b. October 9, 1920

by Laurel Cargill Radley, Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul (Washington National Cathedral), 2013

Frances Barr Cargill celebrated her ninetieth birthday at the Macon County Historical Society Museum. Outside, the front window displayed artifacts and photographs related to Frances’ life, many objects older than she. But inside, the celebration focused on the future rather than the past. Members of the Nikwasi Dulcimer Players, which Fran founded, entertained the guests. And fellow Nonah Weavers, which she also founded, talked about an upcoming exhibit in Asheville.

Frances lives in a log cabin built by her great-grandfather, Albert Siler, and though she is now an institution in the life and culture of Macon County, she has lived there for less than 20 years. She sees herself as a mountain girl, but she was born in the Piedmont and lived most of her life in New England. Her mother, Anna Morgan Barr, was a stalwart of St. Martin’s in Charlotte. A favorite family image of Anna comes from a Charlotte Observer clipping highlighting her years of candy making for the church fair.

Frances’ childhood was spent each summer with Anna’s sister, Lucy C. Morgan, at Penland School of Crafts, which Lucy founded and directed until her retirement. There, Frances learned to weave and played with fellow children from the neighboring (Episcopal) Appalachian School. Frances graduated from Berea College and attended George Washington University during World War II. She attended the Church of the Epiphany there and remembers playing the carillon, as well as a visit from Franklin Roosevelt.

When Frances returned to North Carolina, Anna’s brother, the Rev. A. Rufus Morgan, asked Frances to help him develop a project on church property in Cartoogechaye, Macon County. Based on his socio-political doctoral work at Columbia University, he was interested in replicating what he had done with Lucy in Penland. Among other services to the community, Nonah Weavers was born.

Frances worked with her uncle in a number of capacities for the Church, often playing the organ and helping with his efforts to establish mission churches such as St. Francis in Cherokee. One summer she met a Bexley Hall seminarian from Vermont serving in the Rural Church Workers Conference at Valle Crucis. She married him and spent the greater part of her middle adulthood as the wife of a priest, serving parishes throughout the northeast. Frances also lived in Jackson County for four years in the late 1960s. Though a communicant and choir member of St. John’s, Sylva, she served other parishes as an interim organist as well.

Frances is now a member of St. John’s Cartoogechaye, the church her great-grandmother, Joanna Chipman Siler, founded and her Uncle Rufus rebuilt. She continues to serve in the choir, as a lay reader, and is active in other parish events, as well as those of the All Saints’ Episcopal Community in Macon County. As Matthew Baker wrote in an article for the Franklin Press, “Frances Barr Cargill is a treasure”— as an Episcopalian and as a witness to the work of the Church for all generations.