This Pleasant Land : A Blue Ridge History

This book is being published posthumously and includes recent and earlier writings by the author, Max Thomas. He wrote this 250-year history the way he thought and talked¿like a conversation he might have had with a visitor on his back porch. Max Thomas was a fifth-generation descendant of the first settlers on the middle Blue Ridge plateau in southwestern Virginia. He was a farmer and school teacher and lived 93 years on the same piece of land there. Since he was a boy, he was told stories about his ancestors and their neighbors, men and women who came to, and lived in, a pleasant and rugged land during the 18th and 19th centuries. The rest of the history, he lived it himself¿through most of the 20th century. This is a local history written within the context of what was going on in the outside world. The book begins with the early settlers in the Blue Ridge and progresses chronologically through the years. It includes chapters on marriage and family life, early schools, the War Between the States, and Reconstruction. Later chapters focus on the 1920s and 30s, building the Blue Ridge Parkway, and on world wars. The last part of the book has chapters on specific topics, such as old-time music, the language, transportation, the economy, old-time tools, home life, women and their lives, disease, old-time medicine, and death and dying. This book portrays a way of life in a remote, Appalachian area and helps preserve that heritage.