A Fungus Amongus

A FUNGUS AMONGUS

A Fungus Amongus

Making ’shroom for a new method of farming

By Emilee Phillips

In the dark basement of a sprawling farmhouse, a mother and son work daily — and meticulously — tending to colorful bunches of oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms. Like the natural mushroom systems that grow underground, the labyrinthine basement is laid out in intricate patterns, a maze of rooms, each dedicated to its own phase of cultivation.

The rhythmic routine of misting, monitoring humidity and harvesting is as much art as it is science — a quiet but steady labor rooted in patience and precision only to be broken up by the laughter of a family joke.

In a home that sits on 200 acres of farmland that has been in the family for three generations, Candice Graham and Jonathan Bumgarner have converted their basement into Cranes Creek Mushrooms, breathing new life into empty space.

There is something profoundly grounding about a family farm. In the fast-paced, ever-changing landscape of modern life, the farm represents a constant — a space where the rhythms of nature dictate the pace of life, where the priorities shift from instant gratification to patience. It’s about cultivating a lifestyle that prioritizes sustainability, where food is grown with intention, animals are raised with care, and the land is honored as a precious resource.

Graham inherited the farm from her mother, who wasn’t a farmer herself but had a vision for her children’s future. In an act at the intersection of hope and business, she arranged for 322 pecan trees to be planted that, one day, would tower over the land and provide an additional revenue stream to sustain the farm. Though still young, some of her trees are beginning to produce, her promise literally coming to fruition.

Determined not to see the land broken up and sold off, the family had to get creative. They decided to take a leap into the unknown with mushroom farming. Aside from pecans, neither Graham nor Bumgarner had dabbled in agriculture before. “You take one step forward and three steps back with farming,” Graham says. “There’s a lot of education and research involved.”

Their first summer was trial and error. Beginning outside in a barn, they quickly learned the unpredictability of the effect natural climates can have on fungus farming — an experience that resulted in a complete do-over and driving them inside and underground. One way to bypass the natural limitations of mushroom farming, such as seasonality, is through indoor farming, which allows for year-round production and more control over the finicky crop. Now Cranes Creek Mushrooms produces a variety of oyster mushrooms, including black pearl, elm, chestnut, king trumpet and blue. From start to finish the process takes about two to three months. Lion’s mane — especially prized for tinctures and unique dishes — takes even longer, requiring about five months to grow. The longest part of the process is the preparation and sanitation of everything.

“It’s a very sterilized process, which is ironic considering how much mold mushrooms produce,” Bumgarner says with a chuckle.

The operation begins by soaking wheat grains to use as a breeding ground for the mushroom spores to colonize and reproduce, building vast networks of their root-like structures, called mycelium. Then the spawn is placed into large biodegradable bags and formed into blocks. The blocks are monitored closely after spores are added. These blocks are then arranged on rows of shelves in one of the converted basement rooms, where the mushrooms grow mostly in the dark, changing color from brown to white to nearly black, and then back to white again. In the wild, this part of the journey would happen underground.

“If it gets just one little germ in it, it multiples,” Graham says. If at any point in the process something appears wonky, the entire bag must be discarded. It’s survival of the fittest for these fungi. “You have to keep an eye on them every single day,” she says.

In another room, the next phase begins in large inflatable tents equipped with zippered doors and climate control. This “fruiting” space is lined with shelves of carefully arranged grow blocks that sprout with alien-like forms. Mushrooms thrive in humidity, but the temperature must be carefully managed. “A lot of people think mushrooms grow in the dark, but they actually crave light,” Graham says.

The family works in the tents wearing masks to avoid inhaling too many spores in the confined space. “A lot of it is about the tedious little things,” Bumgarner says.

“None of the labor is hard; you just have to keep an eye on them. It’s like having little babies,” Graham says.

Just days after the fungi begin emerging from the mycelium bags, they’re ready to harvest. For Bumgarner, the most satisfying part is twisting off a large clump of mushrooms, a small and crisp snap accompanying the plucking. Oyster mushrooms sprout in delicate clusters, their soft, fan-shaped caps unfolding in shades of pale cream or dusky blue-gray, like the soft brushstrokes of a watercolor painting. The bushels vary in size, resembling bouquets of flowers.

Just as mushrooms seemingly pop up out of nowhere, so too has their rise in popularity. With growing awareness of their health benefits, mushrooms were named “Ingredient of the Year” by The New York Times in 2022. At the Moore County Farmers Market in Southern Pines, Graham and Bumgarner regularly set up their booth with a selection of oyster mushrooms, lion’s mane and mushroom tinctures, all far from your average white button mushroom. They take the time to educate the curious about the complexities of mushrooms, whether for cooking or as tinctures. “We’re met with a lot of curiosity,” says Graham.

Every week, it seems, the duo find themselves explaining the benefits of lion’s mane mushrooms with their distinctive, almost otherworldly appearance — long, white, hair-like tendrils resembling the mythical abominable snowman. Despite the growing buzz around their potential health benefits, Graham and Bumgarner are often surprised when people haven’t heard of lion’s mane. Graham takes tincture droplets daily, which she believes improves memory and reduces inflammation. For them, mushrooms aren’t just a culinary ingredient; they’re a form of nature’s medicine.

The two are also experimenting growing rieshi mushrooms, which are thought to help aid relaxation. “Everyone needs to relax more,” says Graham. Mushroom-based products like mushroom coffee have been gaining popularity in recent years, but Bumgarner believes tinctures are the way to go. “They’re more potent, pure, and taste better,” he says. Cranes Creek Mushrooms soak their mushrooms in pure vodka to make their tinctures.

Oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms are seldom found in traditional grocery stores. In many ways, they are a quiet luxury, accessible to those who shop with intention at places like farmers markets and co-ops. Their luxury isn’t due to high cost or rarity, but rather their shelf life, which makes them less suited for conventional grocery store environments.

In addition to the farmers market, you can find Cranes Creek Mushrooms in gourmet dishes from local restaurants such as Ashten’s and Elliott’s on Linden. For Bumgarner, nothing beats the simplicity of sautéing mushrooms in butter. He and his mother agree that lion’s mane has a more unique texture, almost chicken-like, with a flavor that is difficult to explain to someone who has never tasted it. “It’s meatier,” he says. “One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about mushrooms is that you don’t get any of the benefits, other than fiber, unless you cook them.”

Graham says the shared mother and son moments are one of the most rewarding parts of their business. “We get a lot of family time. We can tease and talk and work.” As someone passionate about eco-friendly practices, Graham was thrilled to learn about the benefits the mushroom spawn blocks could bring to the soil on the farm.

Along with mushrooms, Graham and Bumgarner have added quail and chickens to their operation, knowing the extra minerals and nutrients from the spent mushroom blocks can aid the overall health of the animals on their property. “We are trying to get to the point where the farm supports itself,” she says. “I also have to stay busy or I’m not happy.”

More than a business, Cranes Creek Mushrooms is life underground, a labor of love, fueled by family.

The Nature of it All

THE NATURE OF IT ALL

The Nature of it All

The soothing embrace of the Healing Gardens

By Claudia Watson

It’s a slight squeak of the wooden gate that welcomes me to the garden, but once I step inside, the sounds shift. There’s a gentle breeze rustling the leaves, creating a soft whisper. The garden’s colors and textures blend with its aromatic smells and birdsong. It’s a soothing symphony, all mine for a few sacred minutes at dawn.

Nature has always been an escape for me, keeping me centered even in the most challenging of times. When I was young, I filled the hours in a woodland and creek, teasing polliwogs, rock-hopping and chasing the delicate butterflies flitting among the wildflowers. Then, I’d seek my secret sanctuary, an ancient white birch tree, snuggle into its curved hollow and listen as the wind in its branches whispered.

Immersive experiences, such as those youthful pursuits, connect us to nature’s wonders. We are hard-wired to find them engrossing, soothing and a powerful tool for healing. Gardens are particularly well-suited to tap into those connections in health care settings where life-challenging and life-threatening events are amplified.

Healing gardens engage the senses and foster those connections. They are designed with a passive involvement approach that allows visitors to be present and absorb the elements of nature, without structured activities and programs.

It was the long and exhausting experience of caring for their loved ones in the hospital that motivated Dr. Lynda Acker and Cassie Willis to approach the Foundation of FirstHealth with a vision to construct a healing garden on the regional hospital system’s Pinehurst campus. Acker and Willis were longtime gardeners, and it was their vision and design, supported by the community’s love for the concept and philanthropic spirit, that brought the Healing Garden oasis to life in 2012.

