Our first full day of our Greer-Wilson ancestral tour began in Todd, Ashe County, North Carolina, now a ghost town as the Virginia Creeper railroad has long ceased to carry forest products from the mountains. Todd is located on Highway 194, north of Boone and south of West Jefferson.
Left to right are Gayle Adema, wife of Bob Adema, a descendant of Frances Wilson Osborne. On the far right is Gerry Stansbery Holliman Feick, likewise descended from Frances Osborne. In the middle is Shirley Sorrell who records her descent from John and Rebecca Wilson. John was a brother of Frances Wilson Osborne.
Below, notice the Baptist Church sign and the name South Fork. Todd is on the South Fork of the New River, one of the oldest rivers in the world. There are dozens of small Baptist Churches in the mountains of western North Carolina. The Second Great Awakening swept through the Appalachians in the early 1800s.
Conservative and emotional Protestantism remains a major cultural force in the mountains as it appears to have been in the lives of our highland ancestors. These churches helped tame the rough and ready energies of the frontier settlers and the generation that followed. Schools and benevolent institutions followed in the backwash of the Great Awakening, and the moral tone of society considerably improved.
Bryan Payne, descendant of Frances Wilson Osborne, reads the Todd historical marker, a community where his Greer ancestors once lived. Next article we go to the Todd cemetery which contains the mortal remains of Jesse and Mary 'Polly' Greer III.
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