Out Of The Black Patch (Life Writings Frontier Women)

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Description

Effie Marquess Carmack (1885-1974) grew up in the tobacco-growing region of southern Kentucky referred to as the Black Patch. As an adult she moved to Utah, back to Kentucky, to Arizona, and in any case to California. Economic necessity primarily motivated Effie and her husband’s moves, but her conversion to the Mormon Church in youth also used to be a factor. All through her life, she used to be committed to preserving the rural, southern folkways she had experienced as a child. She and other members of her circle of relatives were folk musicians, from time to time professionally, and she also became a folk poet and artist, teaching herself to paint. In the 1940s she started writing her autobiography and in the end also completed a verse adaptation of it and an unpublished novel about life in the Black Patch.

Much of Effie’s story is a charming memoir of her vibrant childhood on a poor tobacco farm. She describes all kinds of folk practices, from healing and crafts to children’s games. Her circle of relatives’s life included the backbreaking labor and economic trials of raising tobacco, but it used to be enriched by a deep familial heritage, communal music, creative play, and traditional activities of many kinds. After the circle of relatives converted to the Mormon Church, religious study and devotion became another important dimension. Effie’s account of Mormon missions contributes to the little-known record of Latter-day Saint attempts to establish a presence in the South.

After marrying, the Carmacks moved west, in the end landing in the Arizona desert, where Effie took up painting in earnest. Her art started to draw modest attention, which brought exhibits, awards, and a new career teaching others what she had taught herself. After the Carmacks later retired to Atascadero, California, Effie became a more active and public folk singer as well. a a a a a a a a a ”

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