Located behind the Clara McLean House, the public garden is meticulously designed, expansive and mature. On any given day, it might host a patient undergoing treatment at the hospital, a medical provider taking a break, or a garden club enjoying the season’s blooms. Its beauty and tranquility instill a sense of calm and peace.

Upon entering the Healing Garden through its rose-laden moongate, a visitor is immediately greeted by the sound of birdsong. This auditory experience, combined with the garden’s visual beauty, creates a tone that sets the stage for a peaceful and engaging journey. The meandering, curved stone paths encourage exploration and curiosity about what lies around the next turn.

Small seating areas, including an intimate Lutyens bench in the Cottage Garden surrounded by mophead hydrangeas and roses, invite visitors to linger. The replica of a 15th century English stone dovecote serves as the visual and functional centerpiece of the garden.

The bounty of unusual trees, including a mature loquat, towering snowball viburnum, Chinese elms and vitex, adds a sense of curiosity. Beds of showy Japanese anemones and Mexican petunias add bursts of color. At the same time, sensory stimulation is offered by new dawn climbing roses, daisies, native salvias, herbs and a grey owl juniper that smells like a Christmas tree.

Many plants possess unique features that make them a natural conversation starter. One morning, as I was guiding our weekly volunteer work session, I was approached by a visitor intent on learning more about the plant he held in his hand.

“Can you please tell me the name of this?” asked 76-year-old Harlan Devore, holding out a weed.

“Chickweed,” I said.

“The Latin name, please?” he asked.

Embarrassed, I replied, “I don’t know.”

It was the beginning of our friendship, made in the garden. Devore, a retired military officer and science teacher for 20 years, was a patient undergoing treatment for cancer and staying at the Clara McLean House.

“I grew up loving plants because my mom did and she always used a plant’s Latin name, so that’s how I know plants, not by the common name,” he told me. Using a lot of show-and-tell, we discussed weeds in two languages. He met many of the garden’s volunteers and then asked if he could pull the weeds when he had spare time.

“Sure, if you’re OK with the work. It would be greatly appreciated,” I said, and showed him where we stored our tools and the debris bins.

When I returned a couple of days later, I found three 32-gallon bins full of weeds. Later that week, Devore asked if he could join the garden volunteers every week. He believes that active physical involvement with the garden enhanced his healing while instilling a sense of usefulness and accomplishment — and he made new friends who share his love for it. Today, he’s in remission, spending time with his family, volunteering for numerous organizations, kayaking on a local lake and, of course, pulling weeds at home.

“You reflect on your life, but sitting by the garden’s waterfall reading and listening to the birds took my mind off my worries,” he says of the garden. “I felt absorbed into nature, and that helped me relax.”

Gardens and natural spaces enrich both the body and the soul. When you view nature, you become embraced by its tranquility and beauty. It’s a welcome distraction, especially if you’re grieving. The gardens on the FirstHealth Hospice and Palliative Care campus opened in 2015 and were conceptualized with nature in mind, recalls Acker, who, with Sally DeWinkeleer, designed the peaceful space. With its carpets of densely planted, vibrant flowers and plants, the gardens provide patients, families and caregivers a place for rest, reflection and engagement with nature.

“We considered the individual needs of those who will benefit from this space,” explains Acker. “They need relief from the stressful conditions and long hours in Hospice House. The gardens and the outdoor sitting and walking areas provide respite at any time of the day or night.”

In addition to the beautiful flowers and serene atmosphere, the gardens feature a single-path labyrinth shaded by white Natchez crape myrtles. The labyrinth serves as a therapeutic tool, encourages mindfulness, and is designed to help individuals navigate the complex emotions associated with grief and loss.

“It’s a meditative experience, a reflection of your journey,” says DeWinkeleer, who lost her mother before working on the project. “It was a powerful and safe way to help me process my grief.”

A small pond was placed at a corner across from the Hospice House, where its mesmerizing movement and gentle sound offer a calming space to passersby.

One of the most poignant scenes at the gardens happens in early spring, when the grounds present a breathtaking display of thousands of cheerful daffodils. As the sun crests the horizon at dawn, its golden light illuminates the fields of daffodils, symbolizing hope, rebirth and new beginnings.

The healing gardens at FirstHealth of the Carolinas, including two of its newest at the Cancer Center, are lovingly cared for by community volunteers, many of whom have spent years tending them. These dedicated individuals aren’t just nurturing plants — they are creating an environment where patients, families and staff find peace and serenity during some of life’s most challenging times.

“When I saw how many people found comfort in this garden, I knew I had to be part of it,” says Melanie Riley, a volunteer at FirstHealth’s Cancer Center, which opened in 2023. Riley had just begun the 13-week Extension Master Gardener program with the Moore County Extension Service when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After reviewing the options, she elected a double mastectomy, and days later, passed her final EMG exam. After her recovery, she began volunteering at the Cancer Center’s Healing Gardens, co-designed by Acker and the building’s architect.

“Working here among those with cancer, as well as survivors, gave me a sense of control over my health and emotions,” she says. Now cancer-free, Riley says her experience in the garden was not only life-enhancing, it became life-rebuilding. She cherishes her mornings working in both the lobby-level and rooftop healing gardens.

“Patients and their caregivers come out to the garden for an uplifting distraction from their concerns,” she says. “I’ll introduce myself as a cancer survivor and offer them an encouragement stone that’s engraved with an uplifting message.”

That small stone is often the conversation starter, as they share their experiences. “It’s such an important validation for them to know another has made it through,” says Riley, reflecting on her own turbulent passage through the disease. “Then, I’ll notice a shift in their mindset. They are calmer and will ask about the flowers and plants, as well as the little bugs they see. They leave their worries for a bit and depart with a brighter perspective and a smile.

“It’s magical when they step into the nature of it all.”

Time spent in green spaces has a profound and positive impact on our lives. Whether it’s birdsong, a gurgling stream or the wind blowing through the tall trees, nature provides joy and comfort. Listen closely, as it whispers, “All is well.”

2025 Feature The Nature of it All

The Ladder

THE LADDER

The Ladder

Fiction and Illustration by Daniel Wallace

She kept the ladder hidden against the far side of the house, on its side, behind an array of shrubbery and a small pyramid of partially charred firewood. It was a metal ladder, and heavy, yellow and blue, and picking it up involved several challenging moves — lifting, leaning, pushing, and prying it into its sturdy inverted V. Harder now than ever but still doable. The hinges adjoining the two sides of the ladder sometimes stuck, and with her bare hands she had to thwonk them until they were perfectly straight. The meaty part of her palm had been pinched more than once during the course of this procedure; her Saran Wrap-thin skin roughly torn like a child’s scraped knee. All this happened at night, in almost complete darkness, the only light from the dim bulb in the laundry room, casting a soft, milky glow through the dusty windows onto the thorny leaves of a winterberry. Once the ladder was open she shook it, made sure the ground was level. Usually she’d have to adjust it, moving the legs this way and that a few times before it felt secure. Then she climbed, step by step, testing her balance on each flat rung, falling into a worry that made her take special care not to slip or get her slacks caught on anything. It was especially dangerous when she got to the very top, where it was written in serious, Ten Commandant letters: THIS IS NOT A STEP. Here there was a sharp metal protrusion, the final test that she had, so far, nimbly passed. She got on her knees on the step that wasn’t, and with her forearms on the shingles drug herself onto the sloping edge of the roof, turned herself around, and sat breathing. She brushed the dirt off her forearms. Another breath and she was fully there.

This is what she did for her cigarette, the only one she allowed herself, once a night every night, for almost all her adult life. She didn’t even have to hide it anymore, because there was no one here to secret it from. But it had become a part of who she was, a tradition she could not and would not and did not want to end until she couldn’t make the climb. It was necessary. It was her spot, her perch. There was no great view to be had, really, just the cross-the-street neighbors, a young couple in the modest, red-brick split-level, their lives ahead of them, as they say, as if all our lives weren’t ahead of us, some just farther along than others. Sometimes she could see them — the Shambergers? — as they moved from room to room, miniature people, busy as little ants. It was like watching a movie from a thousand feet away.

She smoked, and the smoke rose and quivered from the red and orange coal into a dreamy cloud, then off into a dreamy nothing. But most of the smoke was inside her, in her lungs and her blood. It made its way to her brain and she felt lighter, lighter. She felt like she could follow the smoke if she wanted. The cigarette didn’t last very long, never as long as she wanted it to, but always time enough to review the plot points of her life, the highlights, good and bad, the husband and the children and now the grands, the cars, the planes, the ships, the glam, and the struggle, the love, the sex, so much of it really it didn’t seem fair that one woman should have it all. So much. But every night she climbed the ladder’s rungs and sat here, here on top of the world, smoking, she wondered what it meant that out of all of it, out of every single second she remembered, this was the best, the very best, the moment she lived for, surrounded by the invisible world beneath the moon and long dead stars, sharing her own light with the dark.

