Robert Henry booklet

Robert Henry is a character suited for fiction than nonfiction While just a boy he fought with the Overmountain Men at Kings Mountain and battled British troops along the Catawba River As a surveyor he helped mark the boundary line between Tennessee and North Carolina He had a long career as a prominent attorney and owned the famous Sulphur Springs resort Yet while Henry is one of western North Carolina s most accomplished ancestors he is also one of the most eccentric He preferred to dress in moccasins and traveled with a walking stick nearly as tall as he Some said he had the gift of foresight and was able to predict his own death Join author Richard Russell as he navigates the unusual contradictory and fascinating life of Robert Henry Robert Henry A Western Carolina Patriot4. Robert henryf book Read this for the genealogy research I ve been doing Robert Henry was my great great great great great grandfather but he s pretty interesting even without a family connection served in the Revolutionary War as a teenager got bayoneted at Kings Mountain at the age of 13 and then was an early surveyor doctor and lawyer in Western North Carolina before opening his own resort hotel He died in the middle of the Civil War in his 90s so he certainly saw a lot of history in his lifetime I was pleasantly surprised at what a good writer Russell is His prose is immensely readable and his research is very thorough He s evenhanded and fairly presents Henry s good points and bad points and seems to capture his eccentric and at times unpleasant personality well The end sort of turns into a litany of lawsuits and family quarrels but Russell does a good job of breaking down the 19th century legalese It was a very helpful resource for genealogy I learned all about some folks I ve had trouble tracking down and found some additional resources to pursue I also discovered that Henry really disliked his one daughter s husbands Naturally I m related to both of the scoundrels It s complicated It amused me My only complaint is the index is poor I think I ve used the indexing program and it does you no good if you don t go back through and combine entries I don t think whoever did the index did that so it s easy to miss references to people and events unless you read the entire index As thorough as Russell was otherwise I wonder if the index was the publisher s handiwork and not his Robert Henry A Western Carolina Patriot