History
Church of the Brethren Conference at Brummetts Creek 1913
The Church of the Brethren traces its roots back over 300 years to 1708 in Germany. The first congregation in America was at Germantown, PA, in 1723, but the denomination’s missionaries soon spread its beliefs elsewhere. The Brethren “mother church” on Lower...
March 1993 – The Storm of the Century
On March 12, 1993 snow began falling on a Friday afternoon. By Monday, March 15th, the Storm of the Century had dumped upwards of between 3 and 5 feet of snow on the region. The storm formed in the Gulf of Mexico and at its height, the storm stretched from Honduras to...
School Days on Beaver Creek
One-room schools, with many grades in that one room, were once the norm in this nation; they lingered a long while in the mountain South, which struggled economically in the decades following the Civil War. Even after the move to tax-supported high schools was made...
Mitchell County for Me
As Americans, we show our patriotism through the singing of the national anthem of the United States called the Star Spangled Banner. As North Carolinians we also want to show our state pride in the state song named The Old North State. However, most Mitchell County...
Jackson Stewart – Live Fast and Die Hard
The old saying “live fast and die hard” could be applied to Jackson Stewart, as well as to his parents and siblings. Almost all of them died in a violent or strange manner, including Jackson. His father, Isaiah, was killed by a falling limb while he was in the woods...
Loafers Glory
This central Mitchell County community was named about 1890 by Jonathon Burleson because men delighted in whitling away their time on the porch of the local general store in the evenings and on Saturdays. One day when such a crowd had gathered, Burleson lazily...
2019 MITCHELL COUNTY HISTORY BEE
The 3rdAnnual History Bee, co-sponsored by the Mitchell County Historical Society and Mitchell News-Journal, is scheduled for Thursday evening, 21 March 2019, at 6:00 PM; once again, we will convene in the Historic Courthouse in Bakersville. Fifty-Eight Mitchell...
Sheriff George K Pritchard – A Colorful Character!
Mitchell County has had 21 men serve as Sheriff. In 1861 the first was Jackson Stewart, the brother of Frankie Stewart Silver; since then many interesting stories have been told and many more are most likely out there to be collected. One of the most colorful...
Catching The Train
Catching the Clinchfield as it wound its way northbound up the mountains, or southbound to the piedmont was an easy task when passenger service was common. The railroad, which ran from coalfields of Elkhorn City, Kentucky to the textile mills of upstate South...
The Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918
A lot of older folks recall their parents and grandparents telling stories about the deadly “grip” that many Mitchell County families suffered 100 years ago. “They said that some took sick and died in two or three days. It was pretty bad.” Little did they know that...