week of 2/6/02
 
 
 

A look at T.W. Reynolds
By George Ellison
As a collector of books about Western North Carolina, I am often curious about their authors. One such is Thurlow Weed Reynolds, who wrote under the name T.W. Reynolds. His books include High Lands (1964), Born of the Mountains (1964), Cherokee and Creek (1966), and The Southern Appalachian Region (Hitherto Untold Stories) 2 vols. (1966). No publisher is cited for any of these books. I own copies of all except Cherokee and Creek.

Reynolds provides a convoluted footnote in his introduction to Born of the Mountains that gives some biographical information: “The writer in his youth looked up to the hills of the Adirondacks, and thinks how chance sometimes makes for coincidence of a curious nature; for he was born in the town of Florida, New York, and summered, when grown up in Highlands, New Jersey, retired to the State of Florida, and now summers in at Highlands, North Carolina, at a place founded by S.T. Kelsey of Massachusetts. Curiously enough, one mile from the writer’s Florida home is Lake Park, founded by H.S. Kelsey, also from Massachusetts, and first called Kelsey City, just as Highlands in North Carolina was first called Kelsey’s Plateau.”

A photo caption in one of the books published in 1966 indicates that Reynolds was 81 at that point in time. A statement in High Lands seemingly indicates that he and his wife, Betty, first arrived in Highlands in the late 1950s.

That’s about all that I knew about Reynolds until I encountered the following information in Randolph P. Shaffner’s newly-published and fascinating 737-page tome entitled Heart of the Blue Ridge: Highlands, North Carolina (Highlands NC: Faraway Publishing, 2001):

“Highlands’ first historian was Thurlow Weed Reynolds, a prose writer who was actually a retired engineer from Amsterdam, New York. He attended Columbia School of Journalism and wrote for technical magazines in New York City, Europe, Canada, and across the U.S. before settling in Highlands. . . .”

“Highlands’ Lands’ gave a detailed coverage of the Highlands plateau from Sylva, N.C., through Georgia to Walhalla, S.C., where the mountain slopes finally die out. At age seventy-four, having spent seven years interviewing and traveling ‘some thousands of miles back and forth and over and over again’ along secondary roads that warn’t fitten to travel,’ Reynolds said he wrote the book because ‘the mountains always fascinated me.’

“While acknowledging that he himself wasn’t a native of Highlands . . . Reynolds defended his book as something no native before him had taken the time or shown the interest to write. And though all natives might not agree in every detail with all the stories he related, it might be that they couldn’t agree with one another either, so that what he told, as near as he could assure its accuracy, was ‘as told me,’ and that had the value of his having recorded what surely would have otherwise been lost.

“Reynolds’ subjects (in High Lands) included the Whiteside Mountain rescue, the naming of Cashiers and Horse Cove, the Hawkins family, a brief history of the founding of Highlands, the Blue Ridge Railroad and Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel, the naming of Satulah, and many more, as he laid out six detailed tours of the area within a forty-five mile radius. His other books extended the coverage extended the coverage to much of Western Carolina, as far as the mountains of Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia and into Eastern Tennessee.

“Behind all of the books lay extensive research into the etymology of place names, detailed maps of all the roads, and points of interest discussed, and Reynolds’ own talent and experience in telling a good story. His books constituted — and still do — a fascinating read.”

Shaffner’s text (pp. 570-571) also reproduces maps by Reynolds of the Highlands area as well as of Horse and Whiteside coves. I seem to recall (but am not certain) that at one time these maps could be purchased separately as visual guides to the tours described in the texts.

Reynolds is at times cranky and irritable when describing his adventures, and he wasn’t always the finest prose stylist this side of Wilma Dykeman; nevertheless, his books are, for me, the best sort of regional history. They aren’t academic treatises. He doesn’t write from a book-lined study. He writes from experience. Almost all of the events described in the books are framed by the author’s attempt to visit where they actually took place . . . or in many instances his attempts (often futile) to relocate lost sites.

I like regional history or cultural depictions that are experiential. The experiential factor is why books by writers like Kephart, Mooney, Rawlings, Dobie, Hudson, McPhee and others will always remain vibrant and have an audience. Reynolds’ books aren’t exactly in a league with those produced by the writers mentioned, but they’re well worth seeking out and perusing. They’re the sort of books that make you want to get out and explore regional sites on your own. They make you want to crank up the truck and set out on a little Sunday afternoon adventure. What could be finer than that?

Unfortunately all of Reynolds’ books are currently out of print. Most libraries here in WNC do have copies of one or more of them. If you like to actually own the books you read, go to the following Internet site and locate copies of Reynolds’ titles offered for sale by various booksellers across North America: http://www.bookfinder.com.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com