page_title: Walker Sisters Place
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Walker Sisters Place / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Walker Cabin at Little Greenbrier in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Sevier County, Tennessee, USA. This angle shows the older part of the cabin built by Brice McFalls in the 1840s, with the newer rising beyond. The corn crib is visible on the left, in the distance.
context_page_description: The Walker Sisters Place was a homestead in the Great Smoky Mountains of Sevier County, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The surviving structures— which include the cabin, springhouse, and corn crib— were once part of a farm that belonged to the Walker Sisters— five spinster sisters who became local legends due to their adherence to traditional ways of living. The sisters inherited the farm from their father, and after the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was formed in the 1930s, they obtained a lifetime lease. The National Park Service gained control of the property in 1964 when the last Walker sister died. The surviving structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
  Former Great Smoky Mountains National Park historian Paul Gordon wrote, "of all the people who once lived in what is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park, none exhibited better the character of the mountain people than the Walker family." While part of the Walker Cabin was built in the 1840s by an early Little Greenbrier settler, the present cabin is mostly the work of Wiley King and John Walker, the latter being the father of the Walker Sisters.
context_section_description: In the 1820s, much of what is now Little Greenbrier was purchased by John Renfro, although little is known of Renfro.  Early Little Greenbrier settler Arthur "Brice" McFalls, who moved to the area from South Carolina, bought what is now the Walker Place from Renfro in 1838.  McFalls probably built the smaller half of the Walker Cabin shortly thereafter.  Wiley King (1800–1859) purchased the land in 1853, and built all but the chimney of the larger, 2-story half of the Walker Cabin.  His sons completed the chimney shortly after his death.
  In 1866, King's daughter, Margaret (1846–1909), married John Walker, a Union Army veteran who had just returned from the Civil War.  The Walkers moved into the cabin in 1870, and in subsequent years dismantled the McFalls cabin and reassembled it as a wing of the Walker Cabin for use as a kitchen.  Walker also built the cabin's porch during this period.  In 1909, Walker deeded the land to five of his daughters— Margaret (1870–1962), Martha (1877–1951), Nancy (1880–1931), Louisa (1882–1964), and Hettie (1889–1947— and his youngest son, Giles (Walker's other five children had married and moved away).  In 1921, Giles deeded his share of the land to his sisters.
  While the mountain communities in the surrounding valleys began to modernize to some extent after World War I, the Walker Sisters clung to the old way of life, which emphasized self-reliance.  The sisters raised sheep and grew corn and cotton, sometimes plowing their own fields.  They made their own clothes from the wool and cotton they had raised, and became well known for their Christmas feasts, which consisted almost wholly of food they had grown themselves.  In 1933, the Great Smoky Mountains Park Commission, charged with purchasing property for the creation of the national park, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Walker Sisters to sell their land.  Fearing bad publicity, the Commission refused to initiate a condemnation suit.  The Walker Sisters finally agreed to sell the property in 1941 in exchange for a lifetime lease.
caption: Walker Cabin, showing the older section and porch in the foreground, and the newer section rising behind it
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