No one ever told me research was fun. I had to find that out on my own. During my academic years, any research I did involved hours and hours in the library reference section. (I predate computers, by the way.)
Once my writing career took off, and once I learned that research involved more than diving into written words, I latched onto a whole new aspect of research - field work...and in my latest venture, literally field work.
I snapped this picture when I hiked last week at the Moses Cone Memorial Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway, with Sara, a dear friend from Florida. Most people stop at this National Heritage Park to tour the "guilded age" mansion built at the turn of the twentieth century by this textile tsar or just to stand on its front veranda and enjoy the spectacular view of the valley below. Or maybe to sit there in a rocking chair and watch horseback riders slowly wend their way along the many trails crisscrossing before them.
Not me. I was on a mission. A research mission. I was heading to the Cone Graveyard, which, according to the sign, was a mere 0.9 mile journey. I had my walking stick. I was ready.
We went through an underpass with cars clattering on the parkway above us. We passed fields. We followed other hikers into the deep woods until we came out into the largest field of all, one with a sign pointing us to the graveyard, and pointing the others to the lookout tower another mile along the trail.
I wasn't there to pay homage to those buried souls, although I felt as if I should, and I did. I thought about the significant contributions made by those buried on that hill so long ago. I must admit, however, I thought more about my mission. I was there to take a picture of the gravemarker before me, that of Moses Herman Cone, industrialist and benefactor of numerous worthwhile causes.
That photograph will appear in the newest book I'm writing. I have seen the proof, and I wasn't quite satisfied with the current version of this picture, so I was there to see it for myself and make the picture more to what I needed.
What I needed was to showcase the granite monument, and therein lies the story I'm about to tell.
Moses Cone died in 1912, and Widow Bertha wanted to honor him with the largest granite marker she could find. The granite was shipped by train to the station here in Lenoir. This was 1914, and shipping was at the mercy of what was available at the time. Ox cart. The task of how to get this multi-ton hunk of rock up the mountain to its final resting place landed on the shoulders of the grandfather of my book's co-author. He had teams of oxen. He was a teamster, after all. He could do this. He scrounged around for more oxen and ended up with twelve teams. Compute that in your mind. Twenty-four oxen.
Imagine the issues of a line of oxen going two by two around the many hairpin curves between here and there. In the end, more than half of them were yoked to thick poles behind the wagon, pushing, with the others ahead of the wagon, pulling.
Four days it took them. Sara and I drove the same distance in twenty minutes.
One detail I've not uncovered as yet, where was the granite quarried? My co-author has spent hours and hours on dead-end phone calls to no avail, but we're still hoping. The thing about research, all it takes is that one final number to call, or that one final person to track down, or that one final website to click on, and then boom! There it is!
Just like I felt when I stood before this monument.
Catch of the day,
Gretchen
