Helvetia: The Swiss of West Virginia

this program was made possible with major support from the national endowment for the arts swiss is a little different than germans you talk to german sometime then talk to swiss and see if you know the difference in it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the [Music] uh i grew up two farms away from here from the otto butler farm my great-grandfather's farm and i lived here until i went to college in saint vincent in pennsylvania and then i worked in washington dc studied theology and became involved in the swiss folklore group because i had grown up folk dancing and yodeling here in helvisia and as i got more involved in the swiss group i had a chance to go to switzerland and travel and to live there and my life has turned turned me back here to hell vision now to live our ancestors came to this valley at the headwaters of the buchanan river in 1869 and they called their village helvisia which is the latin word for switzerland [Music] the early settlers left switzerland and set sail from europe to new york city and from new york city they took a train southwest over 400 miles to central west virginia in the appalachian mountains then they proceeded on foot for the last 60 miles into this valley which is now helvisia where their descendants still live my father got so homesick that when i was five we had to come back to helvetia my grandfather my great grandfather came from switzerland my great grandpa came across in 1886 from burns switzerland my mother's people also came from switzerland then when she came she got on the boat she had two little girls when she got on the boat she noticed she didn't have her trunk so she gathered up the little girls and all she took and the next day she started out again trunk and all the switzerland of the 1860s was very poor and people moved from there to the united states looking for a better life several of them were tricked into settling in helvisia by charles lutz a bilingual land agent who was able to sell them deeds which he didn't himself own and thus the farmers had to pay twice for their land but once they got over this initial disaster they managed to establish a rather successful farming community this was a real ethnic community the children had special summer school to learn written german and church services were in german until the 1940s music and dance were very important to the early settlers they brought with them from switzerland their folk songs and their dances shotish polka wals they played instruments string instruments like fiddle and guitar and early on formed a brass band which remained banned in the community until world war ii their home instruments the stringed instruments were eventually melded with american instruments like the banjo and they started playing appalachian music also and started having square dances [Music] there was a movement from the 1800s to the 1900s from being a purely 19th century swiss village to a 20th century swiss american village the language changed from completely german to almost completely english in my lifetime and also it moved from being a farming community to a lumber and coal region as the west virginia economy evolved so some of the farmers around helvicia still make elvisha cheese alvin berkey is one of our youngest cheese makers and he still works his great-grandfather's farm the berkey place [Music] john berkey and mr taisher had a large cheese house in helvisia in the early days of the village where they produced large 16-inch cheeses round cheeses and their nephew earnest had a cheese house on the berkey farm where alvin now lives which produce first round and then smaller square cheeses the oldest cheese makers in the area are the bali sisters who live out the ridge beyond the buckwheat church when you see a motor store raised at the father when i never libra meet them and fitzy and he said swazi so i had to use for it and we started cheese bacon our grandmother made cheese for a long time and and then eventually we start to make cheese kind of runs in the family we all like cheese so we make our own cheese gross mutter and gross fat on their family that is gross mother that is gross father a fritz that is freaking the freaks pep uncle andrew speak the mommy to the baby come on fancy my susie jersey won't let you come will then what's the matter okay [Music] it gives more cheese and better cheese if you don't have if you have different cows some cows get more cheese than others and some get more butter it's richer cream i think i'm done i got a box full of milk my mom taught me how to make it here at home in the small kettle in the kitchen but i learned to make cheese eight years ago in helvetia [Music] that's the cheese ranch that's what you put in to make it thick to make it clever oh dear out over now that makes the cheese flabber so a little bit i'll make it that's what i said cheese i remember grandma always making cheese and we kids would like to to stay around until we she got it finished because we'd like to eat it before we it was put in the press it's going to come too [Music] [Music] big big we try to keep two pigs on handed all the time to eat the extra scraps that we have and for the to drink cheese milk that we have we like to raise our own pork and have our own sausage and our own tenderloin we cure our own hands too [Music] it's hard to push out sometimes on those little holes where it came out on better [Music] we'd like to see this mold on them then we know they're ripening they're not supposed to touch these are going to be heidi's tomorrow the next stage after the cheese making process that