Category Archives: Austin family

A Document Answers Some Questions (and Raises New Ones)

Posted on February 27, 2016 by David Whisnant

In writing this blog so far, I have consulted and presented many kinds of documents: photographs, census records, newspaper articles and advertisements, printed catalogs, maps, postcards, government reports–whatever I have been able to find that seemed useful. Much of the time, a … Continue reading →

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Mid-Course Correction: Ella Goes to (Mid-Course) Asheville, 1907

Posted on May 29, 2015 by David Whisnant

  A previous post explored Ella Austin’s and Asbury Whisnant’s lives during the post-Civil War years–before they both took jobs at the State Hospital at Morganton around 1894.  Another focused on the State Hospital at Morganton’s development before and during the years … Continue reading →

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Ella, Asbury and the State Hospital at Morganton: From Social and Institutional to Personal History

Posted on December 14, 2014 by David Whisnant

Every day of the year somebody’s brain reels. Splendid as is our civilization, insanity, and intemperance, its foremost proximate cause, are its dark shadows which follow its march with ever-deepening gloom wherever it goes. They appear at our firesides, at … Continue reading →

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The Cruel War and Its Aftermath: Life Down the Mountain for Asbury and Ella, 1869-1894

Posted on November 21, 2014 by David Whisnant

Asbury Whisnant and Ella Austin were not born in Asheville.  They arrived as fully-formed adults: he came in 1900 when he was twenty-eight, and she came in 1907 when she was thirty-eight.  So it is important to understand who they already were … Continue reading →

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The End of the (Wagon) Road in North Carolina: The Whisnants and Austins in the Down-Mountain Counties, 1760-1865

Posted on September 27, 2014 by David Whisnant

My previous post took the Visinands/Whisnants from Germany to Lancaster County PA, where they lived for (it seems) about thirty years before loading their possessions and progeny into Conestoga wagons and taking the Great Wagon Road south into the North Carolina piedmont. This current post … Continue reading →

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