Ann S. Brown c 2025 It was a late summer morning about like any other. I was five years old and I lived with my Grandma and Grandpa Sturgill at their farm on Helton. Every morning Grandma got up and built a fire in the wood cook stove. Then she…
Ann S. Brown c 2025 “The Wedding Party” is the name of this old photograph. It was taken on a lovely fall afternoon in 1915. Family and friends of Cora Blevins and Tom Weaver had gathered at Cora’s house to celebrate their marriage. Cora and Tom had gone to the…
Ann S. Brown c 2025 We never know what the day may hold, whether it will be good or bad. Things were changing at the home of nine year old Maggie, but she did not know it yet. The date was November 3rd, 1907. There was a chill in the…
© 2025 Terry Harmon My 4x great-granduncle, Samuel Hicks, Jr., or “Little Sammy,” as he was known, was apparently a friendly, outgoing, gregarious man who loved dances, social occasions, and celebrations. He was musically inclined and a natural entertainer. He liked to tell ghost stories and “Jack Tales,” and he,…
© 2025 Terry Harmon My 3x great-granduncle, William “Billy” Mast, and his wife Mira lived along Watauga River, not far from the present-day site of the Mast Farm Inn in Valle Crucis, North Carolina, and in the fall of 1849, they lost their lives on the same day. They were…
© 2025 Terry Harmon In the TV series Designing Women, character Julia Sugarbaker said it straight out: “This is the South. And we’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring ‘em down to the living room and show ‘em off. See, no…
© 2025 Terry Harmon My great, great-grandfather, Eli Presnell, was a woodworker. Because he only had hand tools to use, this was a time consuming undertaking, but he did a good job and reportedly made the prettiest furniture. He also fashioned a handmade turning lathe that was said to have…
© 2025 Terry Harmon It’s always interesting and actually quite entertaining to read old church minutes. Some of the oldest of those here in Watauga County, North Carolina belong to the Three Forks Baptist Church (established in 1790) and Cove Creek Baptist Church (established in 1799). Members were often “churched”…
© 2025 Terry Harmon Perhaps one of the most intriguing of mountain lasses was my distant cousin, Delilah Baird. Born in 1800, she left home at the age of eighteen, wooed by another of my cousins – a preacher man named John Holtsclaw. Problem was, the good reverend already had…
© 2025 Terry Harmon One of the most colorful characters of late 19th and early 20th century Watauga County, North Carolina was my great, great-grandmother’s first cousin, Newton Banner, who was known to many as “Uncle Newt.” Newt and his wife, Sophronia “Fronie” Mast Banner, lived on George’s Gap near…