2025 Feature The Ladder

Paper Tales

PAPER TALES

2025 Feature Paper Tales

Doctors’ Orders

DOCTORS' ORDERS

Doctors’ Orders

Breathing life into a contemporary villa

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

Embarking on a second career in retirement is nothing new: Lawyers become clergyman; bank tellers resurface as hairstylists; farmers write novels. But a retired Army physician renovating high-end residences? Well, why not?

Retired Lt. Col. Teresa Pearce, M.D., a public health specialist with a master’s degree in epidemiology, and her husband, Dr. Tony Freiler, M.D., a retired Lt. Col. Army radiologist practicing locally, found Pinehurst perfect for work and family. With two sons, 8 and 12, Teresa thought about renovating a house large enough for several generations to live communally. “I’m very big on family,” she says. She found a candidate in an estimated 7,200-square-foot manse built in 2001, with detached garage/apartment and pool on 5 acres overlooking a Country Club of North Carolina golf course. The multi-generational living plan didn’t materialize but, oh, what a venue for honing interior design skills and showcasing good taste.

Although the property does not conform to any off-the-shelf architectural mode — try contemporary Italianate villa — its wings spread over a section of CCNC where land parcels are of similar size. Teresa’s method was simple: Find something to make your own and get to work. Upgrades took about a year.

“This one . . . it was very well-built but the layout, the flow, didn’t work,” she says. But, given the imagination, the means and the neighborhood, it was a diamond in the rough.

The interior spreads out along hallways on either side of the foyer, where a large painting of a golden orb mounted on grasscloth hangs. Could it be the moon? Teresa’s father was part of the space program, in Florida. His NASA helmet contributes to the décor.

To the right, near the kitchen entrance, was a small formal dining room Teresa commandeered for her office, with a narrow glass-topped table — an unlikely but decorative desk — and a spectacular set of double doors she found in Maryland.

Beginning in the office, a trail of wallpaper and fabrics continues throughout the house — ferns, fruits, flowers, creatures and dense European mini-prints so vivid they jump off the background.

“Wallpaper, it’s my thing,” Teresa says, often in unusual color gradations. Navy, with a touch of teal, becomes Prussian blue; red has deep rather than bright overtones; and green imitates frogs, not limes.

The core of Teresa’s renovation is the living room, whose back wall, paneled to the ceiling, rises 20-plus feet over a formal gathering space with a library section and, at the far end, a dining table seating 12 to 14 “in a pinch.”

Here, Teresa is not shy about expressing her taste. Against one living room wall stands a lamp table lacquered red with gold curlicues, stripped down to pale wood at the top. “All that red and gold . . . just too much,” she decided.

The kitchen escaped significant reconfiguration, although wood cabinets became white and the island more user-friendly. Notable are the side-by-side Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer. Beyond is a kid-friendly family room where the giant circle motif is repeated in wall mirrors. And beyond that is a screened porch and pool.

Teresa haunts auctions and estate sales. “I’m an accumulator,” she admits. At one time, she owned an antique business. Now, she and a partner, Jennifer Beranek, operate Elliott Rowell, an interior design firm in Aberdeen.

Living space continues in an above-ground lower level, encompassing a game room with pool table, a lounging area for watching movies, several guest bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, a kitchenette and gym with weight-training equipment, an arts and crafts area, and Tony’s office. The walls are mostly done in Teresa’s signature navy blue, also the favored color (along with white) in the main floor master suite.

The totality allows for overstuffed sofas, large fireplaces and multi-era furnishings with a surprise around every corner: A campaign throne/chair stands in a hallway. Children’s furniture creates a village, with ceiling shelves for stuffed animals. A combination laundry/dog parlor has an elevated tub for bathing twin Springer spaniels. Teresa’s classic butler’s pantry is a rarity in contemporary construction, but oh, so convenient when serving those 14 guests. A canopy-free four-poster bed dominates the master suite, also home to a giant Boston fern and a bay window. Next up: a rose garden.

“I love renovation,” Teresa says. “I feel like the house has a new life, like it’s relevant again.”

2025 Doctors’ Orders Feature

The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

THE GREAT WAGON ROAD ODYSSEY

A pilgrimage half a century in the making

By Jim Dodson

Not long ago, during a breakfast talk in a retirement community about my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, I was asked by a woman, “So, looking back, what would you say was the most surprising thing about your journey?”

“Everything,” I answered.

The audience laughed.

The first surprise, I explained, was that it took me more than half a century to find and follow America’s most fabled lost Colonial road that reportedly brought more than 100,000 European settlers to the Southern wilderness during the 18th century. As I point out in the book’s prologue, I first heard about the GWR from my father during a road trip with my older brother in December 1966 to shoot mistletoe out of the ancient white oaks that grew around his great-grandfather’s long-abandoned homeplace off Buckhorn Road, near the Colonial-era town of Hillsborough.

The first of many surprises was the discovery that my father’s grandmother, a natural healer along Buckhorn Road named Emma Tate Dodson, was possibly an American Indian who had been rescued and adopted as an infant by George Washington Tate, my double-great-grandfather, on one of his “Gospel” rides to establish a Methodist church in the western counties of the state.

A second surprise came during the drive home when the old man pulled over by the Haw River to show my brother and me a set of stones submerged in the shallows of the river — purportedly the remains of G.W. Tate’s historic gristmill and furniture shop.

“Boys, long ago, that was your great-great-granddaddy’s gristmill, an important stop on the Great Trading Path that connected to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that brought tens of thousands of European settlers to the South in the 18th century, including your Scottish, German and English ancestors.”

This was pure catnip to my lively eighth-grade mind. Owing to a father whose passion for the outdoors was only matched by his love of American history, my brother and I were seasoned explorers of historic Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.

“Can we go find it?” I said to him.

He smiled. “How about this, Sport. Someday I’ll give you the keys to the Roadmaster, and you can go find the Wagon Road.”

I searched for years but found only the brief occasional mention of the Great Wagon Road in several histories of the South, but nothing about where it ran and what happened along it. The road seemed truly lost to time.

Forty years later, however, the Great Wagon Road found me.

On my first day as writer-in-residence at Hollins University in Virginia in 2006, I took a spin up historic U.S. Highway 11 — the famed Lee-Jackson Highway — and was surprised to come upon a historic roadside marker describing the “Old Carolina Road” that was part of the 18th century’s “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”

The sweet hand of providence was clearly at work, for the next day, while browsing shelves at a used bookshop in the Roanoke City Market, I found a well-worn copy of a folksy history called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South, by Williamsburg historian Parke Rouse Jr. I purchased the book (originally published in 1973 and long out of print) and read it in one night, taking notes. I also attempted to track down author Parke Rouse Jr. but discovered he’d been deceased for many years.

Still, the cosmos had cracked open a door, and I began collecting and reading all or parts of every history of America’s Colonial era that I could lay hands on for the next decade, eventually building a personal library of more than 75 books. About that same time, I purchased a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon from an elderly man in Pinehurst, almost identical to the one owned by my late father in the mid-1960s. Pinehurst pals playfully nicknamed it “The Pearl,” which turned out to be among the last true “wagons” built by Detroit before they switched to making SUVs.

I suddenly had my very own wagon. Now all I had to do was find the most traveled road of Colonial America to travel in it.

Eight years later, thanks to the late North Carolina historian Charles Rodenbough and other history-minded folks, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my quest — that, in fact, a small army of state archivists and local historians, genealogists, “lost road” experts, various museum curators and ordinary history nuts like me had finally cracked the code on the road’s original path from Philly to Georgia.

By the spring of 2017, I and my traveling pal, Mulligan the dog, were ready to roll when another big surprise — an exploding gallbladder and a baby carrot-sized tumor in my gut — required surgery and a four-month recovery.

Finally, on a steamy late August night, I began my journey (minus Mully, alas, owing to her age and one of the hottest summers on record) at Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern, which claims to be the birthplace of American cuisine. As I enjoyed a pint of Ben Franklin’s own spruce beer recipe and nibbled on cinnamon and pecan biscuits from Thomas Jefferson’s own Monticello cookbook, I eavesdropped like a tavern spy from Robert Louis Stevenson on three couples having a rowdy celebration of matrimony and a game of trivia based on American history that kept going off the rails.

At one point, a young woman called out a question in clear frustration: “Where and what year were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, adopted?”

None of her mates answered.

So, I did. “I believe it was York, Pennsylvania, in November 1777.”

