Monday After: Remembering the Tar Hollow settlement

A century ago in the Appalachian region of Ohio, life was primitive atop the ridges and amid the pitch pines.

"A cross section of life such as usually has been pictured as that of the illiterate mountaineer — frowsy women and unkempt men, ragged children 'running wild,' all living in rude shacks isolated from civilization — is the picture which is presented (at) the northeastern corner of Ross County," said an Associated Press article published in The Sunday Repository on May 20, 1923.

Families of 15 were found "living in one-room shacks," headlines told Repository readers.

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"Officials Face Hard Problem In Primitive Settlement of Tar Hollow — Untouched By Civilization — No Schools, No Milk— Aid Is Rejected — See Few Strangers — No Garden Produce Raised On Rocky Soil."

The primitive lifestyle "furnishes health and school officials with a difficult problem," said the article, which was tucked inside the newspaper on Page 5. "A section of school lands, timber-covered and overgrown with underbrush ... furnishes an opportunity for such a picture almost in the midst of a comparetively prosperous farming community."

Description of life was bleak

It would be unfair to judge the residents of Tar Hallow, which had earned its name due to sitting in a low portion of rolling terrain and because it previously was a source of pine tar for pioneers. It was a different time.

The bleak lives of "nine large families" who were settled on the land "in their primitive fashion" resisted the attempts of government officials to "better their condition."

"Some of the families hold leases for their land, but others merely live as 'squatters,' having come into the bit of wild country years ago, built rough shelters and remained there almost unmolested ever since," said the article. "Most of the shacks are of the rudest 'lean-to' type, constructed of logs or clapboards hewn from the vast quantity of timber which surrounds them. They scatter themselves through the pine woods in a disorderly fashion and most of them appear to be ready to fall to pieces at the first breath of wind."

Most of the structures were single rooms, with that space often occupied by 12 to 15 people. Those occupants —grandparents, parents and children — "live through their lives and die, many times without having been more than a few miles from their homes."

Surrounding area was wilderness

Access to the settlement was via a single road more than a mile from the scattered collection of huts.

"It is not once in months that a stranger traverses the poor roads and rough country and appears in the colony."

Health problems were caused by intermarriage and poor diet.

A study by Dr. G.E. Robbins, county health commissioner, determined "many of the children were undernourished ... and some of them anemic and possibly tubercular."

"He recommended that they be placed on a milk diet, but was told that the settlement had no cattle and that milk could not be obtained in the entire district."

County and state school authorities tried to compel more than 30 children in the settlement to attend school, but were rebuffed by adult residents.

"'We'll teach them ourselves,' they declared, in spite of the fact that most of them are unable to write their own names. ... The nearest schoolhouse is several miles away."

Food problems were prevalant

Due to the rocky and wooded nature of the ground, "no grain or garden produce is raised in Tar Hollow," the article noted.

"The rocky ground which surrounds the settlement remains as it was before the first settler came and there appears to be no method by which the people eke out their meager living."

Charitable efforts by nearby communities, such as those in Adelphi and other villages in the county, were "met with "sullen refusal on the part of the people to cooperate in bettering conditions."

"They have lived as they are living now for all their lives, they declare, and see no reason for a change."

Change did come to Tar Hollow, however.

Tar Hollow State Forest, "Ohio's third largest state forest," covering 16,354 acres, "began as part of the Ross-Hocking Land Utilization projects in the 1930s," said the parks and recreation page of the website for Vinton County, which is adjacent to Ross County. The land utilization effort was a New Deal program.

The program "aimed to put families on land that they could make a living on."

"People were given a new financial start in life and were encouraged to move to the cities. Most, however, bought more poor ground outside the park and continued to live as they always had," explained a page at the website for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

The project was ended, and years later the land was transferred to the state.

Included in the state forest is Tar Hollow State Park, with offices in Laurelville, a few miles east of Adelphi.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Monday After: Remembering the Tar Hollow settlement