with their families. Pooling their ill-gotten gains they purchased a narrow track of land. The land was rocky and mostly barren, lined with a thick forest of pine scrubs, it wove high up into the mountains. It was hard to farm, but it was all they could afford and it was nearly hidden. It was perfect. The Raines family farm had been established.
The dry forest soil had been coaxed to produce some corn and vegetable crops, enough to eat and some to sell in the local market. A small herd of cattle and some chickens allowed the family to eke out a meager existence. The men farmed and hunted, the women canned vegetables, baked enough bread to sell a few loaves in the town every Friday and made everything they had from scraps of cloth found here and there. Every night the women sat together and made their quilts, which they sold annually at the county fair. That brought in enough money to buy their winter supplies. They built several simple log cabins, a large barn, a chicken coop. The property grew cluttered with farm equipment, broken wagon wheels and home-made children’s toys. Clothes lines, loaded down with sheets and clothes, looped between the trees, blowing in the mountain wind. Lean mixed-breed dog packs roamed the property and a colony of cats took up residence in the barn.
Because of the family’s criminal past , it became their tradition to stick together and avoid contact with outsiders. As long as Alcott Earl Raines lived he feared the long arm of the British Police and demanded complete isolation from the outside world. The tradition was so deeply ingrained that even after his death and the death of his children’s children, the tradition was strictly maintained although no one alive knew the real reason for it. The Raines family feared and distrusted outsiders. When the time came to marry, sons and daughters reached out, found mates in nearby towns and brought them back to the Raines Family farm to live. New cabins were built, families grew and the newly married outsiders became insiders. Eventually ties with their own families were broken. Living in isolation the way they did, the family group developed its own culture, its own set of beliefs. They became a world unto themselves.
Soon the large sprawling collective poked into the forest weaving snakelike through the trees into the mountains. The huge extended family worked the fields, sharing clothes, food and associating only with one another. The family maintained its isolationist practices in spite of their minimal trade arrangements with outsiders. By 1918 West Virginia along with all the other states passed laws requiring children to attend school through elementary school so wanting to avoid problems with the outside world, the Raines family enrolled their children in public school and made sure they attended at least until the children could legally drop out. Though none of them liked it; they valued farm work, not book reading and numbers. That was for city folk. Over time, however, events of the outside world had an impact on them. The Industrial Revolution, World Wars I and II, The Great Depression, The Civil Rights and Women's movements affected the Raines family; but their basic beliefs remained intact. They were anti-stranger and anti-government. They rejected the modern ways. Had no radios or televisions and refused to read newspapers. They refused to learn about the community around them. They obeyed only those laws they felt compelled to obey.
Family members rarely left their West Virginia farm except for occasional visits to town to buy necessities or sell their produce. The women never traveled unless a man was with her and never had contact with outsider s except to buy supplies or sell their wares. Women delivered one another’s babies, men treated their animals and children alike for the odd broken bone or illness.
Professional medical care was prohibited.
By 1965, their isolationism began to break down. One by one, the Raines