Her name was Gina. She gave me a beaming smile and scooted her chair close to mine. “Correct! How did you know that?”

“Because it happened on the Great Wagon Road.”

What ensued was a delightful conversation about a frontier road that shaped the character and commerce of early America, the historic Colonial road that opened the Southern wilderness and became the nation’s first immigrant highway — the “road that made America,” as my friend Tom Sears, an Old Salem expert on Colonial architecture, described it to me.

Gina was thrilled to learn about it and apologized that she’d never heard its name.

I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Most Americans living today have never heard its name spoken, yet it’s believed that one-fourth of all Americans can trace their ancestral roots to the Great Wagon Road in one way or another.

Charmed and fascinated, Gina wondered how long it would take me to travel the road from Philly to Augusta, Georgia.

I mentioned that settlers took anywhere from two months to several years to reach their destinations depending on the weather and unknown factors like disease, getting lost or encountering hostile native peoples or wild animals.

“I plan to travel the entire road in three or four weeks,” I said. “I’ve spent years researching it.”

Silly me. God laughs, to paraphrase the ancient proverb, when men make plans.

A third big surprise came at the end of my third week on the road. I hadn’t even gotten out of Pennsylvania.

On the plus side, I’d met and interviewed so many fascinating people who were passionate keepers of their own Wagon Road stories, I realized I’d just tapped the surface of the trail’s saga.

Instead of writing an updated history of the Great Wagon Road, as originally planned, I borrowed a strategy from my late hero Studs Terkel and decided that the real story of the Wagon Road lay in the voices of the people living along it today, keeping its stories alive — the flamekeepers, if you will, of the “road that made America.” If it took a full year to complete my travels, so be it.

Instead, subtracting 12 months for COVID, it took six years and counting.

My focus on the storytellers proved to be deeply rewarding, introducing me to a broad array of Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion whose vivid and often untold tales about the development of a winding and once forgotten Colonial road (originally an American Indian hunting path that stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas) carried our ancestors into the Golden West and shaped the America we know today, hence the book’s main title: The Road That Made America. Unexpectedly, their voices and stories ultimately restored my faith in a country where democracy — and civic discourse — was supposedly in short supply.

Looking back, this was the nicest surprise of all. For what began simply as an armchair historian’s quest to find and document America’s most famous lost road ended as nothing less than a powerful, emotional pilgrimage for me.

At the journey’s end, while I was heading home through the winter moonlight on a winding highway believed to be the path Lord Cornwallis took while chasing wily Nathanael Greene to the Dan River, I had a final revelation of the road’s impact on me:

. . . a true pilgrimage is said to be one in which the traveler ultimately learns more about himself than the passing landscape.

Perhaps this is true. But for the time being, it’s enough to think about some of the inspiring people and stories that gave me hope in a nation where democracy is said to be hanging by a thread: an old Ben Franklin and a young Daniel Boone, the Susquehanna Muse, real Yorkers, the candlelight of Antietam, a Gettysburg living legend, an awakening at Belle Grove Plantation, Liberty Man, the passion of Adeela Al-Khalili, good old cousin Steve, a lost Confederate found, a snowy birthday in Staunton, and final road trips with Mully.

Without question, my life and appreciation of my country have both been enriched by the people and stories of the Great Wagon Road.

This was the nicest surprise of all.

2025 Feature The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

A Little Gem

A LITTLE GEM

A Little Gem

Sweet, small and smart

By Deborah Salomon
Photographs by John Gessner

Pinehurst has become an enclave of castles and cottages, outdoor showers and indoor pools, antiques and art, dog grooming parlors and tech control rooms accommodating generals and musicians, bankers, brewers, judges and surgeons. From this residential potpourri a new genre emerges: the little gem.

A prime example is the cottage tucked into a quiet, lesser known lane on the edge of a newish residential area. Pinehurst estates have garages bigger than its 820 square feet.

This little gem presents an optical illusion: classic furniture in dark woods is scaled for a larger house but sits comfortably uncrowded in small rooms with low ceilings and a patchwork of floorboards that suggest additions after its completion in 1941. Soon, its intimate parlor, with a few adjustments, will welcome a baby grand piano.

The sorceress performing this magic is Tess Gillespie, who also turned a patio into a garden with seating for a dozen guests — or her children and grandchildren. Bear in mind, the house has no dining room, just a drop-leaf table to pull out when required, and a sweet little bench in the kitchen, where two, maybe three, can add chairs for brunch.

Of course this one bedroom, one bathroom Lilliputian lifestyle requires some sacrifices: no bathtub; no giant TV screen; no walk-in closets; and, by choice, no dishwasher.

What was this residential iconoclast thinking?

The story opens as do many Pinehurst relocations. Tess grew up in the Boston area, loving the sea — hence seascape art dominating the walls. Like other Northern cosmopolites, she and husband Bill looked for a vacation home in a warmer climate rich in facilities, including golf. They tried Florida.

“We didn’t want a condo,” Tess recalls. Driving through Pinehurst they spotted a For Sale sign on the cottage and an adjacent building lot. They purchased the package in 2004, built a new house on the lot and moved into it a year later. Tess has such fond memories of their short time in the cottage that after Bill died in 2013 she worked it up and moved back in.

“We were happy here,” she says. Besides, she muses, “I’ve never been one who loves a big house. Downsizing is freeing.”

Tess brought experience and taste to the task gained while working for Laura Ashley, Lord & Taylor and other high-end fashion and home goods retailers. She decided on a milky/linen white for walls throughout, which she painted herself. Fabrics, where required, are printed in bright navy blue.

“My mother had a great eye for furniture,” Tess says. When she died, Tess and her sisters met and divided up these household treasures. “We cried, we laughed, we remembered . . . ” Results of this and other forays included large wing chairs and a one-armed settee in the living room. On the settee are cushions made from her father’s fisherman knit sweaters.

Tess replaced several space-gobbling doors with curtains and built a window seat with a mattress to accommodate any unexpected guests. The only true bedroom barely contains a queen bed and long dresser. The remodeled bathroom squeezes in a glass stall shower and stacked washer and dryer.

The kitchen, visible from the sitting room, is a slim galley with country French touches. Tess opened the space under the stairway to a second floor apartment (grandfathered as a rental) for a pantry displaying jars and baskets. The countertop is thick, heavy marble; the island, that dark, narrow wooden bench. The chandelier is weathered brass. Tess replaced the dishwasher with an oversized round metal sink, hearkening back to times she and her sisters would laugh, talk and do dishes together in their family home.

Tess, who works part-time in a local real estate office, has a way with flowers. White orchids bloom throughout the house. A small office overlooks her informal gardens, in full bloom.

As much as style and innovation, this mini-gem, barely visible from the street, represents the philosophy of a wise woman. “I have an independent spirit,” says Tess. “I know I can do things, and I’ve learned to compromise and do things myself.” Like create an environment, totally her, filled with talismans.

“I feel safe and secure here . . . the house makes me happy because this is where Bill and I started,” she says. “I don’t want ‘big’ or more stuff. Really, what more do I need?”

2025 A Little Gem Feature

Art is for Everyone

ART IS FOR EVERYONE

Art is for Everyone

Celebrating 45 years of the Fine Arts Festival

By Jenna Biter

Push through the double front doors of Campbell House and you’ll find refuge from the dog days of summer boredom. The walls and halls and nooks and crannies of the home of the Arts Council of Moore County’s first floor galleries will be bursting with art, from ceilings to baseboards.

Cats and dogs will chase each other across canvases, children will laugh in watercolor, and painted flowers will forever be in bloom. The doors to the Fine Arts Festival at the Campbell House galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, are flung open wide beginning July 23. The only theme is art.

Proudly put on by the Arts Council since 1980, the annual exhibition gives amateur and professional artists alike a time and place to show and sell their work. “As long as it’s suitable for public viewing,” says Chris Dunn, the executive director of the host organization, with a smile.

In its 45th year, the Fine Arts Festival fills the sprawling brick mansion with about 250 artworks each summer. Participants can submit one or two pieces. So long as a submission meets requirements — no bigger than this, no heavier than that, no older than two years, etc. — the art will make the show. “Anybody 16 and above,” says Kate Curtin, the Arts Council’s program and art gallery director.

Beyond that, the barrier to entry is a modest $20 or $30, depending on council membership. “I’ve enjoyed being part of this exhibit,” says Ellen Burke, a regular festival contributor. “And I love that my adult students participate in it.”

