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.\ Table of Contents......Page 6 Foreword......Page 8 Boundaries......Page 14 Acknowledgments......Page 16 The First Generation: John Nicholson and Thirza (Thursa) Greene Idol......Page 18 The Second Generation: Rufus and Nancy Watson Idol; Joseph Anderson and Fleetie Watson Idol......Page 29 The Third Generation: John Lane, Sr. and Annie Lula Watson Idol......Page 56 Family Photos ......Page 69 Lane as Hunter......Page 85 Lane at Table......Page 100 Lane as Churchman......Page 105 Lane as Singer......Page 124 Lane as Farmer......Page 136 Annie ......Page 180 Children of Annie and Lane:......Page 229 Deep Gap was not yet the official name bestowed on a community of scattered farmhouses, a small Baptist church, a country store, and a backwoods school house that lay beyond a natural cleft in one of the minor sub ranges of the Blue Ridge to the west of Wilkes County when John Nicholson Idol left his home near High Point, North Carolina, and rode west.