- [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Mike Galligan with the Law Offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Announcer] The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small firm personalized care and service.

(gentle piano music) - I'm Avery Hutchins, your host for "Where Stories Live."

In this episode, we venture out into Overton County to explore the life of a hermit named Claude Ramsey.

Claude was born on November the 11th, 1915 to James and Delia Ramsey, and he was their seventh son and the only child to live past infancy.

Claude and his parents lived in a two-room cabin built by his father before the turn of the century, the same two-room cabin Claude lived in his entire life.

The home, now well over 100 years old, was never updated with any modern day amenities and it still stands today representing just how simple life was not that long ago.

Claude used an old wood stove to cook his meals and an iron kettle in the yard to wash his clothes.

For heat in the winter, he burned wood in his fireplace and used mud to insulate the home.

The old spring provided him with fresh water all year long.

Claude was known for walking barefoot and making visits to Mrs. Copeland's store to trade roots for dried beans and coffee.

Claude lived with his parents until their deaths and then he lived alone with just his companion dogs.

He was shy and set in his ways, but he captured the hearts of many.

Over the years, Claude's friends would check in on him and bring him basic necessities.

He believed that the internal combustion engine would one day ruin the world and he never wanted modern day medical care.

But nevertheless, Claude made his way in a world that was changing around him, perfectly content just the way he was.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ Way down in the woods, far from the highways ♪ ♪ Away from the moments unnoticed and gone ♪ ♪ Way down in the woods touching moss so soft ♪ ♪ On the deadwood dying in time's fertile arms ♪ - We moved here in March of 1972 from South Florida.

It was like stepping back in time.

It was, you know, you look around and it was like the '50s.

People were still raising hogs for meat and killing them their selves and heating with wood, making whiskey and growing big gardens.

- That time period there would've probably been a few automobiles then, mostly been horse and wagons or buggies and that's inside the town, outside in the county.

And then later on, automobiles started.

They started having automobiles and trucks and stuff, too.

- My mom had a wood cook stove and we had to cut wood.

We had to get her in her wood and carry water from the spring to do the next day.

And that was every day.

- Most of the families, though, would raise and fix their food and and stuff at home and raise their gardens and stuff, but you had your staples that was at your county and community grocery stores.

You know we call 'em now, but they were stores then that people didn't get or couldn't make.

They'd go down and buy, too.

- Sunday we didn't work.

We got together and played baseball and done whatever, but we've growed pretty much of what we eat.

Kill hogs in the fall and they'd smoke the meat to render their lard and put away stuff.

I can remember back there when nobody had electricity, no water, no running water.

And that's about the way of everybody.

- First off, he would dig roots, they say, yarrow root, stuff like that.

And then he would walk over the mountain, generally over the mountain, barefoot, overalls, and he would go to Miss Copeland's store and he would trade her.

She would trade him the roots for dried beans and plug tobacco and coffee.

He'd live very simple, but that's how he would get his staples.

I don't remember or think that he ever went anywhere else.

- Nobody didn't look down on nobody because they was poor.

We was all poor.

But one good thing, if somebody was having a rough time, why, they would go in and get a ham meat and take it to 'em or they would help em out.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ Way down in the woods walking close to my heart ♪ ♪ To loosen my tongue and thank God for the stars ♪ - I was looking for some escaped horses from Copeland Cove.

And I followed their footprints around, way around the bend, which is a long ways.

And I was feeling a little bit disoriented and I saw some smoke and actually came around off the road and walked up on that side of the bench here.

And I looked down at this cabin and something just moved me.

It was unbelievable.

♪ Thank God for the stars ♪ ♪ Each one in the heavens ♪ ♪ Thank God where you are and your travel ♪ - Claude's dogs saw me.

Started barking and I was standing on the side of a chestnut fence up there and I figured I'd better not run.

And next thing I knew, Claude came out and it was unreal.

It was an out of body experience.

He had an old felt hat, old overalls and a home-spun shirt and barefooted.