Burke is a retired arts educator who traded golden years in New England for arts festivals on Connecticut Avenue. She lectures at the council, helps award arts scholarships, and sometimes instructs workshops en plein air watercolor painting. Somewhere in this year’s show, you might see her study of a garden in the dead of a Massachusetts winter or a simple watercolor of peas in a pod. Although Burke made the move south, residency isn’t required to participate in the festival. Submissions come from across the county, the state and beyond.

Wander through the White Gallery or the Brown Gallery and somewhere you’ll find a horse studying its reflection in a pond, a scene painted by Betsey MacDonald. She’s a science-turned-art teacher who’s entered the festival consistently over the past decade despite living in horse country — not of the Sandhills, but of Rhode Island. When a good friend packed up and moved to North Carolina, she connected MacDonald to the Arts Council.

“I was crushed, but we’ve remained friends, and she set up a show for me,” MacDonald says.

The Fine Arts Festival began as a way for local artists to improve their skills, and showcase and sell their work. That first year, the exhibition hung at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, across the street from its current home in the Campbell House.

“I don’t know the timeline, but we eventually landed here. And this became our galleries,” says Dunn, gesturing to the rooms of the historic house around him.

An Army spouse, Jo Tomsick moved to Sanford during the COVID pandemic. She’s pressing toward a full-time career in gallery art and, during her time in North Carolina, she’s pressed hard. Tomsick held her first solo gallery show, “Of a Feather,” at Sandhills Community College in 2023 and ships her art to galleries across the United States. “I have a piece that’s actually in Tokyo right now,” says Tomsick, a glimmer in her eye.

Last year, she submitted an oil painting to the Fine Arts Festival, her interpretation of how the princess might have felt in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans. The painting won best in show and just sold a couple of months ago.

“I was mind-boggled,” Tomsick says. “People actually want the art that I make, which is so cool.”

Once all submissions have been delivered but before they have been hung, a judge looks everything over and selects winners. Since awards are assigned across a wide spectrum of seven categories spanning oil painting to photography, the judge must be a versatile veteran of the art industry and not locally connected. This way the art of the usual participants is unfamiliar, and submissions remain anonymous. Blake Kennedy, clay studio manager of N.C. State University’s Crafts Center, will shoulder the burden in 2025.

Every category has a first, second and third place award, each with a monetary prize, as well as an unlimited number of honorable mentions. Whether a piece wins or not, all the works hang throughout the Campbell House galleries, not necessarily by category but by what goes together, like, for example, a quiet set of blue florals entered by Paula Montgomery.

As many artists do, Montgomery started by copying masterpieces. She excelled at the practice and enjoyed it until someone nudged her in the direction of developing her own style, one that’s grown into something bold, geometric and fun.

Ulli Misegades was similarly motivated. As a child, she was told by a teacher that she “had no gift.” It’s the very sort of comment that might turn the faces of art educators like Burke and MacDonald purple. Fortunately, the callous remark didn’t stop Misegades from picking up drawing and watercolor during sleepless nights when her children were young. Eventually, she led a portrait group in Cary, and her art has won awards and been published in newspapers and magazines like The Pastel Journal. “I love children and I love dogs,” says the grandmother of six. “Those are my favorite subjects, and that’s what I usually enter.”

After an exclusive preview night for businesses and individuals who commit to making purchases, there will be a public opening reception the first Friday in August, from 6 to 8 p.m. Typically, it’s standing room only, not by design but necessity; more than 300 people attended last year. The popular event will likely remain cozy until the Arts Council completes its capital campaign for a 1,700-square-foot gallery addition to Campbell House.

Guests will nibble and sip as they swirl about the exhibition, looking for winners and determining their own. At that point, the only medalists not known will be the Sara Wilson Hodgkins Best in Show — which is revealed during the evening’s awards ceremony — and the Lee Barrett People’s Choice, which will be tallied from paper slips after the exhibition ends August 27.

“It’s never been the same,” Dunn says about the two biggest accolades. “To this day, it’s never been the same.”

2025 Art is for Everyone Feature

The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

THE ROAD TO THE HOUSE IN THE HORSESHOE

The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

A Revolutionary tale of murder, survival and derring-do through the Sandhills

By Bill Case | Photograph by John Gessner

The skirmish at Col. Philip Alston’s home had raged for over three hours without any definitive result. But when an oxcart was discovered in Alston’s barnyard, an end to the stalemate appeared to be at hand. The leader of the attacking Loyalist Militia, 26-year-old Col. David Fanning, ordered his men to bed the cart with hay, set it afire, and wheel it ablaze into the two-story frame house. Col. Alston, inside with wife, Temperance, their six children, and around twenty Patriots under his command, recognized this dilemma had no ready solution. If he and his militia members ventured outside, they would be sitting ducks for Fanning’s sharpshooters. Staying inside a burning tinderbox meant certain death for all.

Fanning and Alston had taken turns chasing each other through the Sandhills during the month of July, 1781. Now Fanning was the pursuer and Alston was his prey. The news that Alston’s forces had killed non-fighting Loyalist supporter Kenneth Black had sent the irascible Fanning over the edge, and revenge was foremost on his mind. When Fanning found out the Patriot leader and a number of his men had retreated to Alston’s “House in the Horseshoe” (so named because of its location within a bend of the Deep River) 10 miles north of Carthage, he resolved “to make [an] [e]xample of them for [what] . . . they had done to one of my pilots by name Kenneth Black.”

Alston, Fanning and Black: The convergence of this trio in July 1781 yielded compelling though oft-overlooked Revolutionary War history. Local history buff Paula Caddell finds the contrasts in the backgrounds of the three protagonists fascinating. “Philip Alston was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as the privileged son of a plantation owner. David Fanning was something of an abused child indentured to a man who forced David to live mostly outdoors in the woods attending cattle. This neglect caused an unsightly condition known as ‘scald head,’ which permanently took all the hair off Fanning’s head. Kenneth Black, a Scottish Highlander, emigrated here from Jura, an isle in the Hebrides, seeking a better life.”

Black was among thousands of Highlanders impacted by the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite Army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. To punish the rebels, the crown disbanded the centuries-old Scottish clan system. Many were driven off their land. Those remaining were forced to pay exorbitant rents. Facing starvation, a large proportion of Highlanders sought a fresh start in America. And the king, desirous of encouraging settlement in the colonies, was willing to pardon past offenses and permit the Highlanders to leave provided they pledged an oath of allegiance vowing never to take up arms against the sovereign. Those signing acknowledged that breach of the oath would cause them to be “cursed in all . . . [their] undertakings and family.” Abiding by the oath was considered a religious necessity. In his 1854 treatise, “The Old North State in 1776,” Rev. Eli Caruthers remarked that most Scots’ mindset was that “they must not violate their oath, for that would be giving themselves to the devil at once.”

The trickle of Scots immigrating to this region was accelerating rapidly when Kenneth Black arrived sometime around 1765. He and wife Catherine settled on a 100-acre allotment near the Little River just south of Carthage. Sometime after 1772, he acquired a 50-acre plot near present-day Southern Pines and constructed a home where the Residence Inn is now located. Residing nearby were several brothers with the surname of Black who likewise migrated from Jura. There is disagreement among historians regarding the relationship of the brothers to Kenneth, but they were certainly kin in some way and good friends. Other Scottish- born families like McNeill, Buchan, Paterson, Buie, Blue and Stewart soon arrived in the area. Descendants of these families still populate Moore County today.

The most celebrated arrival was undoubtedly Flora MacDonald. She achieved everlasting fame after the Culloden debacle, when she aided Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape to the Island of Skye by disguising him as an Irish spinning maid. She paid for her assistance to the Jacobite cause with imprisonment in the Tower of London for several months. In 1750, she married Allan MacDonald, ironically a captain in the British Army. They lived on Skye until emigrating to North Carolina in 1774.

The Highland Scots destined for North Carolina assumed they were leaving behind a civil war that had rendered their lives unbearably difficult. It must have been alarming to arrive here to find rebellion in their midst once again. They wanted no part of it. Aside from their irrevocable oaths to King George III, other practicalities mitigated against supporting the cause of independence. England had easily crushed the Jacobites at Culloden. What would prevent the greatest military power on Earth from quelling an American rebellion? There was commerce to consider too. Many of the Scots, like Kenneth Black, had become successful farmers. The longleaf pines on their estates produced naval stores of pitch and turpentine marketed to the mother country. And there was cotton. War would interrupt that trade. Why rock the boat?

Once the “Shot Heard Round the World” was fired in Lexington on April 19, 1775, war was suddenly at hand. One month later, patriots (also known then as Whigs) in the Charlotte area adopted the Mecklenburg Declaration, which is said to be the first formal action by any group of Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. When word reached Royal Gov. Josiah Martin that the Whigs’ Safety Committee in New Bern was poised to seize him, he fled the Royal Palace and took refuge in a British ship offshore. With astonishing alacrity, the Whigs orchestrated a takeover of the reins of government.