i know was brought to elvis with my great great grandparents when the first settlers first came here uh i guess there's been several thousand cheese cured in this basement food is is the soul of this place the first thing you get when you go someplace is food you go visit your neighbor it's sit down sit down have a piece of pie sit down have a hosa blatz sit down have a donut sit down have a hunk of cheese have a glass of wine which was awfully nice when they finally got wine out of the basement it used to be that when you went in in the anyway just the men were invited down in the basement you went down to see uh the canned goods that the women did or you went down to see the new furnace but actually you went down to to sit at a little table down there and have a glass or two or three of the elderberry wine or grape wine or whatever but anyway food is is the soul of this place don't touch the hair on that he knows he knows nothing about where where'd this come from this came from up on the hill uh charlie chan chandler is no no fill it all the way this table is one of the first pieces of furniture in helvetia along with this this wonderful chair if you could could get a close-up of the top of this table you would see that it is all cut up and split and bent stained it it's a wonderful table it was the the wine table down in the agatha basement well our dad used to make wine not that he drank it so much but he liked to serve the people when they come in the class grandpa betler made made wine out of pure juice all together his grapes were really sweet they were regular wine drinks yeah blue concord wine grapes and uh i believe it depends on when you pick the grapes is when you have the most sugar in them ripen fully and then pick them and put them in the barrel at our house we always have to go pick elderberries and they were wild and uh it took about uh oh two bushels of picked berries to make a 50-gallon barrel of wine yeah and remember how we used to have a gallon yeah yeah put a pint to the gallon and we used to and then mom come with a thimble and bang bang hit us on the head because we were being boys [Music] [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] [Music] you [Music] oh this is our late three corn patch it's just coming in silk gold we hope it'll make it but it was so dry we couldn't plant it it wouldn't come out but i think it'll make it because the years are forming pretty good these are beans we put up about a hundred quarts that's three deep in there those jars and that's pears got a lot of honda quartz of them too there's tomato juice okay some of that that's not tomato juice that's tomato there's our sausage we're proud of that's what we were doing last fall they're smoked now see they're not for a nice built just so to keep we used to have corn for siloam we used to plant we get 50 60 boost level days i think i better quit i would roll amen yeah yeah pop asked you know if he could uh come along with the coding in sunday school church and all the time no you can't do that because you use that to play for dancers yeah that's all good about yeah i'm good also but like pop said whenever pop got done criticizing he always said but he is a good man yeah these funny little incidents they come and go you think of them and then maybe that's where you get them funny mook as you guys now you see how she treats me you know what amoka is what she says i have a lot of mochas on the outside yes well you tell them i don't know you you having a lot of them little habits huh little habits you got little somebody touches your wash clothes you throw a stick just stick the stove without ever yeah louis carter would come and walk by my washer and pick up a sticker stove and then i'd hit him too he wasn't supposed to go close to my clothes did you do that nina yes i did well shame on you the poor man he didn't have no business out there maybe he was going to bring in your washing that would be worse and then poor grandma out there in the wilderness and she had a pretty nice over nutrition she'd go up on top of the hill every sunday looking to see if she could see a glimpse of switzerland and here the church bails yeah what she what missed the most was the church bills and whenever there was a nail put in right out there in the hall there's some nails in the floor and then grandma would say oh the woman did that that's probably had this oh anything that had to do with nails and the hammer you got the credit for it grandma said she was going to learn that english language that she was going to be foolish and learn that english language all she learned to say was a nutmeg she could say nutmeg and that things and dentists she called it the dandy yeah what's that that the dentist oh she called her the dentist had to go to the dentist she never did but she she said she wasn't going to be foolish and learn that old english language she didn't either the people who live here are from several sections of switzerland but predominantly from bern so when we speak banduce we speak very slowly here the berkeys and the bethlers and the deathweilers speak baron douche the the clays elsie berkey's family speak up and sell douche and they instead of which means yes and baron they say yo which is yes in open cell and yah is is high german then merck leaves my mom's side of the family speak uh dialect from argyll which is similar to baron douche except it's not so slow my grandmother and grandfather came to this country from gross hofstede in switzerland my oldest aunt remembered them leaving switzerland to come to this country my father was the first baby boy that was born at