L
ib Walker and her brother,
Joe Jefferson, grew up in
Roanoke, but spent most weekends
and summers on the family farm in
Penhook. They are direct descendants
of a first cousin of Thomas Jefferson,
founding father and author of the
Declaration of Independence. Their
storied family history includes veterans
of the American Revolution and the
Civil War, as well as combatants in
the locally infamous Witcher-Clement
feud. Lib is married to local man-about-
town Charlie Walker, who provided
photos for this article.
Their parents, William Emmett
Jefferson and Ida Mae Goodman
Jefferson, eventually inherited the
farm along with Emmett’s sister, and
bought her out. Emmett had always
wanted a dairy farm, so he converted
it from a subsistence farm into a dairy
farm, calling it “Oak Grove Guernsey
Farm.” To this day, although renamed,
it remains a 100-plus head dairy farm,
spanning both sides of Rt. 40 about a
mile west of Penhook.
The farm had been established
around 1850 by Joe and Lib’s great-
great-grandfather, who was named
Newbill, and remained in the family
for the next 117 years or so. For the
curious, the farm is located about
midway along a seven mile stretch
of an arrow-straight stretch of Rt. 40,
which was cut right through the farm.
A tunnel was built under the roadway
so that the cows could travel back and
forth between pastures. According to
Charlie Walker, it was along this same
seven mile stretch of 40 that Robert
Mitchum shot a scene for the film
“Thunder Road” in 1958. It was a story
about Tennessee moonshiners, making
this locale particularly appropriate.
“They told Dad, Keep your cows
and cars in tonight – we’re filming,”
Charlie recalls.
It’s no secret that Rt. 40 was
well-traveled by moonshiners; Joe
remembers a cut through in a hill
on the farm along Rt. 40 where law
enforcement officers would perch their
cars atop an incline that would enable
them to accelerate quickly onto the
By Charles Alexander
FAMILY
TREE
E
Hugging The
roadway, in hot pursuit of their quarry.
He also speculates that moonshining
may have been even closer to home.
“My father had a tenant farmer…
didn’t make much money… he was
there five or ten years,” Joe says, with
a twinkle in his eye. “Anyway, when
he left, he bought a big farm… he had
to have a still somewhere… he didn’t
make that money working the farm.”
Prior to the Second World War,
there was a Civilian Conservation
Corps camp established in Penhook.
The CCC was one of many New Deal
programs designed to put people to
work during the Great Depression. The
projects included building fences and
stone walkways in such places as the
Jefferson farm. By 1942, the war had
rendered the CCC unnecessary, so the
abandoned camp was converted into
a prisoner-of-war camp. At first, there
was no perceived need for high security,
since the prisoners could not easily flee
outside our borders or assimilate into
the surrounding population. So they
were put to work, and this brought
them to the Jefferson farm in Penhook.
Joe and his brother were college
students at the time, working on the
farm during summer break. “My
brother and I… were hunting… and
I guess the Germans were in the corn
field, scaring the rabbits out… we were
down there hunting near them… and
one of us shot, and one of the Germans
climbed up on the fence and started
counting heads.”
Young Lib Jefferson was the little
girl who had tried to give the German
soldier a drink of water. It wasn’t the last
time she upset her grandmother. “My
sister and I were teenagers or almost
teenagers. Anyway, we were quite
interested in money and didn’t have
any. So Daddy… would hire people by
the day… and we approached him…
begged and pleaded… and he finally
let us work… my grandmother about
had a fit…”
Grandmother’s ennui was short-
lived; the problem quickly solved
itself. “We lasted all of one day,” Lib
laughs. “It’s a… horrible job… you get
this sticky juice all over your hands,
and sweat and dirt, it smelled terrible,
The shirtless young German soldier mopped his brow as he sweated
in the hot August sun. He was thousands of miles from home, in a
foreign land where he didn’t speak the language. He was thirsty,
and managed to communicate this to the young girl sitting on the
farmhouse porch. She ran to get a bucket of water.
Her grandmother became apoplectic when she realized what her
granddaughter meant to do, frightened at her own imaginings of
what horrors this young “heathen” might visit upon the girl.
Discover Smith Mountain Lake
Spring 2014
37
36