In August 1775, a convocation of Whigs was held at the “Hillsborough Provincial Congress.” This assembly took up the question of raising troops to defend the colony against an anticipated British invasion. Two regiments were authorized (known as the “Continental Line”) , but lack of funding meant that the majority of Patriot fighters during the war were militia members.

While those favoring independence in North Carolina were in the majority, the Highland Scots provided a formidable counterweight favoring allegiance to the king. They were joined by remnants of the Regulators movement. The Regulators were western North Carolina settlers who had rebelled against the fraudulent imposition of fees and taxes by conniving public officials. This brouhaha had led to the Battle of Alamance in 1771 — a devastating defeat for the Regulators. The movement collapsed, and its surviving members were forced to swear their own oaths of allegiance to the king.

In the early stages of the Revolution, the Whigs sought to lure the Highland Scots and Regulators (collectively referred to as “Tories”) to the revolutionary cause with various inducements. But when those offers were rejected, the Whigs resorted to coercion in the form of arrests, banishments, estate confiscations and tax penalties. Seeking to restore royal rule, the embattled Gov. Martin made his own overtures to recruit the Highlanders to join the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment (“the Highland Regiment”), promising 200-acre grants to all who enlisted. Martin, not above threatening reprisals against recalcitrant Scots, proclaimed those refusing service risked having “their lives and properties to be forfeited.”

Martin’s recruitment efforts met with some success. On February 2, 1776, 1500 Highlanders and a smaller number of Regulators gathered at Cross Creek near Fayetteville to join the Highland Regiment led by Gen. Donald MacDonald. Flora MacDonald’s husband, Allan, served as an officer in the Regiment. Flora herself is said to have made a fiery oration urging valor in upcoming battles to her fellow Highlanders. The plan was to march the Highland Regiment to Wilmington to link up with British forces led by Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was scheduled to be arriving shortly by sea. But Patriots led by Col. James Moore and Richard Caswell rushed to block the Regiment at Moore’s Creek, eighteen miles north of Wilmington. Realizing that the Regiment would be crossing Moore’s Creek Bridge, Moore and Caswell removed most of the bridge’s planking, greased its support rails with tallow, and awaited the Regiment’s appearance. When the Highlanders arrived and attempted a charge across the bridge, they were welcomed with deadly cannon and rifle fire.

It was a rout. Fifty Scots perished on the bridge, and the majority of the Regiment was captured and imprisoned. Allan MacDonald was among them. Those that escaped hastened back to their farms and laid low. When Cornwallis finally arrived in Wilmington in May 1776, there were no Highlanders to greet him, only a chagrined Gov. Martin, whose foolproof plan to take back North Carolina had backfired. With no fighting Tories around to augment his own army, Cornwallis chose to sail for Charleston with the intent of attacking the Patriot stronghold of Fort Moultrie. With the Tories in disarray, armed resistance to the Patriots in North Carolina melted away. In short order, the Whigs cemented their hold on government by adopting a new constitution, electing Richard Caswell as governor of the new state, and levying property taxes.

While there was a hiatus on military engagements in the state, the Highlanders’ troubles continued. Flora MacDonald’s home at Cheek’s Creek was ransacked and seized. Poor Flora! Once again, she had cast her lot with the losing side. Now age 54, homeless, separated from her husband, and a pariah, she appealed to Kenneth Black for help. He allowed Flora to hide at his Little River property, where she remained until reuniting with Allan after his release in a prisoner exchange. In 1779, the couple left America and returned to Skye.

Kenneth Black himself ran afoul of the four-fold tax that the authorities imposed on those who refused to take an oath to the new state. This led to an altercation reported by Caruthers in his treatise. In the fall of 1778, an unintimidated Black rebuffed the efforts of two tax collectors for the county who came to his home.

Subsequently the taxmen brought in reinforcements, who promptly seized “a negro man, a stud horse, and a good deal of other property, amounting in all to seven or eight hundred dollars.” Black offered no resistance. Caruthers offered the view that given the rough treatment afforded Black, “a man in good circumstances, and of much respectability in his neighborhood . . . we may suppose it was worse with men of less property and influence in the community. During this period the Scots complained bitterly of such military officers as [Philip] Alston [and others] . . . for carrying away their bacon, grain, and stock of every description, professedly for the American army, but without making compensation, or even giving a certificate, and thus leaving their families in a destitute and suffering condition.”

Labeled by local historian Rassie Wicker as a “swashbuckling, aristocratic rascal,” Philip Alston wore many hats during the Revolutionary years: tax assessor, justice of the peace, and member of the legislature. And he was certainly a man of means. His wife, Temperance Smith, came from a wealthy family. Alston’s land holdings — mostly in the Deep River area, and including the House in the Horseshoe, totaled nearly 7,000 acres, and he owned slaves. But Alston sensed that the best way to further his emerging political career would be to lead his men into battle. Eager to join the revolutionary fray, he sufficiently impressed his Patriot superiors to be named First Major of the Cumberland County Militia. But after heading south, his regiment was mauled in the Battle of Briar Creek, Georgia, a stinging defeat for the Patriots. Alston was taken prisoner, but later escaped. As he made his way back to North Carolina, Cornwallis’ army was finally gaining a solid foothold in the South, having overrun Savannah and Charleston by May 1780. Moreover, British Maj. James Craig successfully occupied Wilmington in January 1781, so Cornwallis now had available a North Carolina sea coast supply base and garrison.

With Patriot prospects in the South on the downslide, Gen. Horatio Gates, the victorious American leader at the Battle of Saratoga, was placed at the helm of the Patriots’ “Southern Department.” But Gates suffered a humiliating defeat after marching his troops, including 1,200 North Carolinians, into the jaws of a surprise attack by Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina.

Gates’s failure at Camden caused George Washington to replace him with Gen. Nathaniel Greene. Intent on demolishing the new leader’s troops, Cornwallis re-entered North Carolina and pursued Greene northward through the Piedmont. In the process of fording a stream, Cornwallis’s troops discovered that Greene had dumped tar in the stream’s bed to hinder the British crossing — one of a couple derivatives for the nickname “the Tar Heel State.” The adversaries met in battle on March 15, 1781, at Guilford Court House near Greensboro. While the engagement was declared a British victory, it was a Pyrrhic one. The heavy casualties on both sides hurt Cornwallis far more than Greene. With his army depleted and running low on supplies, a frustrated Cornwallis abandoned his pursuit of Greene and marched to Wilmington for refitting. He then departed that city with his army for Virginia on April 25.

While Cornwallis’ forays into North Carolina failed to subdue the Patriots, his presence nonetheless reignited Tory resistance. Young David Fanning emerged as a resourceful and ferocious leader of guerrilla-fighting Tories who terrorized the countryside in 1781. Much had happened to Fanning in his 10 years since leaving home at age 16 to escape the cruel treatment he endured as a child. After a period of wandering, he was rescued in Orange County by the O’Deniell family. The O’Deniells restored Fanning to health and cured him of the “tetter worm” disease that had caused the loss of his hair. They taught him to read and write. At age 19, Fanning settled in South Carolina, and traded with the Catawba Indians. When the Revolution came, Fanning favored the Whigs’ cause. However, according to Caruthers, everything changed when, “. . . on his return from one of his trading expeditions, he was met by a little party of lawless fellows who declared themselves Whigs, and robbed him of everything he had . . . [H]e at once changed sides and in the impetuosity and violence of his temper swore vengeance on the whole of the Whig party.” He then joined a Tory group of militants in South Carolina, until returning to North Carolina in tandem with Cornwallis’s army in early 1781.

Though not receiving any formal command from the British, Fanning nonetheless became a feared foe of the Patriots. Caruthers reports, “He was often upon his enemies when they were least expecting it, and having accomplished his purpose of death or devastation, he was gone before their friends could rally. Often when supposed to be at a distance, the storm of his presence in a neighborhood was communicated by the smoke of burning houses, and by the cries of frightened and flying women and children.”

While both Patriot militia and Tory guerrillas committed atrocities during the conflict, one incident really inflamed passions on both sides, and it stemmed from a seemingly inconsequential event. A member of a Patriot militia led by Col. Thomas Wade stole a poor servant girl’s piece of cloth. Her ensuing complaint was communicated to Tories who discovered that Wade was camped nearby at Piney Bottom Creek, where Fort Bragg is today. The Tory band launched a surprise attack on Wade before daybreak, quickly killing six of his men. A young camp-following boy who was a favorite of Wade begged for his life only to have an attacker split the boy’s skull in two with a swipe of the sword.

