V. 1. Reagan, Huskey, and Ogle families-v.2. Shultz, McCarter, Trentham, Bradley, Watson, Conner, Swearingen, Oakley, and Clabaugh families-v.3. Whaley, Ownby, Bohannon, Maples, and King families.
The Oconaluftee Valley, located on the North Carolina side of the Smokies, is home of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). This seemingly isolated valley has an epic tale to tell. Always a desirable place to settle, hunt, gather, farm, and live, the valley and its people have played an integral role in some of the greatest dramas of the colonial era, the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War era. The experiences of turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial logging alongside the national park movement show how land-use trends changed communities and families. Though the valley saw its share of conflict, its residents often lived like neighbors, sharing resources and acting cooperatively for mutual benefit and survival. They demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of threats to their existence. Elizabeth Giddens offers a deeply researched and elegantly written account of Oconaluftee and its people from Indigenous settlements to the establishment of the national park by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. She builds the tale from archives, census records, property records, personal memoirs, and more, showing how national events affected all Oconaluftee's people—Indigenous, Black, and white.
Bonnie Trentham Myers was born in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park before it became an American treasure. Her family produced nearly everything they needed on their 363-acre farm before they sold their property to the national park service. Her reflections, helpful hints, and insights into early life in the Smoky Mountains provide a truly authentic glimpse into a unique existence. From camp meetings and corn shuckings to tailholders and ¿tater holes Best Yet Life and Lore of the Smokies informs and entertains with topics that are too quickly passing from our memory.
This book is more than just genealogy. It includes personal family stories and facts about mountain life and living. It includes photos, not only of family but the area in general. One of the earliest families in the East Tennessee Smoky Mountains area is presented here. Expect some of the photos included to be faded, odd sizes and worn due to age, old cameras, etc.
A creative non-fiction work built on stories about actual feuds, murder of individuals and disasters that occurred throughout Great Smoky Mountains prior to the area becoming a national park. The stories read like excerpts from a novel, but are based on true stories, some information taken from court documents and intervews. Reading these stories helps give the reader an image and a voice to those who used to live in the mountain areas of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. "As usual, Dr. Palmer spins a good yarn in the style, and often in the vernacular, of her beloved Appalachian kin folks. Some of the accounts were familiar but others were new to me. All were captivating and entertaining. As the old adage goes, history is a compilation of rumor. However, via scholarly interpretations of the clues she had to go on, she skillfully breathed life into these tales." Allen R. Coggins, author and Smoky Mountain tour guide
This fabulous work is a county-by-county guide to the genealogical records and resources at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. Based largely on the Tennessee county records microfilmed by the LDS Genealogical Library, it is an inventory of extant county records and their dates of coverage. For each county the following data is given: formation, county seat, names and addresses of libraries and genealogical societies, published records (alphabetical by author), W.P.A. typescript records, microfilmed records (LDS), manuscripts, and church records. The LDS microfilm covers almost every record that could be used by the genealogist, from vital records to optometry registers, from wills and inventories to school board minutes. There also is a comprehensive list of statewide reference works.