The 2013 Wilson-Greer Reunion

by Glenn N. Holliman

A 2013 Gathering at the Ancestral Home of Earl and Mayme Wilson Donnelly....

Every third Sunday in July the Sutherland, North Carolina United Methodist Church holds a homecoming with preaching and lunch on the grounds.  Generally this draws a number of descendants of the pioneers who settled the picturesque North Fork of the New River Valley in the late 1700s and early 1800s.  Below the church service on 21 July 2013 with guest preacher, Bennie Wilson, left, a third cousin of this writer.

 

The Sutherland United Methodist Church was founded in the middle 1850s as a result of revival camp meetings held along the North Fork.  Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilsons evidently were charter members of this congregation.  One of their sons, William Albert Wilson, became a Methodist minister, once a pastor of the church, before spending 40 years as a Christian missionary to Japan. 

This writer's great grandfather, George Washington Osborne, was ordained a lay minister at the church in the 1870s and preached in the church and to other Methodist congregations in the North Carolina highlands between the 1870s and 1896, before moving to Tennessee. Below the Sutherland United Methodist Church today, the latest physical incarnation, resting on a hill above the North Fork of the New River.

This past July, my son, Christopher S. Holliman and grand daughter, Camille, and I took a few days to drive to Watauga and Ashe Counties from our Virginia and Pennsylvania homes.  For my offspring it was a first time look at the mountain landscapes, cemeteries and traditional cultures of where our ancestors rest.  Below is the magnificent view from the front door of the former home of Earl and Mayme Wilson, grandparents of the current owner, Shirley Sorrell.  The peaks surrounding Sutherland and Creston, NC near Trade, Tennessee soar as high as 5,500 plus feet, some the tallest mountains in the eastern United States!

After dinner on the grounds at the Sutherland Methodist Church, a number of Wilson genealogists gathered at Shirley's home and made plans to form a core group of cousins who will continue to share and save our ancestral highland heritage.

Gathering below on Shirley's front porch are left to right: Glenn N. Holliman of Pennsylvania, Jackie Lewis Farrington of Virginia, Shirley Sorrell of North Carolina, Clinton Getziner of Virginia, Len Wilson of North Carolina, Dale Wilson of Kansas and Peggy Sue Huber of Pennsylvania. Len is holding the Civil War sword of our common great, great or 3 great grandfather Isaac Wilson (1822-1864).

 

This story and others of these families may be found at Ancestry.com or at www.bholliman.com.