The massacre sent the Patriot militia into a paroxysm of rage. Retributions against the Tories increased dramatically. One retaliatory raid by Wade and company targeted Kenneth Black. Wade’s men rode horses into Black’s house and gathered 51-year-old Black and his family into the chimney. Wade intended burning the house, but decided to search it first. After finding two chests belonging to British army officers who had left the chests with Black, the militiamen broke them open and dumped the contents on the floor. By unhappy coincidence, two daughters of Flora MacDonald arrived to visit the Blacks out of concern for a bout of smallpox the family had endured and weathered. According to Caruthers, the militiamen “took the gold rings from their [the MacDonald daughters] fingers and the silk handkerchiefs from their necks; then putting their swords into their bosom, split down their silk dresses and, taking them into the yard, stripped them of all their outer clothing.”

Wade’s men were preparing to leave with their plunder when Catherine Black exclaimed, “Well, you have a bad companion with you!” When the men apprehended she meant smallpox exposure, they immediately threw down their booty. Wade and his men took old Kenneth along to guide them out of the area. But “probably thinking that there might be danger of getting the smallpox from him, they told him he might return home.” A gunshot fired with bad intentions whizzed by Black’s head as he departed his captors to return to his devastated family. His fellow friends from Jura were not so fortunate. Wade’s men killed Alexander Black and Archibald Black was badly injured. Thus, Kenneth Black, though not himself a fighting man, nevertheless had a score to settle with the Patriots.

Of course, violence begets violence, and David Fanning had no inclination to be gentle with Patriots he encountered. The British commander in Wilmington, pleased with Fanning’s success in engendering panic and dread among the Patriots, appointed him colonel of the Loyalist Militia on July 5, 1781. Proud of his new status, the vainglorious Fanning donned the British army redcoat, and looked for a bold strike that would further impress his superiors. He found it at the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro. Caruthers recounts that on July 16 or 17, Fanning and about 35 men “. . . dashed into Pittsboro when the county court was in session . . . and captured the lawyers, justices and other officers of the court, with such of the citizens and prominent men in the place as he wanted . . . [H]e swore the rebels should never hold court there again.” Fanning then proceeded to transport 14 of the captured to Wilmington, where Maj. Craig had erected a stockade prison.

While en route to Wilmington with his prisoners, Fanning stopped for the night (probably July 20) at Kenneth Black’s farm. Fanning probably was unaware when feasting at Black’s that Philip Alston, newly appointed to colonel in the militia, was trailing him in hot pursuit less than a day behind. After breakfast the following morning, Fanning resumed his journey to Wilmington. Kenneth Black accompanied Fanning’s band for a few miles “as a pilot.” But after the ride began, Fanning’s horse, Red Doe, a celebrated and normally lightning-fast steed, became lame. Fanning and Black swapped their rides. Black said his goodbyes and — astride his friend’s lame horse — turned back toward home.

Unfortunately for Black, his path home ran smack into the pursuing Alston at Ray’s Mill Creek, where Southern Pines Golf Club is now located. According to Caruthers, “As soon as he [Black] saw them he turned up the creek and attempted to escape on Fanning’s foundered horse. They discovered and pursued him, shot and wounded him; but he went on some two hundred yards further, into the edge of the swamp, and then fell with his face on the ground. When they came up they smashed his head with the butt of his gun, and when begging for his life [killed him].”

Alston ultimately abandoned his chase of Fanning and retreated north toward the Deep River. When passing by the Black homestead, Alston called on Catherine Black and “expressed much regret” that his men had killed her husband.

After Fanning dropped off his prisoners in Wilmington, he headed back the way he came. While en route to his headquarters at Coxes Mill, he stopped by the Blacks’ farmstead, where Catherine Black informed him of her husband’s death. Enraged, Fanning headed for the House in the Horseshoe to seek revenge. On the way, he learned Alston’s militia “had separated into small parties thinking I should never return from Wilmington.” Fanning wrote that he and his men “marched all that day and that night following and just as the day [sometime from July 29 to August 5 — accounts differ] [d]awned commenced firing on Alston and his reduced force.”

As musket balls smashed through the windows, Temperance Alston protected her two smallest children “by putting a small table . . . in the fireplace, for them to stand on, and thus they were entirely beyond the reach of the bullets.” Temperance, clutching her 6-month-old daughter, scurried beneath her bed for protection. Alston’s two teenage sons probably were among the defenders returning fire. Caruthers reported that there was “among the assailants, a lieutenant from the British army by the name of McKay . . . and he told Fanning that if he would give him [McKay] the command he would take the house in a few minutes.” Fanning consented, and McKay promptly led a “pell-mell” rush toward the house. But as soon as McKay started his charge by jumping a rail fence, “a rifle ball entered his head and he fell dead on the spot.” Those following McKay retreated back behind the fence. Fanning then “bribed a free negro to set the house on fire at the far side where it was supposed he could do it without being observed.” However, Alston got wise to the scheme and shot the man as he was about to torch the house.

By noon, “one or two had been killed in the house and four or five wounded; but Fanning’s loss in killed and wounded was more than double.” It was then that Fanning conjured up his end-game strategy of propelling the fire-laden oxcart into the house. “In this perilous and critical moment, Mrs. Alston came out of her bedroom . . . and with perfect composure, requested them to commit the business to her.” Temperance volunteered to venture outside with a raised white flag. All the men, and Alston particularly, objected. They thought it “very improbable that Fanning, under all the circumstances, would respect even a lady of her standing.” But Temperance would not be denied, and she courageously walked out on the step. Rather than shoot down the unarmed woman, Fanning “called to her to meet him half-way, which she did.” Then Temperance calmly announced her message: “We will surrender, sir, on condition that no one shall be injured; otherwise we will make the best defense we can; and if need be, sell our lives as dearly as possible.”

Fanning agreed to her proposal, provided that Alston and his men agreed firstly not to venture more than five miles from their homes for the duration of hostilities, and secondly to swear oaths not to take up arms against the king or “cause anything to do or be done prejudicial to the success of His Majesty.” The terms were agreed upon and the lengthy skirmish was over. It appears that Alston and his men abided by their oaths throughout the rest of the war.

Thereafter, Fanning continued his guerrilla raids. His most spectacular maneuver involved capturing Gov. Thomas Burke and 200 other Patriots in Hillsborough on September 12. While en route to Wilmington to incarcerate his prisoners, Fanning was attacked by Patriots at Lindley’s Mill. Numerous dead and wounded resulted on both sides. But Fanning succeeded in delivering Gov. Burke to Maj. Craig for imprisonment.

While Fanning was terrorizing North Carolina as the bloody summer of 1781 came to a close, Gen. Cornwallis found himself check-mated in Yorktown, Virginia. Surrounded by American and French armies, and the French navy preventing his rescue by sea, Cornwallis surrendered to Gen. George Washington on October 19, 1781, and the British began vanishing from the South. Maj. Craig evacuated Wilmington on November 18. For a time, Fanning continued his reign of terror, but he too ultimately fled Wilmington for Charleston — still holding on as a British bastion — in May 1782. But then that city was abandoned by the English on December 14 and Fanning, along with his new 16-year-old bride departed as well. He ultimately settled in New Brunswick — a haven for exiled Loyalists.

The end of the war still left unresolved what the state should do with the Tories and their confiscated property. The Black farm apparently escaped seizure as wife Catherine resided there for many years after Kenneth’s death. In 1783, the state legislature passed a measure pardoning all Tories and permitting some restoration of confiscated properties. There were three named exceptions to the pardon, one of whom was David Fanning.

Both Alston and Fanning led controversial lives after the war. After the southern half of Cumberland County became Moore County in 1784, Alston held various positions in county government. But he made political enemies, and they sought to eliminate him as a foe by causing his indictment for murder arising out of the aforementioned killing of Thomas Taylor when Alston was trailing Fanning in July 1781. Alston ultimately received a pardon for this offense, but other scrapes followed.

George Glascock, Alston’s principal political nemesis, was murdered in 1787. Alston’s slave Dave was accused of the crime. Alston, who was hosting a party at the time of the murder, was charged as an accessory. Records of the disposition of the charges are sketchy, but it appears that Alston was confined for a time, but later escaped to Georgia, where he owned property. In 1791, he was assassinated by an unknown killer.

Fanning faced his own charge of criminal conduct while in New Brunswick. In 1800, he was convicted of the rape of a neighbor’s young daughter. Fanning received the death sentence but managed to avoid this punishment by receiving a pardon through appeal. The pardon was conditioned on Fanning’s exile from the province, so he sailed to Nova Scotia, where he enjoyed success in shipbuilding until his death in 1825.

