Working in local history archives at UNCA Ramsey Library and at Pack Library’s North Carolina Room, I thought often about the many fascinating stories that remain hidden in the oral histories of both collections. Until the interview is transcribed, the story remains untold. Few people will have the time or the patience to listen to the
How often have you driven on Hendersonville Road and wondered what this or that site used to look like before twenty-first century development? Let’s look at one address: 866 Hendersonville Road. This is what you see today. 866 Hendersonville Road was originally owned by Frank Mears. In 1945 Reginald O. Dodd purchased the stone building.
A few months ago some questions arose about a couple photographs in the North Carolina Room’s Special Collection. They show a group of African-American masons erecting a wall up against a building with a large “Drink Pepsi-Cola” sign painted on it. Zoe asked me if I could confirm the details in the description. Here’s part
In our last post in this series on early black public schools, we looked at the lives and careers of Harrison B. Brown and Daniel Cato Suggs, two of the original five teachers who opened Beaumont School on January 9, 1888. This new post profiles two more of these teachers, Edward H. Lipscombe and Mary
The Creation of a Public School System for the City of Asheville, 1887-1888 Setting Up the System and Hiring the Teachers Asheville Times, July 29, 1887: “Graded School Carried: Asheville Keeps to the Front By a Very Close Squeeze” “We need not multiply words to express pleasure at the result of the election yesterday on
Unlike most of the communities we’ve covered in this series, the community of Ramoth is in reality, no longer. Once a rather large, and even incorporated suburb of Asheville, most folks living in Buncombe County today have probably never heard of this North Asheville community. Indeed, at one time, Ramoth was so large, they intended
If you grew up in Buncombe County any time after 1960, chances are you took a trip either with your school or your parents to the Zebulon B. Vance Birthplace State Historic Site located in the Reems Creek community near Weaverville. The reconstruction of a late 18th, early 19th century mountain plantation has hosted thousands
Throughout the year as I’ve continued to work on this series and it has gained traction and popularity, hints and suggestions as to what I should write about have come in from various sources. It has been a tremendous undertaking, and sometimes it’s a relief to hear from someone else what you ought to say,
Pleasant Alexander Calhoun lived most of his adult life in a place Horace Kephart described as the “back of beyond.” Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was so remote that few outsiders had ever ventured into the isolated community nestled deep in the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s not probable that he thought his final years would be spent in an