[instrumental music] ♪ [audience clapping] - My name is Jonny Foster and I am the Senior Publicist, for Arcadia Publishing and the History Press, and we believe that local history matters, and local history is important 'cause almost like everything else in our country and our world, local history is the building block for national history, and it's the building block for world history too.

So it's very important that we know our local history and this group of people, they know their local history, trust me, I've worked with each and every one of them.

I will ask each author to give a brief introduction of themselves and their books relating to the history of North Carolina, 'cause who knows their works better than the authors themselves.

So Anne, - So I started writing about beer about 15 years ago, which in the scheme of things is actually a long time.

I was a newspaper reporter and my primary beat was business.

And all of these breweries, which are small businesses, started popping up and I started writing about them and then got interested in history.

I started writing a regular beer column, for Mountain Express, and someone from History Press called me 'cause they had seen a timeline of Asheville.

And they said, do you wanna write a book, about the history of beer in the Asheville area?

And I said, yes, which in hindsight was kinda crazy.

So my first book, "Asheville Beer" came out in 2012.

I wrote about 19 or 20 breweries, and six or seven Western North Carolina Counties.

Then six years later, History Press came back and they were like, wow, things have changed, a lot's going on.

Do you wanna write another book?

So we called this one, "Western North Carolina Beer."

And as you can see, it's a lot bigger than "Asheville Beer" because in this book there are 74 breweries in 18 counties.

So just in that six year period, it kind of blew up.

And, but you need both books actually, because it's kind of like a volume one and volume two, History Press doesn't really like to say that, but this has a lot more of Asheville specific history.

Whereas this one I really got to expand out throughout the Western part of the state which is a pretty big place.

It's bigger than a lot of States, just that part of the mountains.

- Good morning.

My name is Steve Compton, I've been collecting North Carolina pottery for about 30 years and altogether I've written eight North Carolina related books.

The most recent book that I've done is the one that I have with me today is "North Carolina's Moravian Potteries," which has much to say about where we are today, that we are in the midst of Wachovia, which was a 100,000 acre tract granted to the Moravian Religious Community to settle here in 1753.

And along with them came some of the most skilled immigrant artisans ever to enter the state, including tin smiths, silver smiths, cabinet makers, and fortunately potters.

And so my collecting led to the writing, and the research has taught me how to spot things, like Moravian pottery when I find it.

And so it's been a joy to have that opportunity to write the books I have about North Carolina pottery.

- I'm Steve Miller, I'm a history instructor for Randolph Community College in Asheboro and Forsyth Technical Community College here in Winston-Salem.

Back in 2013, I took my first stab at writing something for Asheboro Magazine, where I live and wrote an article called North Carolina's Year of Three Governors.

It told about the end of the civil war, it was that unusual occurrence of North Carolina, having three different governors in one year, but a friend of mine, Dr. J. Timothy Allen, contacted me later in 2014 and said you know, I read your article and you know, how would you like to help me with a book?

He said, you know, it's going to encompass the whole state.

And, you know, I would just feel better if I had some help.

So in 2016 slave escapes and the underground railroad in North Carolina was published, and that was such an education in not just writing, and research, but the whole publishing process and everything.

It led me down some rabbit holes that I didn't expect to you know, to get into.

And I came to realize that there's an entire part of the North Carolina story prior to the Confederacy and the civil war that most North Carolinians I find don't even know.

And so that led me after slave escapes into "North Carolina Unionists and the Fight Over Succession."

Of course, this was the first book I had done on my own.

So I have no one else to blame for its success or failure.

- So the title of my book is, "The changing Blue Ridge Mountains Essays on Journeys Past and Present."

This collection really spans about a decade of my life, but spans close to 250 years of Western North Carolina history.

So anyway, when I first moved to Macon County from the North Georgia Mountains, not far over to the North Carolina line I came to work in North Carolina for a land trust and we were really working kind of feverously then to get ahead of massive development in Western North Carolina Mountains.

So it was inevitable for me, I worked on a graduate degree in history for many years and did a dissertation on environmental change in the North Georgia Mountains.

So when I got into the Western North Carolina Mountains, I was not far from home and not far from the history of that particular region because they share so many similarities.

So the one person who kinda served as a talisman for me, as far as creative writing goes was an 18th century American Naturalist by the name of William Bartram.