The Moore County Historical Association (MCHA) was involved in efforts to preserve the graveyard of Kenneth Black and family, located between Hwy. 15-501 and Morganton Road across from the Target shopping center in Southern Pines. For decades, the unmaintained graveyard was forgotten as vandals decimated gravestones and rock walls collapsed.

In the 1960s, Tony Parker, a local history writer and devotee of ancient graveyards, rediscovered the Black family burial ground. Black descendants and brothers Bill and Nolan Moran got local media interested in the site and convinced a local bank to place a new marker over Kenneth’s grave.

Over a decade ago, the Moran family requested that MCHA serve as an agent to oversee the cemetery. MCHA’s volunteers sprang into action to restore the burial ground by unearthing buried stones and rebuilding a fallen wall. Money was raised to pay for ground-penetrating radar to identify the specific locations of all 34 graves in the cemetery to ensure their nondisturbance. Impressed by MCHA’s restoration efforts, Vince Viscomi, the Tennessee physician who owned the property at the time, made known his desire that any development of the property would preserve and protect this historic burial ground.

Had Kenneth Black sided with the Patriots and been killed by the British under similar circumstances, he likely would be remembered as a martyr and hero of the Revolution. John Brown of Roanoke, Virginia, another Black descendant who succeeded the Morans as a family representative for the cemetery, agreed. Though his ancestor was not on the winning side, preserving the story of his role in the Revolution is important.

“The work by MCHA and the Black family descendants to maintain the cemetery shows that people sill care about history. Today, too many people don’t care,” Brown said. In 2020 a development plan by Mid-Atlantic Properties for the 100-acre site that included the cemetery was approved contingent on the cemetery’s preservation. According to MCHA, “GPS recordings of the gravestones and rock walls were recorded and then the objects placed in storage. Approximately 17 feet of soil was then placed over the cemetery as part of the grading process. The stones were then returned to the GPS recorded locations. A sturdy white picket fence was erected around the cemetery, and a pair of brick columns were constructed to mark two entrances of paved walkways to the cemetery.”

MCHA also helped preserve the House in the Horseshoe itself by acquiring it in the 1950s from a private owner and restoring the house to close to its original condition. MCHA subsequently conveyed the property to the state of North Carolina. The state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources welcomes thousands of visitors annually who examine numerous bullet holes still visible from the desperate fight that took place 244 years ago. The site’s low-key operation, coupled with its splendid, isolated setting, do much to help a visitor visualize the time when a courageous woman emerged from the House in the Horseshoe to confront hostile attackers long ago.

2025 Feature The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

Cold and Crisp and Sweet

COLD AND CRISP AND SWEET

Cold and Crisp and Sweet

Fiction by Clyde Edgerton Illustration by David Stanley

This happened a long time ago. I was seven years old.

Aunt Rosa raked off some seeds from the watermelon slice and then sliced the watermelon out of the rind and cut it up, removing some more seeds. This was back when watermelons had black seeds only. The big food companies, nowadays of course, have pretty much deleted any personality from fruits and vegetables.

I’d walked down to Aunt Rosa’s from my house because my grandma was sick in bed and I was told I needed to give her a visit and to do what Aunt Rosa told me to do.

Grandma lived with Aunt Rosa. “If she talks,” said Aunt Rosa, “she might talk a little out of her head. Sit in that green chair where she can see you with that watermelon. Just go on in there.”

I remember very little about the visit, but I do remember thinking that talking out of her head meant talking out of her nose and ears, and that scared me, as I recall.

***

My name is Flossie. I’m walking into the room where Grandma is sick and I have some watermelon in a plate and a fork and napkin. I know some things: I know Grandpa made coffins in his funeral home, and Grandma kept the books that were in a back room at his funeral home. And there was a fireplace in there, and Grandpa had some long black cars that carried dead people in the back. I could go in there until Grandpa died.

I’m in the room now. Grandpa’s first name was I.O. and that is printed on a long board in Aunt Rosa’s garage: “The I.O. Walker Funeral Home” and some other long words. They took it down and put it in there because Grandpa died, and Mr. Gibby took over.

I heard Daddy talking to Mr. Abernathy at the grocery store and they didn’t know I was listening, and Daddy said that Grandpa used to pull gold teeth out of dead people before he got caught. He said Grandpa made them into wedding rings and bracelets, and he made them into these money pieces like pennies and dimes that he said were a thousand years old and he said Grandpa put scratches in the money things and then rubbed in black ashes that had got wet and that made them look real, like they were from some country far away.

And Grandpa and some other people started a Mule Funeral Militia a long time ago, too. They buried mules just like in a funeral because people loved mules more back then. They cut the head off a mule one time and buried that because of some reason. The mule was dead, though. But Grandpa just died not long ago and there was a big funeral for him, and now Grandma is down here sick at Aunt Rosa’s house. Mama told me I had to walk down here for a visit.

I take the watermelon on into the room where she is laying in a big bed, and there is that green chair beside her bed and she is under the covers and her head turns toward me on her pillow when Aunt Rosa says, “Mama, here’s Flossie,” and Grandma stares at me kind of hard. Her face is skinny. It used to be kind of fluffy and puffy. Her eyes have got these red lines under them and her hair is in these patches kind of. She seems real little. She won’t that little before she got sick. Mama told Mrs. Tally that Grandma was “wasted away,” but she hasn’t wasted away. She’s still there — right there in the big bed.

She says, “Hey there, Barbara.”

“This is Flossie,” says Aunt Rosa and now Aunt Rosa leaves and I’m a little bit afraid.

Grandma says, “Hey there, Flossie. I’m sorry, Honey. I get everybody mixed up. You come on and sit in that green chair. You are so pretty. Are you married yet?”

“No ma’am,” I say.

“That’s okay. You’ve still got some time. Can you eat some watermelon for me? I used to grow watermelons.”

“Yes, ma’am.” And I fork me some watermelon and take a bite.

It gets quiet. She is looking at me, smiling a little bit. Mama’d told me to talk to her, so I say, “Where’d you grow them?”

“In my garden,” she says. “Me and I. 0. always had the biggest garden you ever seen, but you stand up straight and you won’t have to go far before you can get married if the right beau comes along. Could you take another big bite?” and I do and she says, “Ain’t it good?” and I say, “Yes ma’am.”

I look through the door into the middle room to see if I can see Aunt Rosa, but she’s not in there.

“Would you go ahead and eat it all?” Grandma says, and she reaches up and puts her hand behind her head so that her head tilts up a little. Her arm has saggy skin. She’s looking right at me. “It’s good, ain’t it?” she says.

“Yes ma’am,” I say.

“You’re the one likes cornbread so much, ain’t you?” she says.

“Yes ma’am.”

I keep eating the watermelon. It’s cold and crispy and sweet. I want to ask her about the gold teeth, but I don’t know if that was a sin, and I think I will not ask her, because I am a little bit afraid, but anyway I go ahead and say, “Did Grandpa pull gold teeth out of people’s mouths?” and she says, “Why, who told you that?” And I say, “Nobody,” and she says, “He’d use a set of needle nose pliers and pull ’em out and find somebody down in Baldwin to make whatever you want out of that gold. A ring, a coin. ’Course they probably ain’t still over to Baldwin — fellow named Swanson. I.O. got that fella to make some mighty fine gold coins that looked like they come right out of Mexico, right out of that city of gold that that explorer looked for. Did you learn about that in school?”

“No ma’am.”

She rubs one of her eyes, then looks at me again. “Go ahead and take another bite,” she says.

I do.

***

I was probably fourteen when we were taking a trip to Florida — me, Mama, Daddy, and my little brothers when Mama told me about that visit with Grandma and the watermelon — and the meaning behind it all, the big story behind it all: Not long after Grandpa died, Grandma got real sick, and she told Dr. Gibson that on account of Grandpa being gone she didn’t want to live anymore, but she didn’t want to take any poison, so what would happen if she just went to bed and didn’t eat anything or drink anything like she’d heard about old Miss Cain doing back a long time ago? And Dr. Gibson told her she would likely live no more than a couple of weeks. So Grandma decided not to drink or eat so that she could die, and she went to bed at Aunt Rosa’s where she was living. She lived two weeks and one day. And then Mama said, “She loved to eat watermelon, so she asked Aunt Rosa to get one of her grandchildren down there in that green chair every day to eat some watermelon in front of her, so she could watch.”

I wish I could remember more about that visit. I only remember going into her bedroom and eating some watermelon in front of her, and it seemed to make her happy.

2025 Cold and Crisp and Sweet Feature

Tag: Feature

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