16 Discover Cocke County 2021
Leonora: The Real Christy By Hannah Zellers
The Honda bounced over patches of concrete and gravel. With each curve in the road, my stomach twisted a little tighter. I tried to ignore the motion sickness and watch for a road sign to the Christy Mission. My dad and I were on a Sunday afternoon drive to hunt down some local history. Even as a Cocke County native, I had forgotten how deep these mountains went. The one-lane road wound through hollows that wouldn’t see sunlight until late afternoon. Old tobacco barns sat in tree-lined clearings, slanting precariously above the vehicles and farm implements stored inside. Dogs barked from the front porch welcome mats of houses tucked between hillsides. .I didn’t see the Christy Mission sign until it appeared in the rearview mirror. A little reverse work and one sharp turn later, we were back on track, angling upward and trading the patched concrete for gravel. I wondered what these woods had looked like to Leonora Whitaker, the real-life schoolteacher who inspired the bestselling novel, “Christy”, by Catherine Marshall. Telling the story of a nineteenyear-old from Asheville, North Carolina, the book follows Christy into the mountains of East Tennessee. Though the novel is fictionalized, an estimated three-fourths is based on fact drawn from the life of Leanora. Arriving shortly after Christmas 1909, Leonora . stepped off the train at the Del Rio train stop and spent the night at the boarding house owned by Joseph and Mildred Burnett. After a journey through the snow to Ebenezer Mission, she began teaching school in the little community that the novel fictionally refers to as Cutter Gap. The novel creates a love-triangle between Christy, Rev. David Grantland, and Dr. Neil MacNeill—but the doctor’s character was added for fictional appeal. In reality, a love story did occur between the mission pastor named John Wood and Leanora, the new schoolteacher. The two were married four months after they first met. .What was this Leonora like—the real Christy? I wondered. Had she really been the city-girl with the fine clothes depicted in the 1994 “Christy” film starring Kellie Martin? It seemed that only a girl with
Cocke County Department of Tourist Development
This is one of the many signs that provides information to travelers as they visit Chapel Hollow Road in Del Rio. This is the site of the fictional village Cutter Gap, used in the novel “Christy”, which was based on the life of Leonora Whitaker.
courage and grit would hike seven miles through snow to an isolated cove in the mountains to live among strangers in order to teach children how to read. .As we drove, I tried to imagine making the trek on foot, or, worse, in a horse-drawn wagon on roads with holes so deep that wagons were trapped up to their axels in mud. The gravel roads under our tires seemed luxurious compared to the novel’s description of the mudhole where “mules might just as well be trying to hoof it through sorghum.” After enough twists and curves to make me question the existence of Christy’s mountain home, the woods on both sides of the road fell away to reveal a narrow valley ahead, a true mountain “holler” if ever I’d see one. .Kudzu grew on the steep slopes. A sign with peeling paint and moss growing on the edges said “Christy” in black letters chipped by time and weather. Another sign beneath it read “INFORMATION” in block letters next to an empty brochure box. Further up the valley, a rusted car with wingtips sank up to its hubcaps in soft, spring earth. It had arrived sometime in the interim between Leanora’s arrival and my own and had apparently decided to put down roots. .Little plots cleared from the surrounding woods were empty except for signs staked into the ground. Continue to page 17
