A Watauga County Resource

by Glenn N. Holliman

Looking for Resources to Learn more about our Watauga County, North Carolina Ancestors?  Surprise - the local library!

In recent articles, we have been posting photographs and information on our Wilson ancestors from the highlands of Western North Carolina.  Shirley Sorrell, Jennifer Bundy and other cousins have been providing biography on the Wilson descendants. As noted in earlier blogs, numerous members of the Wilson, Osborne, Forrester and other families seem to have left Ashe and Watauga Counties for the far western United States in the first half of the 20th Century.

Below, Mr. Ross Cooper, research librarian at the Watauga County public library in downtown Boone, North Carolina, confirmed my thesis that many children of mountain families had to move in order to support themselves.  The bottom land had been taken by the first pioneers in the late 1700s and by the early 1900s, even the steep hill sides had been claimed by generations of offspring.

So if one did not inherit land or participate in the booming logging industry of the middle 1910s, then young families often made the decision to leave the highlands and move to more economically promising areas. (See the previous blog.)  Mr. Cooper shared the following article and advertisement from 1914 with me from his own blog concerning Watauga County history.

Want to study more on the histories of our families and their friends?  The Watauga County Library has an excellent local history section and a very knowledgeable research librarian. Also, one can follow Mr. Cooper's blog at http://alookbackatwatauga.wordpress.com .  Ross has over 200 followers of his post which looks back from time to time at yesterday via back issues of the Watauga Democrat in Boone.  

More information on the relationships of Greers, Wilsons, Osbornes, Stansberys and others can be found at this writer's Ancestry.com site. Please write glennhistory@gmail.com for access or to add information.

 

 

From the Scrapbook of Shirley Sorrell 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

We continue sharing photographs from Shirley Sorrell's collection of the family of John and Rebecca Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina.  John and Rebecca are Shirley's great grandparents.

Below, ca 1900 Shirley Sorrell's great grandmother, Rebecca Wilson, modeled a more-than-modest hat.  Even though she lived isolated in the mountains adjacent to the Tennessee line in Sutherland, North Carolina, she stayed in fashion!

Below Rebecca, again ca 1900, multi-tasks, holding a child, riding a horse and mounts on her head another fashionable chapeau.  Note the young colt beside her.

 

 

Above, in 1900 ca, this formal photograph of the Wilson girls, all dressed in white, was taken.  Back left to right are Margaret and Mayme. Front are Callie, Ruth and Minnie  Wilson, children of John and Rebecca Wilson.

 

 Below, Rebecca's sister-in-law Frances Caroline Wilson Osborne (this writer's great grandmother) recorded in her diary in March 1919 - "Charles Osborn (to Shirley Sorrell he was always Uncle Chall) and wife Minie ate diner hear on ther way to oragan.” 

 

Frankie (1852-1940), poorly educated in Ashe County before and during the Civil War, wrote as she spoke. Evidently Charles, a great-nephew of Frankie's husband, G.W. Osborne, and Minnie (the girl on the front row to the right of the baby pictured above), were moving to Oregon as had other Wilson and Osborne relatives in the 1910s and 1920s. Frankie lived in Bristol, Tennessee from 1917-1940, and two of her sons also migrated west in the 1920s. Photo from the collection of the writer.

More information on the relationships of Greers, Wilsons, Osbornes, Stansberys and others can be found at this writer's Ancestry.com site. Please write glennhistory@gmail.com for access or to add information. 

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