My initial intention for this post (one in a series on Enka) was to investigate the presence of Black workers at the Dutch-owned American Enka plant in Buncombe County’s Hominy…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part I: Sulphur Springs as Proto-Land of the Sky, 1827-1861
This post arose initially from my effort to understand the West Asheville of the early 1920s, when both my Whisnant and Rudisill grandparents moved there–the Whisnants from fifteen years in…
Read moreRetrospective I: A Primer on the Sad Truths of Slavery in Asheville, Buncombe County and Western North Carolina
The Consensus Myth: “No Slaves or Slaveholders in the Mountains” John Preston Arthur’s popular 1914 history put the matter of slaves and slaveholders in the mountains succinctly and unambiguously::…
Read moreHow’s That Again?: Some New Angles on Asheville and Western North Carolina History
Perennial Problems with “Land of the Sky” History Since it first appeared in 1875, the “Land of the Sky” descriptor for Asheville has been perennially present, enticing and marketable.…
Read moreHow Did 1900 Asheville Happen?: A Retrospective in Four Parts–1850-1900
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 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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