Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Martha and Lizie (pronounced Lie-zee) were born and lived their entire lives here on Coggins Road off of the Fifteenth. They were twin sisters who stayed behind to take care of their parents and never married. They died a year apart of each other at the ages of 92 and 93.

Martha and Lizie kept a house full of cats. One year, their uncle sent them a shipment of citrus fruit which they turned into marmalade and gave out as gifts. It was the prettiest marmalade you ever saw...except when you held it up to the light, it was swimming in cat hair. Cat hair jelly.

Both were strikingly beautiful women in their youth. They would sit on the rocks of Big Creek with their long black hair hanging about them, as brown as Indian Maidens.

Both girls were known for their beautiful needlework and quilting.

I've felt a certain fondness for these two though I never met them. Perhaps it's because I'm an old maid, too.

"In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains,
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision-
Genius is wisdom and youth."
.....Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology