Honorary Doctorates:

• University of Richmond
• Berea College
• Morris Harvey College
• DePaul University in Chicago
• Loyola University in New Orleans

III. Information about the region

The "real" Walton's Mountain is called Schuyler, Virginia and is located about thirty miles south of Charlottesville (FAQ).  The town is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the population consists of about 400 people.  It is in Nelson County in central Virginia.  Schuyler is fifteen miles from Scottsville.  It is about thirty miles from Waynesboro (where Clay Spencer worked in The Homecoming) and forty miles from Lynchburg.

Many of the places in Earl Hamner's stories exist in Schuyler.  His boyhood home is pictured above ("My Favorite TV Show").  The school the Hamners attended has been turned into a community center and museum (Atkins I).  There, Walton's memorabilia, set replicas, and audio-visual presentation can be seen.  The Schuyler Baptist church, avoided by Clay Spencer in Spencer's Mountain, still has regular services (Atkins I).  The Bethel Methodist Church, now New Faith Methodist still stands as well on the Rockfish River Road (Atkins I).

The New World Stone Company is located in Schuyler, Virginia.  The company is the only source of Virginia Soapstone.  It is on the site of the historic Alberene Stone Company.  Earl Hamner, Sr. was once an employee at the Alberene Stone Company (Atkins I).

IV. List of Works

Novels
Fifty Roads to Town (1953)
Spencer's Mountain (1961)
You Can't Get There From Here (1965)
The Homecoming (1970)
The Avocado Drive Zoo (1999)

Screenplays
Spencer's Mountain (1963)
Palm Springs Weekend (1963)

Teleplays
Highway (1954)
Heidi (1969)
Appalachian Autumn (1970)
Aesop's Fables (1971)
The Homecoming (for CBS, 1971)
Where the Lilies Bloom (1972)

V. Summaries of Works

Spencer's Mountain (1970)
On Thanksgiving Eve, Uncle Virgil arrived at the Spencer home with a present for fifteen year-old Clay-Boy—a hunting knife.  The next day Clay-Boy went on his first hunting trip with the Spencer men and killed the great albino deer his Grandfather Zebulon has told about so many times.  Anyone who killed the deer, he said, would be marked for glory.

In the spring, the Baptist church got a new minister, Reverend Goodson.  While Clay Spencer was out fishing on the Rockfish River, pictured at left, the new pastor joined him (Atkins II).  After awhile, he and Clay got drunk.  Goodson arrived at the parsonage inebriated, much to the dismay of the church ladies.  Clay spent the entire week visiting neighbors to restore Reverend Goodson's name.

One evening Miss Parker, the English teacher, and Rev. Goodson visited the Spencer home with news that Clay-Boy could receive a scholarship to the University of Richmond.  The only ones left were ministerial scholarships.  Despite his own disagreement, Clay allowed his son to apply anyway.

Claris Coleman, the daughter of Colonel Coleman, came to visit New Dominion during the summer.  She charmed Clay-Boy with her striking honesty and, during the summer, their romance progressed.  Claris later came with the news that she would be attending Westhampton, the women's college, at the University of Richmond.

After much waiting, Clay-Boy finally heard news of his scholarship from the University of Richmond.  He was not accepted because he had no Latin. His father worked it out that Clay-Boy could learn Latin from Rev. Goodson.  His father promised to go to church in return, a big surprise to Olivia.

Clay Spencer's dream had always been to build a house on his share of Spencer's Mountain for Olivia. He had good intentions, but never seemed to finish.  When he was working on the house, Zebulon came up on the mountain and a tree fell on the two before Clay-Boy could warn them.  His father broke his leg and Zebulon died. 

After recovering, Clay Spencer went to ask a neighbor for a loan for his son's college tuition and he is turned him down.  Clay realized he must sell his land on the mountain to pay for it.  The dream of the white house with the green shutters was gone. Clay-Boy got on the bus for Richmond, the sky as his limit, ready to accomplish anything.