And he come up to the fence and met me.

You know, he was surprisingly cordial.

I think I might have reminded him of the neighbors he used to have 'cause I had long hair and I was dressed kind of rough.

And I found out later that Claude was real shy and didn't actually present himself to most people, but we immediately hit it off.

And we talked about where I came from and how I'd been involved in the anti-war movement up north.

And he talked about how he lived here and slowly everybody moved away or died and he was here by himself.

(gentle guitar music) - A friend of mine told me that the property was for sale.

I already had some property in Brotherton, but I was looking for another piece that had a better water situation.

And Claude's spring is a great, great spring.

And of course we have all of Jack's pictures of Claude hanging up here in the house.

But we did some extra work on the house, the shack over there, to help it survive, put a little bit more roof on it.

It had a shake roof on sections of it.

And we replaced that with tin.

And we are planning to, we're in discussions with a land trust and we're planning to file a conservation easement.

And so this property and the other properties that we have acquired since then will be protected, theoretically, forever.

- The cabin was unreal.

It was like walking into a museum.

There was a flintlock over the door and there was beds stuffed with corn husk and that old cook stove in the back.

I mean, it was as simple as fire in the fireplace.

He never completely shut the door.

Back then, people would leave fresh air coming in, even in the winter.

And I'm sure I was so amazed.

All I could think of was I needed my camera.

(lively music) ♪ Joseph Marta seven kids ♪ ♪ I know them names by heart ♪ ♪ Your mother's father worked the mines ♪ - When we visit Claude and his family, the house that they lived in was a little two-room and it had a little upstairs to it and the stairway come down beside the chimney.

- At first he was real shy about the camera, but he didn't mind me shooting the house or the barn or the spring or the cook stove or like that.

But I came so many times with it, I noticed that more and more he was comfortable with it.

And we had some of the only photographs and still do of Claude Ramsey.

Pretty cool.

I wanted to capture history, that's what I wanted to capture.

That's what we came up here for, was to.

Cameras are for history, I think.

That's what they do.

And with Claude, I could step back in time and capture that history, which was very appealing to us.

- Cloude's mother's name was Delia Ramsey and of course she married Jim, James, Jim Ramsey.

Believe they married in 1897 or there about.

I think the first child was born in 1899 maybe.

And then that brings it up.

I think Delia, his mother died in '65.

And I don't recall when Jim passed away.

- Well, he was raised by his mom and his dad here.

He was a seventh son of seven sons and he was the only one that survived childhood.

And so he did have family.

I don't know when his mother passed, but it was well before I came and met him.

- I probably was eight or nine year old.

And Claude was, yeah, he was a lot older than me.

He was a grown up boy, more or less, maybe in his teenage years or something.

- I think people were drawn to him to a certain extent.

I think a lot of people were afraid of Claude just because of his nature.

He wasn't dangerous, but he was the man that was left behind.

He was the wild man of Overton County and that was his reputation.

There was a few people that would see Claude.

Kenneth Winham would come back and see Claude, but there wasn't many.

- Claude was known as somebody that kept to his self, stayed out of other people's business.

But if you would talk to Claude, he would talk to you.

And I never known of nobody ever being mad at Claude or having anything bad to say about Claude, other than, you know, he just stayed home.

He would, through the summer, he'd go barefoot, him.

And he did wear shoes in the winter and he was just a good boy in the community.

Didn't bother nobody.

- Claude had six brothers and sisters, but none of 'em lived.

They all died young or died a small child.

Actually, they were all deceased by 1914.

(lively music) Family Bibles is the birth dates and the death dates, the marriage dates, and a lot of times you'll find different stuff wrote in too, or different pages stuck in there about who so and so was and how many kids they had.

It was various things that you can find besides just the main focus of birth, death dates and marriage dates.

All the writing is in, looks like an old pen style, except there's two modern writings in like a common ink pen.

And one of them is Delia, his mother's death date.

