CHURCH AND SCHOOL 229 
roll of weaving. Now came the question whether 
there was a market for such work. This was soon 
ascertained. Our first coverlets were sold in a few 
weeks, and the demand for more was enough to 
justify at least a small start in business. So an enter- 
prising young woman near us volunteered to learn 
the double draft. A loom was found for sale in the 
'Ivy Country,' and hauled to us, more wool bought 
and more spinners set to work." 
Thus started what has grown to be an Important 
industry to that part of the mountains. From this 
cove one of the settlement workers pressed yet deeper 
into the wilderness, to the "Laurel Country," as all 
that region drained by tributaries of Big Laurel 
Creek is called. Here, away up on Little Laurel 
Creek, near the Tennessee line, almost due north 
from Hot Springs, and close under the wild Bald 
Mountains, at a place called Allenstand, the work 
was begun again. Once Allenstand was a stopping- 
place on one of those early roads over which passed 
the traffic in cattle, sheep, horses, and swine from 
Tennessee to the eastern lowlands, and from this 
it got its name, a "stand" being a place where 
drovers stopped overnight with their charges, this 
particular one being kept by a man named Allen. 
Allenstand may have been prosperous in those days, 
but the tide of traffic becoming diverted, the people 
living there were left to primitive conditions until 
the coming of the woman who was to open the doors 
to them, for it is to one woman that the "Laurel 
Country" owes its prosperity. It is always the indi- 