The Homecoming (1970)
"It is remembered in my family that on Christmas Eve of 1933 my father was late arriving home.  That, along with the love he and my mother bestowed upon their eight red-headed offspring, is fact. The rest is fiction." – Earl Hamner

The novella opened with Olivia Spencer feeling a lack of Christmas Spirit.  The children were restless and her husband, Clay, was late in arriving home.  The time was the Depression, and Clay had to find work in Waynesboro to support his family.  Olivia sent the oldest son, Clay-Boy, out to cut the Christmas tree on Spencer's Mountain.  They had selected it the summer before.  In the process, he had a run-in with one of the offspring of the legendary white buck.

When Clay-Boy arrived home, his father had still not arrived. A missionary lady came to town handing out "presents," and the Spencer children almost compromised the family pride.  In a mixed-up chain of events, Clay-Boy went out to look for his father.  He rode with a sheriff to the First Abyssinian Church.  One of the men at the church then gave him a ride to the Staples' place, elderly women notorious for their "Recipe."  Clay-Boy returned home with no luck, arriving quite intoxicated in a one-horse open sleigh.

Around one o'clock in the morning, Clay arrived home.  He had missed the bus from Waynesboro and had to hitchhike and walk.  He had spent all of his paycheck on presents for the family.  Clay bought his son five writing tablets and a fountain pen, so Clay-Boy would be able to pursue his dreams of a writing career.

Recipes from The Homecoming

Olivia's Applesauce Cake
1 cup of butter
3 ½ cups flour (sifted)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups applesauce
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups light raisins
2 teaspoons cloves
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt

Sift together: Flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.  Take ½ cup of flour mixture and stir into the nuts and raisins.  Set both aside.  Cream butter until whipped soft.  Add sugar a little at a time until mixture is smooth.  Beat in eggs vigorously.  Alternately stir in flour mixture and applesauce.  When all mixed together add nuts and raisins and mix well.  Pour batter into a well-greased cake mold.  Bake in a preheated oven at 350¥ for one hour.  Cool ten minutes, then turn out on cake rack.  Frost with Whiskey Frosting when cake is cool.

Jane's Whiskey Frosting
¼ cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon cream
2 tablespoons whiskey
Pinch of salt

Cream butter, add sugar and salt, then cream and whiskey.  Whip until smooth.  Frost cake.  Decorate with a sprig of holly.

VI. Interesting Quotations

• "Margaret Tanguay asked Hamner how his own family, after whom the Walton characters are largely patterned, had reacted to the series. 
• 'Not [with] shock, but delight at reliving old times,' Hamner said.  'You know, Thomas Wolfe 'couldn't go home again' because of the things he'd written, but I can go home, and do, because I've written with affection about our life together.' " –Gale Database
• "It did not feel like Christmas.  That moment which had always come in other years, that mingled feeling of excitement, which she called The Christmas Spirit, had evaded her." –description of Olivia Spencer, The Homecoming, p. 1
• "When something called 'the Depression' happened in Washington or New York or some distant place, the soapstone plant had closed down, and all the men in the village had to find other jobs and other ways of making a living for their families." -The Homecoming, p. 7
• " ' It's just like Daddy always claims,' said Becky bitterly.  'Nobody ever gave away anything worth keepen!' '' -The Homecoming, p. 63
• " 'Someone has run out of the Recipe!' said Etta." –The Homecoming, p. 87
• "He kissed her tenderly on the cheek, but then, and this was what the children were waiting for, he picked her up and danced about the kitchen shouting joyously, 'God, what a woman I married!' while Olivia shouted indignantly, 'Put me down, you old fool!' ''-said of Clay & Olivia Spencer, The Homecoming, p. 109
• " 'Up there on the mountain, when I was a boy,' the old man began the story he told each year, 'there used to be a big old buck deer that was white all over and had pink eyes . . .' " - Grandfather Zebulon, Spencer's Mountain, p. 11
• " 'It wasn't no boy that killed that deer, Clay,' he said.  'It took a man to do it.' " -Uncle Virgil, Spencer's Mountain, p. 19
• " 'You're crazy,' she said, and then she was gone into the house and Clay-Boy was alone and miserable, bewildered and in love."-Claris Coleman, Spencer's Mountain, p. 105
• "He rose and began to destroy that which was already dead . . . Each blow he dealt to the house fell as if on some living part of himself and Clay cried aloud with pain."-Spencer's Mountain, p. 231

VII. Recited Works

VIII. Links

X. Bibliography