midwest and not familiar with a lot of NC history beyond the Wright Brothers. Thanks for posting.

My mother's family is from Yadkin County; my mother was born and grew up just over the line in Iredell County. Deep Creek and Hunting Creek is where they all are counted in the census in 1850 and after. I have so far not been able to find anything about my great grandfather (mother's dad's family) by the first name he was born with, and which set of (family name redacted for privacy) were his parents. He was born in 1850, the year Yadkin County was formed from Surry County and would have been an infant when they were counted. And he wouldn't have been old enough to participate in the civil war, but this may have made an impression on him...
My mother's father named his first son Milton. One of his (my grandfather's) middle names was Vance. I have to wonder if this really does have something to do with it? I know that my mother and her siblings (there were 6 kids total) were raised by her parents to treat African Americans with the same respect they gave to white residents, and my mother often told us about one of her brothers getting an ass-whipping for being rude to one of their AA neighbors; plus when Milton was born, my grandmother couldn't produce milk and an African American neighbor helped them by breast-feeding him during his infancy.
I know there were Moravians and Quakers in the family line - I have a relative buried in the Moravian graveyard in Winston-Salem, and my mother always said that some of my grandmother's family were Quakers.
I would never have known or guessed that this had happened up there! This gives me some ideas for new directions to search for him, and I think I'll be going to the Yadkin County Historical Society when I can get a day off from work (I live in Alexander County).

I am so happy to know that some of my family's home area residents were not the proto-typical southerners - even if my family turns out not to have been involved in this group, I feel that this event may have made its mark on my mother's family. Especially after seeing the names...Milton is not a family name in my mother's family so it had to come from somewhere, particularly with him being the oldest son.

Thanks so much for finding this and posting it here!

BTW...my husbands mother's family is from Durham, lol! Maybe it's a sign!

I cannot wait to show this story to my sister and niece! Wow! I'm so excited!

I know from personal ancestry work that those Ah-Ha moments are so exciting and can provide context for family events/changes that otherwise don't make any sense.

Speaking of those moments, my sister called me this evening very excited. She has been on a mission for several years to find the grave of one of our g-g-grandmothers. She has been through the records of every cemetery in three counties without success and then someone recently listed the burials in a private cemetery not 8 miles from where my sister lives. She has already called the landowner (she actually knows them) and will be out there as soon as the snow melts to visit and take a picture. The thing is that the site makes no sense as my g-g-grandmother never lived in that county and as far as we know there is no family connection. Next stop is the county courthouse to research the ownership records for that farm. You find one answer and then you have several new questions and on it goes.

To be honest I am a transplant from the midwest and when I saw this on the NY Times website this am the first thing I had to do was pull up a map and find Yadkin County. I guess now I will look up Alexander County.

It is a really great story and hope that you and your family find more answers and are left with fewer questions. Good luck.

Look north of Charlotte, and find Statesville, then look west and find Hickory. Then look north and find Wilkesboro. Make a visual triangle of those 3 cities and look in the middle of the triangle. You'll see the small town of Taylorsville, which is the county seat of Alexander County. Its one of the smallest counties in NC, and we only have about 40,000 in the population. Its also one of the poorest. Oh, and that evil old battle ax Virginia Fox is our congress critter. She could be beatable, if someone had several million dollars to burn...her district covers 3 media markets...Winston, Charlotte and Asheville. Ugh!