helvisia after the family came uh here he lived here all his life [Music] [Music] oh my great grandpa came across in 1886 from burn switzerland and uh and settled here in adolf and if some others come along about the same time there was feasters feasters and wagons and brown moles i don't know how old this shaving horse is huh my grandpa rush made it and then my dad he used it all the time and then when i got big enough i got to use it but uh it's made a lot of handles and so if i'm willing on a piece of wood here now i start to make a hammer handle uh that's what i'm a little known now way back when this barn was built there's a lot of swiss people around here and they all got together and that's how they got the locks up they all helped each other and that's how the barn got built just people are helping each other my dad told me that he hewed on these logs when he was seven eight years old we grow oats and buckwheat all over that hill there and corn everything we grown up there again that hill this cradle here we cradled oats with them then we tied them in sheas then in the wintertime we thrashed them here on this floor on the floor here we my daddy called up the thrash floor and we trashed and knocked them out with a trail my grandparents built this sled and my father and he was a boy though young made this sled and never hauled nothing on me hay saw the whole hole and it surely holds a lot of hay and uh that's all we use it for still using it at times oh man albert graham malt was a blacksmith and i watched him when i was a kid i used to watch him a lot take the horse up and give him a shot the old time told me the devil will get you for hitting cold orange my dad he was raised here in adolf and then uh got acquainted with my mother over hell bishop they got together and they got married one of the true sons of helvisia was walter agather and walter was worked with the ambulance service during world war one in europe and but he was also a very fine photographer and did the many many uh photographs of early helvetia and the scenes and the family gatherings that most of them around the turn of the century and we are most fortunate to have a complete collection of aggregators the old glass plates and also many of the glass plates have been uh developed for us and many very fine photographs of early healthy scenes and people this is a woven coverlet we thank one of the first pieces of weaving in helvetia and this is a door from apparently a small cupboard mr layman came from germany he was one of the german descendants of here and he had three daughters and when they got married he was kind enough to paint the interior of their living room walls [Music] [Music] oh all right i think jim could have a sausage sandwich and i could have the chicken it would just don't drip hazardous hazardous services thank you now the coffee is coming [Music] do [Music] i started folk dancing when i was two years old i've always been real proud of the tradition in helvetia my grandfather was was a native from switzerland he was originally from switzerland and he he was real proud of the tradition this is my mother and she's been focusing for two generations here and this is my daughter three generations so yeah we have three generations [Music] so [Music] helvishy has always danced there's always been dances even if it was square dances on saturday nights when i was a kid growing up every every saturday night it seemed like a friday night there was a dance at the hillbilly hall and dancing is one of the way that we could keep the heritage of our people and ancestors that came from germany and switzerland to settle in hell this year it's just a nice place to be from and i wouldn't change it for anything [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] okay uh the children of the pickens and helvetia area attend pickens school which is the smallest school in west virginia and probably were the most raw or isolated geographically this is the 11th and 12th grade social studies class that uh at this time we have four full-time teachers k-12 this is a k-12 school with approximately 50 students the reason we're so small is there's no viable alternative the roads and the geographic location of pickens there's just no other possibility to get education these children they have to be educated here because it's just not humane to bust children out of here it's really important that we have the school there for the children and for the community the schools go out your post office is going to go your stores are going to go and what are you in churches also going to be be bad and then it's it's better i think for the children sit still honey uh with the children all around you know even the adults they have more time than at home and it just it's just not right without a school in your community my great grandfather came from switzerland when my grandfather was 11 or 14 years old and they settled in ohio dover round over ohio and then later in later years they moved here to helvetia and they lived up here on the farm he had family of several children was there something else zumbas were talented some of them were gunsmiths like norman zombo was a gunsmith and then he had a brother who was a clock maker and a carpenter one was a carpenter they made they made machinery too they made a thrashing machine little thrice machine that's over here in the museum now and then norman i think was norman by himself made a some kind of an engine they were just real ambitious seamstresses so they could sew this is one of my pride pride quilts i think these dates on here in 1924 i think that they must have started