Interesting Novel

[Linda]

Looks like we lost your post, Patty. Somehow, I maxed out the disk space for our site. I think I uploaded some files I didn't meant to. I think everything else is okay, I'm testing it now. But it looks like your post, Patty, went to Virtual Heaven. Sorry about that.

[Patty]

I thought it was acting odd when I tried to post so I saved my comment in a Word document just in case. Here it is. :)

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Does anyone else read novels by Sharyn McCrumb?

I always enjoy her work. The stories are always set in Appalachia on the Tenn./NC border, and they always have such an authentic "flavor" about them that they make for a very good read.

I've just finished one called "The Songcatcher" and was very pleasantly surprised to read in the afterword that it was the story of her GGGG-Grandfather. Still a novel, of course, but the historical events of his life, including the circumstances of how he came to "the new world" from Scotland, are based in fact.

One of the most interesting parts of the story for me was her description of her ancestors' trip from NJ to NC in an ox driven wagon. Here is a quote from the afterword:

"In 1794, when Malcolm was past fifty and a prominent attorney in Morris County, New Jersey, he suddenly left his wife, his profession, and the place that had been his home for more than thirty years to journey down the Wilderness Road and homestead in western North Carolina, which was in those days a trackless wilderness."

A trackless wilderness??!! All my ancestors had LEFT western North Carolina for parts further west by that time. There had to be a very good reason to push them out.

I sure wish I could get a "move-on" on researching my paper trail........... :( It just doesn't move fast enough.

[Linda]

I wonder where the truth lies in this. In Byrd's Dividing line it was mentioned that NC was pretty backwards. That's 1723. And western NC was of course "settled" later. I would be interested in what an historian who really knew these migration patterns thoroughly had to say about this.

I had some Germanic (Flemish?) family that had been in PA move down to what's now eastern WV in about that time frame. That's always seemed peculiar to me.