And I just feel, that's probably Claude's writing that.

I don't think nobody else would've wrote that in the Bible for him.

I think Claude would've wrote that.

- By that time when I was growing up, my dad would send me maybe to the store to get fertilizer, seed, taters, whatever.

And if I was with a wagon and mules and Claude would be there, he would ride back up the mountain with me.

But if I was in a truck, he wouldn't ride.

- He looked up one day.

There was a plane going by and he said, "That's the ruination of us all."

The infernal combustion engine is what he called it.

Kenneth Winham brought him a little transistor radio and I assumed that he brought him batteries from time to time.

And Claude would listen to that and Claude would listen to the guy that predicted the future.

And Claude would listen to the swap shop.

And I guess on Sundays maybe Claude would listen to church services.

He wasn't opposed to it, not at all.

- He listened to the radio all the time.

And there was a man on the radio by the name of Armstrong, and he had a program.

And Claude, he would order his literature and listen in to him on the radio.

And reading his literature, I suppose that he learned a lot.

- Along in his later years, he was set up with a check, a disability check, and he would have it sent to the old Copeland store down on the Monterey Highway.

And so he knew when that check was coming in.

And the story I heard was that he would take off walking to the store and it's a pretty hefty walk, about three miles or so, and would cash the check and then buy a bunch of stuff.

I'm sure he ate a lot of beans, but I think he was buying a bunch of canned foods and a lot of junk food.

But he would, and doing this barefoot, and then he would walk back up the trail with all of his goods, but he didn't want to have to carry it all the way back here.

So he'd take part of it and he'd have a stash and he had apparently several stashes along the trail.

And then throughout the month he would go back and raid those stashes until the next month when the process would be repeated again.

- Claude was very literate.

I understand that his mom taught him to read in the old family Bible and he could write, he could read, which surprised me.

And he would discuss things that he'd read.

And I always loved to just sit and listen to him.

- The story that I got, he went to school one day.

He went home and told his mother he wasn't going back.

So she taught him how to read, how to write.

- How would I describe Claude's personality?

Very bright, very in tune with his surroundings.

He was also shy.

But once he got started, he could tell you a lot of things.

He could tell you the nature of the creatures and how things had changed and how the squirrels would raise their babies at a different time.

And just very in tune with what was going on around him.

- He didn't have a lot of hard items that he owned that would've lasted.

I know over at the spring there was a sapling that had been cut into a trough, which is how he would go over to the spring and fill a bucket and bring it back over to the house.

So we really don't have much of what Claude owned.

What we have is an old thermometer hanging on the wall.

One of the other items that we have is an handmade key and on the front door to Claude's house has a lock on it.

(lively music) ♪ Good old days, good old days ♪ - After his mother's death in 1965, Claude found friendship in many of his neighbors who would check in on him from time to time.

His independent spirit and self-sufficiency were admirable, but it also may have been what cut his life short.

In March of 1982, Claude was found unconscious in his home after refusing medical care from what they believe to be cancer.

Now in his sixties, Claude wasn't afraid of death, but he was afraid of losing his hand.

He was admitted to the hospital for care, but it wasn't long after his stay in the hospital that Claude passed away.

He was buried alongside his mother and father at Liberty Cemetery in Overton County.

♪ They bring me food and water ♪ ♪ In this room is all I know ♪ ♪ My thirsty spirit keeps me ♪ - He got bit by a copperhead in his garden and it bit him on the hand.

And years ago when he had the growth on his hand, he told me he thought it came from the snake biting him, but he got bit by a snake and of course just treated himself.

I don't know if his mom, I think he was younger and I think his mom was still here then.

But he thought that's what caused him to have later problems.

Did Claude get medical care when he got sick?

They were gonna come and drag him out of the farm and take him to the hospital.

And in retrospect, I kind of wish I'd let him.

But I was young and thought I knew everything.

And I brought Dr. Wolf out here and carried her over the fence and shooed the dogs off.

