Ashe County NC Archives - Appalachian History

The Lost Provinces

Ashe, Alleghany, & Watauga counties were separated from the rest of NC by the Eastern Continental Divide. They were ‘lost.’

Mrs. Mary J. Jones (b. 1910), interviewed in 1976 for the Southern Highlands Research Center, has lots to say about “no-account white trash.”

Mother’d have something special, cook up something special for Christmas, like cakes. We always had cake. For Christmas you didn’t get much.

In Ashe County in June 1918, however, a group of forty deserters decided to hide out in the hills for the duration of the war.

Blaine Shepherd, a youth of the Crumpler-Grassy Creek section of the county, was shot and accidentally killed by his father.

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