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...
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 identified. Based on information from Georgia, four men associated with the Dixie Mafia...
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...
I recently read this:
“We die twice: once when our breath leaves us, and again when the last person who truly knew us sets down the last object that remembers our existence…. Every object we own is a poem waiting to be understood. That faded photograph, the chipped teacup from your grandmother’s kitchen, the worn leather journal – each carries the fingerprints of moments lived, breaths taken, tears shed…. Listen to these objects. They tell stories of love, of loss, of becoming. Each item you...
This week I celebrate my 28th year of employment with the international Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. Over the course of these almost three decades, I have had many interesting experiences, most stemming from traveling the globe, and I am sometimes asked what my most memorable trips have been. There are a few that stand out, but I would have to say my brief stint in Iraq is at the top of the list. Almost eight years ago, in January 2017, I traveled there in support of the...
Two passages from my recent Bible readings have stuck in my mind these past few weeks:
Joel 3:14 – “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”
Lamentations 1:9 (in part) – “She did not consider her destiny; therefore, her collapse was awesome.”
My attention is particularly drawn to two key words within these passages – decision and destiny – and I cannot help but consider how the two are intertwined.
Although the “valley of...
At 11 AM, I will be lecturing about and signing copies of my latest book - CONVOLUTED: The 1972 Durham Family Triple Homicide - in the 1904 courtroom of the Museum of Ashe County History in Jefferson, NC.