Life in the Toe River Valley
Jo Ann Thomas Croom, Author
A new history of the Toe River Valley in the early 1900s draws on the writings of two men who bore witness to great changes brought about in their quiet farming community by the railroad and large-scale mining. Jo Ann Thomas Croom grew up in Madison County and taught at Mars Hill University for many years. When she retired, she found herself with time to take up the brown-lined notebooks her father, Walter Thomas, and uncle, Monroe Thomas—both educators, historians and residents of Mitchell County—left behind. Monroe kept a farm journal that evolved into a history of the area. He also wrote poetry, and Thomas Croom, with her daughter’s help, published a collection of his poems titled Lilt in the Mountains. She then decided to compile a history using her uncle’s many journals and the records made by her father, who, upon retiring, organized the family history through story-telling.
Rather than the accounts becoming “dusty archives,” Thomas Croom wanted to share their life experiences. “As I began to appreciate the uniqueness of the materials I had inherited, I could almost feel the daily routine of the farm as well as the challenges of the time and place,” she says. “History is often written by outsiders looking in—much of this history was written by insiders living in place at the time.”
No Work in the Grave: Life in the Toe River Valley, June, 2022, memoir, paperback, $29.95, by Jo Ann Thomas Croom, and published by Dykeman Legacy Press, Asheville, NC. Order copies at WilmaDykemanLegacy.org or find at local bookstores.
