My parents were Gilmer James and Louise Smith Hartley. Everyone called my dad “Slick.” How I wish I had found out where that came from! In any case, I remember that Mother and I debated whether to put his nickname on his tombstone when he died in 1985, and I’m…
When I was growing up, there were several families on Church Street. On the right side going down the hill were the Thompsons, the Methodist parsonage, the R. B. Sanfords, two rental houses, Marsh Dwiggins, our house, and the Shore house. On the other side from the bottom to the…
Recently I posted on Facebook that with the passing of Mrs. Jim Wall, I was the last of the original Church Street residents. Several people suggested that I might want to write the story of my street, so I decided to do just that. I hope you enjoy getting to…
Looking at all the pictures of old houses on the Appalachian Memory Keepers site made me think about the idea of home and what the word means to different people. It might mean a house, a trailer, a condo, an apartment, or any place of residence. To a college student…
John Boone was the first cousin of the more famous Boone, Daniel. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1727 but spent his childhood with his uncle and aunt, Squire and Sarah, after the early death of his mother. He was named after his father’s brother John, who was a teacher…
Boone’s Cave is a North Carolina State Park located in Davidson County, North Carolina, just a few miles up the Yadkin River from where my Hartley ancestors lived. Because it was close to the old home place, I have been going there since I was a child who soaked up…
Hiram Hamilton Hartley, known as H. H. to friends and family, was my great-great-grandfather. Born in Davidson County, NC, in 1839, he was lucky enough to inherit his father’s land and must have been a land speculator because deeds show that at one time he owned over 5,000 acres of…
Minnie Elizabeth Hendrix Potts was my great-grandmother, the mother of my dad’s mother, Iva Potts Hartley. Her parents were Lewis Hendrix and Louisa Young, and she was the oldest of their eight children. Born in 1875, she lived a very secluded life on a farm and learned to work hard…
Ollie Hamilton Hartley, Papa Hartley to me, was born in 1885 in Davidson County, North Carolina, only one of two boys in a large family. Because his dad had a big farm, he only got to go to school through third grade. Very early on, he learned all about hard…
My grandmother, Iva Potts, married my grandfather, O. H. Hartley, in 1908 when she was sixteen years old. Papa was seven years older than she was. Together they had five children, one of whom died in infancy, and the other four who lived on into adulthood. My dad was their…
