Above: Bettie Henderson Sims with her children, Mossie, Eva, Harvey, Brown, Hattie; 1904. Courtesy of Polk County, North Carolina History   by Anne Chesky Smith “I didn’t set fire to the jail,” Bettie Sims calmly told a representative from The Charlotte Observer...

By Trevor Freeman 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...

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...