The Last One Leaving Mayberry: Please Turn Out the Lights

In the years following the American Civil War, many Southern families, their sons and husbands having lost their lives or their health in defense of the confederate cause, also lost their farms and homes. For the entrenched Southern aristocracy, the conversion from a plantation economy based on slave labor to a similar system based on share cropping seemed a logical adaptation. So when a small farm family no longer had the manpower required to make the farm productive, it was usually soon lost to foreclosure and often was bought up by a former plantation owner. This is scenario precisely describes the experience of the family of Henry and Caron Yeatts, a young family that, following the Civil War and the death of Henry, was forced to leave their farm in the fertile Virginia Piedmont to resettle on a borrowed rocky homestead in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In spite of an incredibly difficult beginning, the Yeatts progeny has thrived, maintaining their roots in a mountain community with the name of, believe-it-or-not, Mayberry, Virginia. This book is a collection of vignettes from six generations of a family that has been sustained by hard work, strong faith, and a lively sense of humor.