Hello and welcome to my official author's website - a place for you to encounter and hopefully enjoy the things I have written over the years about faith, family, and history.
I am a native and lifelong resident of Watauga County, North Carolina, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, where many of my ancestors settled by the 1790s, resulting in some of my family having been here for eight or more generations. This rich and lengthy heritage sparked my early interest in genealogy and local history and, at the age of eleven (quite a few moons ago!), I embarked on a quest to write books about each of my four grandparents' families. I published three of those over a period of decades and have one more to complete. Beyond these genealogical endeavors, I have also delved into other aspects of my county's history (including a well-known murder case), resulting in the publication of a few other books, ideally with more to follow. Additionally, I have composed quite a few personal reflections about Bible passages, my faith in Jesus Christ, and the Christian life.
I am a graduate of Appalachian State University in my hometown of Boone, North Carolina (BA in Political Science/MA in Education with a social studies concentration) and also worked at the university for nine years before being employed at Samaritan's Purse, a Christian international relief organization, where I have worked for the past twenty-eight years.
Perhaps because I'm blood kin to a number of craftsmen, musicians, and storytellers, I have always needed and enjoyed creative outlets. Aside from writing, I have dabbled through the years in art (pencil drawings in particuar), residential design/decor (enjoying my log home, which sits on part of my maternal grandparents' former farm and has an inspiring view of the mountains), collecting and refinishing antiques, amateur photography, and even a bit of cooking.
I have also had the privilege to travel quite extensively, visiting more than 60 countries through both personal and work-related trips, and I have appreciated the opportunity to expand my worldview in the process. In the words of Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.... Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Again, welcome! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out. I am glad you are here.
Hello and welcome to my official author's website - a place for you to encounter and hopefully enjoy the things I have written over the years about faith, family, and history.
I am a native and lifelong resident of Watauga County, North Carolina, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, where many of my ancestors settled by the 1790s, resulting in some of my family having been here for eight or more generations. This rich and lengthy...
Currently available in paperback and Kindle versions with an audiobook in the works!
For fifty years, the 1972 murders of Bryce and Virginia Durham and their teenage son Bobby on a bitter winter’s night in Boone, North Carolina were unsolved, but in 2022, the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office announced that their killers had finally been...
Prior to its formation in 1849, Watauga County was a hunting ground for the Cherokee and part of the trail blazed by frontiersman Daniel Boone, for whom the county seat was later named. Primarily settled by whites after the Revolutionary War, many of the county’s earliest families came to the Appalachians from the Piedmont region of North...
This 325-page book outlines the ancestors and descendants of the author's great, great, great-grandparents, Alf and Letha Watson Yates, who moved from Wilkes County, North Carolina to neighboring Watauga County, North Carolina in 1875. It includes many details of Alf Yates's military service as a Confederate soldier, including the Battle of...
Around 1919, my seven-year-old future grandfather, Iris Harmon, began attending school. Suffice it to say, his first day was not stellar.
Someone threw a rock.
It struck him in the head.
He “cut a terrible shine.”
Hurt yet undeterred, he resumed his education despite this literally rocky start.
Each day, he and his siblings walked three miles to the schoolhouse and three miles home. Whether uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow, I know not, but Iris dreaded the trek.
“A little fellar,” he...
My great-granddaddy, Council Harmon, more commonly referred to as “Counce,” was dark-haired and blue-eyed and always wore a thick brush of a moustache. Standing about five feet six inches and weighing probably no more than 135 pounds in his prime, he sometimes had a hard time finding clothes to fit him. Even after reaching manhood, he continued wearing boy-sized shoes out of necessity.
Though small of stature, he was a manual laborer and a hard worker like most men of his region, day, and...
There are particular moments in life when we human beings find ourselves reluctantly surrendering our modesty. More often than not, these seem to involve medical examinations and requisite degrees of undress. For me, one such examination involved a procedure known as a flexible sigmoidoscopy.
Although proclaimed to be less invasive than a full-blown colonoscopy, try telling that to the parts about to be invaded. It’s a hard sell, kind of like trying to convince ancient Europeans that the...