Bartram traveled through Western North Carolina in 1775.

And reading Bartram is really the only way to kinda get a glimpse at what that region looked like because no one else traveling in to that part of Western North Carolina prior to that really wrote about anything except what there was to trade, and about what there was to acquire, and about what there was to convert.

But these essays really in this collection used Bartram sort of, I think as a central piece for most of them and a lot of the essays this book explore what I can consider to be sort of the death of this idea of wildness and what that means in society at large, but particularly as it applies to our landscape in Western North Carolina, where those demographics are shifting so much politically, socially, you know, just a lot going on.

And that's the story of this nation, I think in general in many ways, but in Western North Carolina in particular that's my focus with this collection of essays.

- So we're gonna talk about the historical fabric, of history when it comes to your books real quick.

And Brent, you talked about Bartram.

What got him interested?

- Really Bartram was trying to make a living and his father wanted him to be a businessman.

He tried in Wilmington and he failed in business in Wilmington with an uncle.

So Bartram had an super inquisitive mind, and a British patron by the name of John Fothergill, actually funded Bartram to travel throughout the Southeast.

And to really explore, you know, the Western part of the state here, particularly for plant specimens.

But Bartram was way broader minded than that.

Bartram was an astute observer of native American customs.

And so not only did he collect some of the first plant specimens under European science, he was also an incredible cultural observer.

So we have these, you really just actually Bartram was, he was a Quaker.

I think he really considered native American people.

One of the first Americans to actually do this to really consider them moral equals and write about that extensively.

The Bartram family published an incredible plant catalog every year.

And William was the one in the family he would take advantage of those plant catalogs and write broadsides on the back of them about abolition or about the inferior treatment of native American people in the country - He was an activist anyway.

He was an 18th century activist, but also a very reclusive person.

So he never really got out of Philadelphia after returning to Philadelphia, when he was in his thirties, he never lived more than a days route out of Philadelphia for 44 years but he spent three years exploring the Southern United States and going into parts of the South that people really just didn't go.

And so he really was a unique in that sense because he did give us some of those, and actual literal interpret like drawings of some of the Cherokees and some of the dwellings of the time.

We just didn't have that.

And you know, when travels came out in 1791, his publication of that journey, it was poorly received in America translated into six languages in Europe, within a decade Kublai Khan, Kola region, and Wordsworth both borrowed heavily from that book, but it was not well received in America because he was so sympathetic to other native American people at the time.

- Its incredible, you had someone who is of the mind to go back and write that history down for us to go back and learn about today.

Let me ask you, speaking of activists, in the first book that you have written with us, it was about slave escapes in North Carolina and you don't really think about that in the South don't realize there were people helping enslaved people reach freedom.

Would you consider them really activist?

And were any of those people who were helping the enslaved escape were they unionists from your second book?

- First of all, let me point out that we don't want to confuse unionists with abolitionist.

The six or seven unionists that I concentrate on in North Carolina unionist, several of them own slaves themselves.

So I don't wanna leave anybody with the impression that unionists were automatically abolitionist.

But from that first book, I learned quite a bit about the Quaker community, especially in Randolph County and Guilford County in North Carolina and along the coast, there were quite a few unorganized individuals, that were always willing to help slaves escape to Northern regions and actually on into Canada.

But the Quakers were some of the earliest examples of abolition activists in North Carolina.

Most of the slave escapes that we Tim and I researched actually occurred along the coast.

You think of the Eastern part of the state of being strongly, you know, a slave industry, but actually the further you get to the coast, there were some abolitionist activist in, oh my gosh especially the Wilmington area up into Edenton and Elizabeth city.

So it was unorganized, it was a loose confederation of people the underground railroad, as we know it, or as we imagine it really didn't hit until you got to Philadelphia, New York, Boston because then you had the organization and the structure from the manumission societies and such that were able to help the slaves get further North.

But these people were very much activist in trying to fight the institution, of slavery in North Carolina.

- Steve Compton, can you tell me a bit about even before settlers came what's the importance of pottery in pre-colonial and colonial besides, I mean we know it is decorative of course today as well but it served a very important purpose to the natives and to the Moravian settlers in this area.

Talk a little bit about the importance and the changes over time, if you will.

- Sure.

