This post is a Table of Contents guide to what–from time to time over the next while–will become a series of four retrospective posts, each focusing on a topic central to…
Read morePublic Presentation on Asheville Junction: March 26, Mars Hill University
I have a very welcome opportunity to make a public presentation on my blog in the Asheville area. Details are in the flyer below. I would welcome anyone who lives/will…
Read moreAsbury’s Asheville: 1900-1907
For Starters: Some Guesses as to Why Asbury Chose Asheville Although the romantic designation as the Land of the Sky was bestowed upon Asheville in Christian Reid’s 1875 novel, this…
Read moreElla, Asbury and the State Hospital at Morganton: From Social and Institutional to Personal History
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…
Read moreThe Cruel War and Its Aftermath: Life Down the Mountain for Asbury and Ella, 1869-1894
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…
Read moreThe End of the (Wagon) Road in North Carolina: The Whisnants and Austins in the Down-Mountain Counties, 1760-1865
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…
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