On Friday, Oct. 28, 1904, an Englishman “of refinement and culture” died in a boarding house on Montford Avenue in Asheville. His death certificate, noting a death date of Nov. 10, 1902, was not completed until May 18, 1910. The local health official noted in 1910...

The Glades as it appeared c1950 after many additions. The section on the left is the original home.   “Disguised as an old woman, and riding horseback, she went from her home … near the Catawba River (in North Carolina) to the Fort at Ninety-Six, South Carolina....

“I don’t know whether my brother Tom will get here tomorrow for my body or not. Tonight’s his night off,” 22-year-old Martin Moore, a tall and lanky Black man, mumbled to the cadre of reporters stationed outside the bars of his cell in Raleigh’s Central Prison. It was...

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in February 1942, and the resulting interment of predominantly Japanese American citizens or residents from the West Coast into camps scattered across the California...

“I didn’t set fire to the jail,” Bettie Sims calmly told a representative from The Charlotte Observer on Dec. 11, 1906. The reporter had tracked down the 29-year-old Polk County native the day before she was to appear on bond in front of a federal judge on charges of,...

The mountains of Western North Carolina occasionally experience earthquakes and seismic activity. These instances often pass without much notice or damage. In 1874, however, the mountains at the eastern edge of the Hickory Nut Gorge — along the northern arm of modern...

On Tuesday evening, Sept. 14, 1819, Bob, a 14-year-old “familiar artful fellow … (with) a good countenance” liberated himself from his captor, James Smith, in Asheville. He traveled north along the Buncombe Turnpike toward Paint Mountain and into Tennessee. Bob took...

“A female convict on the (Western North Carolina Railroad), emptied a phial of sulphuric acid into the coffee of Mr. Griffin, the newly appointed Steward, but he did not like the taste, so the poison did no damage,” reads a blurb in the Sunday, April 15, 1877, edition...