at that time then they have 1940 and probably finished by then whenever my girls get married i give them a quilt a quilted quilt that i make and then the grandchildren now get one too and so then the the boys usually like the comfort so i make a comfort out of real wool and give them for a wedding present [Music] it doesn't show very good that's better [Music] so [Music] i call them rolls my mother called them little wrigleys she carved my land waiting for the night and so i have a whole stack of london and you have to make a comfort if you're clubbing [Music] holy [Music] we had one sheep that had great big long wool and that was my spinning rule every year and my dad would always say well now this is yours and he'd always put it separate so i could uh because yeah all you have to do is mix it up and it was too bad because you couldn't uh yeah the other was clear different now see this a lot of this is very good and then these little lumps but this is from the new wool grandma gave this spinning wheel to me and grandpa merkley made it in about 18 and 70. how many did he make oh 12 or 15 and he had him sold before he'd ever get them finished for a dollar and a half i'm making these socks for charlie he's my brother-in-law and he's been sick and he's always got a cold foot so i said well i'll make you a pair of wool socks and you can keep your feet warm so he liked it and he burst him to bed every night said he has no trouble keeping his feet warm but i like to knit in the evenings i i'm never too tired to knit a few stitches yeah i guess i was about 12 when grandma said and she'd say it in swiss she said you come and sit down here now she said you can do it and i didn't like to sit and skin but i did you never said no to grandma or none of my people as far as that grandmother taught us german and we all knew german and english when we went to kindergarten when grandma and grandpa were first here i think that about the second year that they were here that they had this together and there was nowhere to dance but they would get together and sing and then they would make these the horse blats the crawlers the rosettes and raise donuts every faznaf we would and since 1925 we have made rosettes crawlers and hosa plants and raised donuts and would take them to the hall and different ones would bring in food like that and we'd all have a celebration that's where we celebrated fars now shrove tuesday but i have to get a newspaper oh so i'll get it for you okay can get a newspaper let me put it paper towel they're just perfect here taste it i got okay mm-hmm yeah they're cooked in the middle fastnacht is always a fun time here in hell bishop because it's i like to play fiddle for it and everyone dresses up in masks and it's a the swiss word for mardi gras which is fat tuesday it's right before lent begins and so it's the last chance before you're abstaining from meat products to to eat things fried and lard and so that's why we have the rosettes and the hoes and blots and the donuts to eat that day it's very similar to the french mardi gras or the carnival in in rio it's uh because helvisia is not a catholic community most of the people came from baron and from zurich the celebration probably came over with the catholic family which was the merkleys and and it's not a pure false knocked in that it borrows both from the fossnak tradition of basel and a winter fest tradition or a winter festival tradition from zurich and that's where we the old man winter is hung in effigy and cut down and burned as a bonfire to chase away the winter it's it's not a traditional fast knocked event but it's a traditional winterfest event that takes place about the same time in switzerland so it's a mixture of catholic and protestant festival at the same time when i was a little girl here we always had things to do and to go to one of the things we particularly liked was paws knocked when people dressed up in all sorts of clothing so that so that others would have to decide who we were so it was always a great time and then you didn't go to any other dances or anything of that nature until after easter you you wore all kinds of masks whatever you could find to make something out of when you went to the community hall from at faust knocked the uglier they were the better you liked them and it was it was fun to see whether you could recognize who the other uh people were that were there and also dressed up in their fosun garb [Music] yes [Music] okay [Applause] [Applause] now [Music] [Music] bring your partner [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] laughing [Applause] [Music] so [Music] wow out [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's right baby bird [Music] is a village with so much potential economically and culturally west virginia is losing people every year and so why why did i come back here is there's so much to work with here we have already the swiss culture we have a state the same size as switzerland they're both mountain mountainous regions they have similar problems with rural education with transportation with the isolation from their neighbors and yet all these things can be monopolized upon the swiss have taken those disadvantages and made them advantages and i'd like to see that more and more done here in hellfish [Music] [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] never snow [Music] down [Music] do do you

Channel: Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College

Views: 376,799

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Id: Sk2Gv2lKzRI

Length: 59min 2sec (3542 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021