She was kind of the old country doctor that took care of the hippies and took care of old country people.

And I brought her to the house and Claude had a big growth on his hand.

And she said she dressed him and petted him and treated him like a mother.

I could tell he really liked it.

And she said, "Claude," she said "if you don't get this fixed, you're gonna die."

And Claude said, "Well, we're all gonna die."

Finally, Jesse Dixon, who used to bring him wood, who was a good buddy of mine, he found him passed out in front of the fire on the floor and gathered him up and took him to the hospital in his log truck.

- And we went around there and they called ambulance.

Ambulance come, but Jesse, he logged, cut timber and he took his log truck around there and they put Claude on the back of that log truck.

And he rode out of where he was at onto the road where the ambulance can get to him.

And that's the way he went to town.

First and the only time as far I know he rode on a vehicle operated by gas.

- And I heard about it.

Jesse called me and told me and I packed up and went to the hospital because I wanted him to know what a special guy they had.

Oh hell, they all knew him.

And they said, "Do you want to see him?"

And I said, "Well, yeah."

And he had a single room, appropriately.

And there he sat propped up in bed, all shaved and cleaned up, and he had two or three milks and four or five things of Jello.

I talked to him for a little while.

It was a little uncomfortable because we were both outta context.

And I looked up and there's a TV set.

And I thought, "Well."

I said, "Claude, do you wanna watch TV?"

He goes, "Well, I've heard of it."

He goes, "Well, yeah."

And so I turned it on and of course it was PBS.

And when I left Claude that day, which was shortly after that, he was watching Big Bird.

And believe it or not, Claude died that night because he knew they were gonna operate on him and he wasn't gonna have it.

And that was the last time I ever saw Claude was watching Big Bird.

- His family's been here and through the ranges.

He never did have no siblings that lived.

He does have and did have some nieces and aunts and uncles, but, matter of fact, one great-niece did live in Collierville.

I haven't heard from her in several years or so, but he's got a lot of descendants, family connections.

- Claude was drafted in World War II and he wasn't gonna go, obviously, but they came out and got him.

Some people came out and got him one day and loaded him in a truck and started to town with him.

And when they stopped the truck, he jumped out and ran home.

And some lawyers in town, some good people found out what had happened.

And they stood up for him and wrote to the federal government and to the president, in particular.

And he was deferred from service, as he should have been.

And they took care of him that way.

They understood how special he was.

- There were, and still are to a certain degree, trails all over the property.

And we used to walk all those trails regularly.

Now that I'm getting on in years, I don't walk 'em as often.

And some of 'em are starting to disappear, but just a way of life that you don't see in Tennessee anymore.

And fortunately, Jack preserved a lot of that, a lot of the imagery from that way of life.

And it'll be with us from now on.

- We always said Claude was the man left behind because there were neighbors on either side and a lot of people back then were headed up north to work in the automobile industry.

So I think that he was more social when he had neighbors, but not incredibly.

But I don't think that it shaped him totally.

He was who he was.

(gentle guitar music) - Claude Ramsey may be known as a man of mystery or a man of legend, but for some he will forever be known as the hermit.

For those that knew him best, he will forever be known as their friend.

Claude's life has been documented forever, as the photographs taken by Jack Stoddard are part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian.

Thanks to Claude and his life, a piece of history was captured, which tells the story of life in rural Tennessee.

I think we could all learn a lesson or two from Claude Ramsey, the hermit.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of "Where Stories Live."

If you like this program, please visit our website at wcte.org.

Thank you for joining us and I'll look forward to seeing you next time when we go where stories live.

(gentle piano music) (lively music) ♪ Way down in the woods far from the highways ♪ ♪ Away from the moments unnoticed and gone ♪ ♪ Way down in the woods touching moss so soft ♪ ♪ On the deadwood dying in time's fertile arms ♪ (bright music) - Hi, I'm Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Announcer] The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small firm personalized care and service.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.