Certainly before the first European settlers arrived here the native people were making a low fired, pit fired earthenware that serves many purposes for storage, for cooking, for moving items, from place to place.

Even the enslaved people in the state made pottery from time to time.

But all of that was very low fired unglazed, but served its purpose kinda like the, today the Tupperware of the day, [participant laughs] in a way to whatever you could put in it is what you put in it and use it that way.

It was very necessary and a central for really for centuries before the Europeans first arrived here.

When the first immigrant potters arrived here with European backgrounds, they were making earthenware primarily though it looks today like some may have arrived in the state also making stoneware two very different types of pottery.

So for about a century and a half, that was what was being made after the arrival of the first settlers in the state, in the Piedmont, and then eventually in the mountains zone.

Well, what happened around the end of the 19th early 20th century is more and more people could get glass containers and metal containers and did not need the pottery they had needed in past times.

And so many of the potteries either went out of the business of making pottery or the amount diminished.

And so early in the 20th century, we began to see a transition from the stoneware and earthenware to more decorative ware.

So all the way from pre-start times with the native Americans and the African-American enslaved people, into the European settlement, we've had pottery being made in the state throughout that period.

And always for either function, or just for decorative enjoyment - Just like the pottery was important changes in the blue Ridge mountains in time in the colonial period, beer has played an important role in our national history.

- Yes.

- And in North Carolina's history.

So when did, two questions, when did beer first reach North Carolina shores?

- Okay.

- And I'm guessing maybe it's [Ann laughs] with the lost colony of Roanoke.

We don't know that for sure, but, and also how important of a role did beer play in the colonial times in maybe around the American revolution time periods?

- Well, there is, yeah, that is kind of two questions.

There's a long history of pubs and taverns being organizational meeting places.

And I actually wrote a magazine article fairly recently about Western North Carolina and all of these small breweries going into small towns many of which were formerly dry and becoming community meeting places.

And in some places, and with some people, particularly the younger generation replacing the church as the community center.

So as you can imagine [laughs] that's a fairly controversial subject, [participant laughs] but to go back to the history really of alcoholic beverages in North Carolina in revolutionary war times, the most popular beverage was actually rum.

Now what you have in North Carolina.

And really, I know more about the Western part of the state.

So the Western part of the state was not settled by white people, white Europeans until really the late 1700s, So a lot later than the rest of the state because it was very hard to get to.

But the settlers would make beer or alcoholic beverages from whatever they had to hand, persimmons, locusts pods, honey, of course, beer was a little more complex because there was not a lot of barley particularly up in the mountains.

And that's usually the primary malted grain that you use in beer.

So beer, as we know it today was very different early on, but a lot of the settlers were from beer making country countries.

- Like which countries?

- Germany, Scotland, or Ireland, you know all the people who escaped religious persecution and famine, [laughs] all our ancestors.

And they did bring both whiskey making and beer making techniques over with them.

- Well God bless them.

[laughs] [participants laughing] - Yeah, yeah.

You know, what we have now in America is very similar to what we had before prohibition and that there every small town has a small local brewery or 15 [laughs] and it was really only in a few years ago that as a nation we surpassed the number of breweries small breweries that we had before prohibition.

- When did that start, this new, which I'm a big fan of the new fascination with you know small batch breweries and things of that nature?

Well, I think there are several things, you know, eating and drinking local used to be very much very niche and now it's become mainstream and people want to know where their food is coming from.

They wanna know the people who are making their food, they want there to drink beer that their neighbors have made.

And that maybe is being sourced with local ingredients which like I said that can be complex in a place like North Carolina.

But it's happening more and more and more.

And there's also that kind of community aspect of you know, where are people gonna meet, oh were they're gonna meet at the pub and in a lot of the dry counties, which were all over North Carolina but definitely very strong prohibition, in Western North Carolina.

What, happened was that people kind of lost some of that community meeting place.

You know, some of it transferred to churches but it's definitely coming back.

And it's been an interesting thing, even in these direct formerly dry counties people have learned okay, breweries are not just places where they're gonna be a lot of drunk people.

They're gonna be, you know, they're family friendly, they're now dog friendly.

You know, it's very different from I think what the expectations where.

- Really is a meeting place.

And most of them, I meet, they have really good restaurants attached to the breweries too.

- Eating is good when you're drinking.

- All right, so now I wanna ask our authors to give you an idea of where you can go to, to experience some of this history that they've written about.

