Photos by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

"They Call Me Aunt Orlene," a one-woman play written by and starring Phyllis Stump (above), will be performed at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Puckett cabin, near milepost 190 on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A family photo with Puckett at right.

Shelby and Raleigh Puckett, relatives of Orlean Puckett, help maintain her children's graves. "She must have been a woman of really great faith," says Shelby Puckett.

THE HOLLOW -- The babies sleep eternally in one long row, beneath dry, dying grass shaded by enormous pokeweed growing over a split-rail fence. Most of their resting places are marked by simple field stones, one at the head, one at the foot, barely three feet apart.

These are 20 of Orlean Puckett's children, the ones you read about on the sign outside the Puckett cabin on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The ones who died when they were babies or were stillborn. Four more are buried on top of the mountain where Orlean and John Puckett lived after they took leave of their Patrick County home "below the mountain," as locals refer to the foothills and flatlands.

The Pucketts lost 24 babies between 1862 and 1881. How a woman could bear perennial tragedy -- more than once, she lost two in one year -- and live to be almost 100 years old is unfathomable today.

The story could have ended there: Just another mountain tragedy from the days of primitive science, homegrown medicine and hard luck. As it turned out, Orlean Puckett's story was just beginning.

Unable to have a child of her own, Orlean Puckett discovered another way to bring babies into the world -- near age 50, she became a midwife. Not just any midwife, either, but the most famous of all the mountain midwives and "granny women" who helped numerous women through the ordeals of childbirth.

She is believed to have brought more than 1,000 babies into the lush, green hills of Patrick, Carroll and Floyd counties. She helped bring Bob Childress, the "man who moved a mountain" and who built the famed stone churches along the parkway, into the world. She worked with the early country doctors, including the redoubtable Arthur C. Gates, who brought modern medicine into The Hollow in the 20th century.

Orlean Puckett lost 24 babies but gained a thousand children.

"And they all loved her," said Karen Cecil Smith, a North Carolina writer who wrote a book about Puckett. "She rose above the tragedy of her life. She could have been jealous of other women, but she never was. She loved their babies and they loved her. Her story needed to be told."

Presenting 'Aunt Orlene'

Puckett's story has seen renewed interest in recent years. In addition to Smith's book, "Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife" (Parkway Publishing), a one-woman play based on Puckett's life will be presented Sunday at the old Puckett cabin on the parkway near milepost 190.

Phyllis Stump plays the role of Puckett in "They Call Me Aunt Orlene," a play she wrote and has performed for four years. (Yes, Smith and Stump spell Puckett's first name differently. Everybody does. According to a family historian, documents exist that refer to Puckett as Orlean, Orlene, Orlena, Ilena, Alena, Aulenia, Arlena and, based on the 1840 census, Aulene.)

Like thousands of other travelers over the years who stopped by the old Puckett cabin (which wasn't Orlean's cabin, despite the park service's claims many years ago. The cabin belonged to one of Orlean's nieces), Stump was intrigued by Puckett's story filled with tragedy, irony and triumph, and was inspired to learn more.

So inspired, in fact, she and her husband Bob bought a home about a half-mile away from the old cabin so she could study Puckett's life.

"I said, 'I'm coming up here because somebody needs to tell the story of Aunt Orlean,' " said Stump, 68. "It's important to keep this history alive so people won't forget what a struggle it was."

What historians say

Orlean Puckett's life would have been like that of other mountain women of the 19th century. The order of the day was to survive. That meant long days of work, whether it be working in a field or putting up cans of food for winter. She was married to a man who drank too much and who might have been mean to her. Scandalous rumors persisted that John Puckett, a Civil War veteran who might or might not have deserted a Confederate regiment, had caused the deaths of Orlean's children either by beating her or them.

None of the historians believe that to be true. Smith and others have theorized that Orlean Puckett had Rh-negative blood type, which can cause problems with pregnancies, even leading to fetal death. Smith consulted with several doctors who concurred with that theory, although it's impossible to know for sure.

Puckett's first child, Julia Ann, actually lived for several months, perhaps even two years, before she died, possibly during a diphtheria outbreak. None of the other babies lived that long.

Still, she tried and tried to have a child. Today, we are left to wonder why she would not have done more to avoid becoming pregnant, forgetting that a mountain woman in the 1800s probably did not have the last say on what she could and couldn't do.

Then again, she might have willingly kept trying, thinking that this time, finally, a child would live and she would nurse it, raise it and love it.

"She must have been a woman of really great faith," said Shelby Puckett, 66, a former high school teacher and guidance counselor who married one of Puckett's great-great nephews, Raleigh Puckett, 68.

Keeping her story alive

Shelby and Raleigh Puckett maintain The Hollow History Center in Patrick County, less than half a mile from the graveyard where the 20 Puckett babies are buried facing Doe Run Mountain. The Pucketts cleaned up the graveyard and re-set the grave markers that had been knocked over by cows. Two marble stones bookend the row, one for the first child buried there and one for the last.

Shelby Puckett knows many stories about Aunt Orlean, who died in 1939 somewhere between the age of 95 and 102 (not even Orlean knew her birth year). The first baby she delivered was Kinney Bowman. It is unclear why the Bowmans called on Orlean to help, unless it was because she had experienced so many childbirths herself, she must have known what assistance a woman needed.

Orlean continued as a midwife almost to her death. The last child was Maxwell Hawks, born Aug. 30, 1938.

Through it all, Orlean Puckett apparently maintained a self-deprecating sense of humor that must have helped her cope with hardships. When her ill-tempered husband died of tuberculosis, Orlean sat in front of a roaring fire and is reported to have said, "John must be happy now because he always did enjoy a good fire."

"She had a wonderful sense of humor," Shelby Puckett said. "She really was kind of ugly in her old age and she once said, 'I'm glad I have two front teeth and they both met.' " That is, one on top of the other.

She died not long after the park service forced her out of her cabin so the new parkway could come through. Relatives say she died of a broken heart.

Now, however, the parkway keeps her story alive, inspiring a book and a play.

"She was an amazing woman," Shelby Puckett said.

And those 1,000 babies she delivered? They all lived.