In the spring of 1891, an elderly patient was brought into Boston’s city hospital. Seemingly dressed in everything he owned – four shirts, three pairs of pants, two overcoats – and accompanied by his dog Pete, the man was a curious sight. He suffered from a bad heart and bad kidneys, and when he died, faithful Pete had to be dragged from his side. The old man was buried in a pauper’s grave.
His beginning was as regrettable as his ending. Born into slavery around 1815 in Caswell County, North...
Remember that popular Dos Equis marketing campaign with the debonair, silver haired and bearded gentlemen that proclaimed him to be the most interesting man in the world? The slogan soon became part of our cultural fabric and generated numerous parodies and memes. Well, that fellow aside, I think I may actually know the most interesting man in the world.
I first became aware of Kenney Isaacs in the early 1990s. I didn’t know him personally, but his adoptive father and my father were second...
In 1989, I made my first visit to Willow Valley Baptist Church, where a Wednesday night Bible study was being led by the pastor, Reverend Ray Greene, more commonly and affectionately known as “Preacher Ray.” The way in which he mined the scriptures and brought forth gems of insight took me to a new level of biblical understanding that, along with the wonderful church family there, led me to join their congregation within the following year.
As I got to know Preacher Ray better, I would learn...
August Schroeder was dead.
His widow, Dora, had found the prosperous forty-one-year-old farmer hanging in their barn on a summer morning in 1900 in rural Iowa. He left no note, but all Dora could figure was suicide.
The pair had married a decade earlier. August, a German immigrant, was more than a dozen years older than Dora. They had three children – two boys and a girl – ages 9, 7, and 5 at the time of their father’s death.
After discovering her husband's suspended body, Dora cut it down and...
As young bachelors in 1840, my great-grandfather’s great uncles, Nineveh and Ephraim Ford, left their native Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for Missouri, but this would prove to be a temporary stopover as their attention was next drawn to Oregon.
Nineveh’s appetite had been whetted by the scenic descriptions within Lewis and Clark’s account of their great expedition some forty years earlier, and his intention to venture further westward was cemented by information he gleaned from...
As children, my mother and her siblings were not allowed to have bicycles. Their father forbade it – not as a form of harsh parenting that denied simple enjoyment, but, in his estimation, as a means to lovingly safeguard their wellbeing. His decision was rooted in what had happened to their cousin, Gordon Spainhour, Jr., who died almost a full year before my mother’s birth.
In the fall of 1938, as a freshman at North Carolina State University, seventeen-year-old Gordon and a friend were...
It’s almost been a year since the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene, and this fall will mark the 26th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which also resulted in extensive flooding and power outages. That day, September 22, 1989, was also the day I chose to get a haircut.
Don’t ask me why. There was no rhyme or reason to that decision, and I have no sensible answer. It was a Friday, and I was out of work for obvious reasons, so maybe since I had some free time on my hands, it seemed like a...
As I stood in line at an event last evening, I met an older man who steadied himself with a cane. I soon learned that he is a military enthusiast, and he began talking extensively about Civil War-era Virginia, a topic that I also find fascinating. His accent sounded distinctly northern, and he shared that he had grown up in Philadelphia, having moved there from the South, where his mother was from, and where his great-grandfathers had fought for the Confederacy.
In fact, as our conversation...
Today, I happened upon Mr. Dan Miller. He was manning a booth at an event in southwest Virginia, sitting among various antique pieces, one of which was a large, wooden bowl, purported to be Indian and more than two-hundred years old. Whether that is genuinely accurate, I cannot say, but there was no doubt about Mr. Dan’s genuineness.
At age 85, the first thing he told me about himself is that he takes no prescription medications and tries to avoid doctors whenever possible. He believes they...
In 2007, a work-related conference took me to Asheville, North Carolina, and during a free evening, I ventured a little further west to Maggie Valley, to a gathering that my cousin Dean had invited me to.
As I mingled among the folks there, I looked across the way and saw someone I recognized – Harold Beckenholdt. Mr. Beckenholdt, a native Oklahoman, was nearly eighty. He was standing alone, so I went over to converse with him and to ask him about some work he had done in my home county some...
In some ways, it was a run of the mill event like hundreds before it in any number of communities – family and friends gathering to witness the union of a bride and a groom and to wish them well in their new life together.
This one was different, though. The bride, a local gal, had somehow managed to snag an Irishman for her husband, and that almost never happened in these parts. Almost everyone from here married another someone from here, and usually someone they knew from church or school....
I’ve always thought my great, great-grandmother, America Banner, had the coolest name – very patriotic sounding, reminiscent of the Grand Old Flag…you know, that high flying flag…the Star Spangled one. When I embarked on discovering my family’s history, my knowledge of her was limited to a few facts and an old photo my paternal grandparents had of her, alongside her husband, Eli Presnell. These were my grandfather’s grandparents, and the image captured their mountain stoicism, he dressed in...
Almost twenty-four years ago, I was hanging out in a hotel lounge in the company of a couple of college-age acquaintances. There were a few other patrons around us. A white tent stood on the hotel lawn – not unlike one that might have been erected for a wedding reception – and I observed a man exit it. Dressed in a red, untucked, casual shirt, he wore a straw hat and dark sunglasses. I probably would not have paid him any further attention but for some news that had been circulating in the...
A few days ago, a local restaurant, Red Onion, closed its doors. I ate there periodically through the decades, but recent mention of the establishment triggered an almost forty-year-old memory.
For the first five months of 1986, fresh out of college, I was employed as a front desk clerk at the newly opened Sheraton Hotel in Boone, North Carolina. It was the largest and nicest hotel in town at that time.
One evening, as I stood engaged in a phone conversation, a man walked up to the desk donning...
I was blessed to know all four of my grandparents, and at the time of my birth, I had five living great-grandparents – all four great-grandmothers and one great-grandfather. Four of these were dead by the time I was nine, so my memories of them range from non-existent to quite limited. But I was twenty-eight when the remaining one – my Great-Grandmother Mamie Yates – died, so I had more of an opportunity to know, appreciate, and love her. Today marks the 125th anniversary of her birth on May...
“Do you believe in God?”
That was the question a stranger once posed to me on a shuttle bus. It’s not a question I’m asked very often, and it took me by surprise, although it really shouldn’t have, considering what had transpired within the past hour.
In anticipation of an early morning flight, I had spent the previous night in a hotel near the airport. The next morning, as I prepared to depart, I uttered a prayer to God, asking Him to use me some way that day to make a difference to someone....
I don’t claim to be the first or only person who ever formed an interest in genealogy as a child; there are likely thousands of us. But I would venture to say it’s not the norm. I was 11 when it took hold of me, and I know it coincided with our nation’s bicentennial in 1976. Attention on America’s founding was everywhere, and it set me to thinking, not just about our country’s history, but also about my family’s history.
The following year, a miniseries documenting writer Alex Haley’s ancestry...
My great-grandmother’s brother, Dick Horton, was more mechanical than agricultural and, much to his father’s and brothers’ chagrin, finagled himself out of farm work whenever he could. From the age of eleven in 1888, he began learning watch repair from his uncle, Joe Councill, a traveling tinker.
In the fall of 1900, Dick took this interest to another level, leaving his Vilas home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to attend the Philadelphia College of Horology and Optometry. He graduated a year...
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...
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...