Blue Ridge Heritage: An Informal History Of Three Generations Of The Family Of John Nicholson Idol

A native of the Piedmont area of North Carolina, John Nicholson Idol, a Confederate Sharpshooter, looking for a way to make a life for himself in the Reconstruction South, comes to Deep Gap, meets and marries a daughter of pioneer settler Solomon Greene, and begins to adapt to Blue Ridge ways of working and living. How he and two generations of his descendants became absorbed into Blue Ridge culture is the story told in this book. It is a story drawing on family letters, oral history, and personal experience. Although the book focuses on a particular family, it reflects more generally Blue Ridge traditions, the making and using of tools, the steps taken to become better farmers, craftsmen, and homemakers, and the expression of ideas and beliefs. It traces a mode of life much like that of Colonial America (log cabin, produce hauled to distant markets by wagon, and marriage between cousins) in the beginning to the era of airplanes, television, and Christmas-tree farming. It is also a chronicle of survival, loss, conflict, love, and death.

The author is the fourth generation native of the Blue Ridge and taught English literature for over thirty years at Clemson University. He is now settled in Hillsborough, North Carolina.