You know that I love visiting home sites. And, I’ve confessed before that when I walk these lands, the stories echo in my mind. Such is the case with Uncle Bill Todd’s homeplace above Slate Creek.

William Jasper Todd was certainly a character to remember. He was born in Washington County, Virginia in 1853 and headed west to Tennessee with his parents and several of his 15 siblings in the years following the Civil War. These would have been the first of the Todd family to cross into Tennessee.

Their new home must have seemed like The Wild West after generations of the family had lived on a western Virginia plantaion! Remember that no rail access crossed the Cumberland Plateau until 1890. The vast stretches of timber were one of the mountain’s greatest resources but went relatively untouched the railroad was available to haul it to metropolitan markets. In 1870 the population of Anderson County, Tennessee was a whopping 8,704 people. But that was too many, so the family kept heading west into Fentress county where the 1880 census finds them numbered among the 5,941 residents of the county.

Uncle Bill, as he is universally remembered today, settled on the banks of Slate Creek and soon had a thriving homestead. He would need to prosper as he fathered and raised 22 children with 3 wives.

I don’t know in what order he built, but there was a mill on Slate Creek. Folks went to Uncle Bill for dental work – well at least pulling teeth as needed. He was a barber, it seems like a lot of barbers were also the local dentist and I don’t quite know how those two professions compliment each other. And William Jasper Todd would be the local Justice of the Peace.

So, it’s said you could have a turn of corn ground, get a hair cut and tooth pulled, and get married all in the same place. Doesn’t that sound like one happening spot in the late 1800’s?

The home was large – remember how many children it had to accommodate – and stood until the late 1940’s. Several families lived there before Odell Atkinson bought the farm and eventually built a new house for his family. Folks say that was the coldest house in Martha Washington. Perhaps its perch on the hillside above the flowing waters of Slate Creek cast a chill on it. Yet, it was home to Bill Todd until shortly before his death in 1929. The 1920 census shows him still living there, along with his last wife, Vandora (remember that on the mountain we pronounce that “Vandoree”) and 6 children ranging from 4 to 17 years of age.

Despite all of this history, there’s little hint today that the home ever existed. Except, for the yellow Easter flowers that blanket the hillside. These always whisper a reminder of a homeplace, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many in one place.

Well, I planted my potatoes on Good Friday. That’s when you are supposed to plant them, right?

Old timers will give you all kinds of advice on when to plant what. There are the signs to follow – we really need to explore those, don’t we? Then, there are the hints from other plants – I understand that when the Service Berry trees bloom, some will tell you to plant your potatoes. And then there’s the Good Friday rule.

My mother’s grandmother always wanted to plant her potatoes on Good Friday. In fact, she also wanted to plant corn then. However, March 31st is just too early for me to chance a crop of corn. Great-Grandma Livesay was so serious about planting on this day, Mama reports she would wade the mud and scoop out holes with a tablespoon if that was what was required to honor the Good Friday planting day.

Slowly, I walked through my little patch of plowed ground, dropping and covering the layers of lime, fertilize and cut seed-potatoes. As I did, my mind was working through all that needed to happen over the Easter Weekend. We had started out the day with a reading of the Crucifixion from Matthew chapter 28. There would be a celebration on Saturday and food needed to be prepared. Special clothes must be ironed and laid out ready for Sunday morning. All of this was to celebrate the blessed resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ – the only hope we have of eternal life in fellowship with a Holy God!

How did it all meld with the urgency to get the potato crop in the ground on Good Friday?

The Farmer’s Almanac is aware of this advice and made a scientific analysis here back in November 2023. They weren’t quite willing to endorse the “tradition” but they did mention the idea that had come to my mind amidst my meditation on the Resurrection. Author Amber Kanuckel traces Good Friday planting back to Ireland (I’m not surprised by the origin, although I might have thought it started earlier) when potatoes were an essential crop.

Jesus was “planted” (I hope that isn’t irreverent) on Good Friday and gloriously rose in three days – just as he had prophesied in John 2:19. Perhaps, we could infer that anything similarly planted the same day would grow and prosper?

I’m no prophet, and based on last year’s potato crop, not a particularly good gardener either. But, the seed is in the ground and we’ll see if the Lord blesses it!