And let's go ahead and start with you again.

Where do you recommend going to not just the brewers 'cause you have a lot of breweries listed in your books, - A lot of breweries.

but the history there is there any historical places you can go to?

- Most of the breweries today, I mean the oldest North Carolina breweries opened in the nineties, but one of the fascinating things about breweries and that we're talking about revitalizing small communities is a lot of times breweries will go in and renovate an old building that otherwise might have been torn down.

A lot of former warehouse districts are now brewery districts.

For many, many years, those warehouses were just dilapidated and falling apart.

And recently some real estate investors came in and they put in like two or three breweries.

There's a distillery, there's a restaurant and it's a coffee house.

And there's a lot of history there.

- So they're basically saving history, by using these buildings readaptive usage for buildings.

- Absolutely yes.

- So where would you recommend to go to see the history of pottery?

- In general, one of the good places to begin is in Seagrove at the North Carolina Pottery Center, which is a museum and educational center.

And you could see there a full range of the types of pottery made from the beginning with the native Americans all the way up until the contemporary times.

In terms of the Moravian potteries this afternoon would be a good time to go and see nearby some excellent beautiful examples of the Moravians ware at MESDA which is the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts located in Old Salem, just South of here on the other edge of town or in Bethabara, which was the Moravians first community and where the first pottery was located today in contemporary scene, it's get out and go to where there are festivals for pottery like this festival for books and go to Kill Hole openings where the potters open up right after they've made a batch of pottery.

Usually wood-fired, archived in and see it there and can learn.

But as far as the Moravians, you can be in a better place than you are this weekend to go to one of these communities, 'cause this is where it was made.

And there are some absolutely wonderful examples in these local museums.

- Where can we visit in the state?

Is there anywhere around that with a relation to the underground railroad sites and also are there sites relate to the North Carolina unionists book that you would recommend to go to.

- All along the coast, there are some really interesting sites that have to do with a slave escapes.

The river walk area of Wilmington in particular there's a marker in Elizabeth city, that marks a spot where we know slaves congregated to try to get to the North.

Just the history of the Dismal Swamp Canal - Yeah.

- And this 22 mile long canal being all hand dug by slaves, not only that but the 14 feeder tributaries that feed into the canal were all hand dug by slaves in each one of those, or at least a mile long.

Unionist, that's a little harder to dig out Johnny because you know, we don't necessarily celebrate unionist.

Like now you hear a lot about Zebulon Vance.

- Yeah.

- He was big in the state, but you usually it isn't usually followed by well, Zebulon B. Vance was a unionist - Yeah.

- We think of him primarily as our governor during the civil war, Blandwood mansion in Greensboro is a place where you can go visit.

It was John Motley Morehead's home and he was a unionist - And Brent, where can we see in the Blue Ridge Mountains 'cause you've talked about how he's changed over time.

is there anywhere we can visit to see it, from one period to another period?

- Yes.

The place to start for the far Western part of the state would be the Cowee community its C-O-W-E-E. A lot of people know about Cullowhee where Western Carolina University is or Cullowhee where the hydrological lab is.

But Cullowhee is the biggest national historic district West of Asheville.

Its a 370 acres there, the old school there that was built by the CCC and the WPA still now serves as a heritage center for Macon County.

So there's a lot of Cherokee history there.

The Cherokees had been really active in the Valley that I live in a little Tennessee Valley, they've acquired three different mountain sites.

So the Cullowhee Mound now is in Cherokee ownership.

There's great interpretation throughout the national historic district, particularly at the Macon County heritage center.

And I would highly recommend the Cherokee Museum in Cherokee, North Carolina.

So if you haven't been to the Cherokee Museum, they've done a tremendous job with that museum.

I would say the casino has worked really well, for the tribe to actually begin really a cultural revitalization process with the funding that they're getting now through the casino.

So there's a permanent foundation set up as part of that casino revenue and that's done a lot for the tribe and historical acquisitions and historical interpretation has been part of that Anne Fitten Glenn, Steve Compton, Steve Miller, Brent Martin.

We gotta talk about relatives later.

[participant laughs] Thank you for joining us.

Thank you to Bookmarks for having us.

Thank you for UNC for being here and thank y'all for coming out today.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

[audience clapping] - Thank you guys.

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