Covering Bristol's formative years, this is the story of people and events surrounding the rise of this city between two states—the town that Joseph R. Anderson, its founder, wanted to call "Paradise." The book reveals a cross section of Bristol's ancestry, ranging from the noble and well-known to the humble and obscure. Containing a myriad of facts that will be of wide local interest, the narrative offers insight into the human condition as it existed during the last century. Enhanced with numerous old photographs, this carefully researched volume is a definitive reference on Bristol.

This second in a series of books on Bristol's history gives a vivid account of her most trying years—the Civil War period. It begins with a look at slavery as it existed in the new town in those years just prior to the beginning of the war. For a town its size, Bristol had a surprising number of slaves. Information given in the opening section of the book was largely obtained from the writings of two persons who lived in the new town at that time—thus a valuable insight into slave life is given by those who saw it firsthand. The author has endeavored to show how this great civil conflict affected the everyday lives of local citizens. An effort is made here to show that Bristolians suffered more from the atrocious acts of roving bands of bushwhackers than by the invasion of conquering Yankees.

In 1852, Joseph R. Anderson purchased 100 acres on the Virginia-Tennessee border with the intent of building a town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Four years later, Bristol was incorporated, and it celebrated its 150th birthday in 2006. Taking its name from the English city, Bristol is also known as the Twin City because of its two distinct towns with two separate governmentsone in Virginia and the other in Tennessee. Postcard History Series: Bristol portrays the city from the late 1800s through its growth during the 20th century and preserves its rich heritage in vintage postcards.

Join local author Bud Phillips as he explores the fascinating, and occasionally uproarious, lost tales of Bristol. Legend has it that in 1842 a local slave, Silas Goodson, dreamed of a large city spreading over the hills, and ten years later Bristol was founded on the border of Tennessee and Virginia. Much of Bristol's most unusual history is long forgotten, but local author Bud Phillips's collection of his Bristol Herald Courier columns brings light to the overlooked pages of the past. With stories of a jilted suitor's porcine revenge, the legendary fiddler Nora Cross and the Devil's Hideout and the search for the gold of Rosetta Bachelor, readers will delight in the history that they always wish they knew.

A lone man wanders from swamp to swamp searching for himself, a wolf-girl visits Wales and eats the sheep, a Welsh criminal marries an 'Indian Princess', Lakota men re-enact the Wounded Knee Massacre in Cardiff and, all the while, mountain women practise Appalachian hoodoo, native healing and Welsh witchcraft. These stories are a mixture of true tales, tall tales and folk tales, that tell of the lives of migrants who left Wales and settled in America, of the native and enslaved people who had long been living there, and those curious travellers who returned to find their roots in the old country. They were explorers, miners, dreamers, hobos, tourists, farmers, radicals, showmen, sailors, soldiers, witches, warriors, poets, preachers, prospectors, political dissidents, social reformers, and wayfaring strangers. The Cherokee called them: ' the Moon-Eyed People'.

“A whirlwind ride through the spooky and supernatural, including a ghostly Civil War leftover” (SWVA Today). The nighttime glow of the Cameo Theatre illuminates an apparition of the infamous madam Pocahontas Hale, and the ghost of a young Confederate soldier rises from Cedar Hill to gaze mournfully on his lost homestead—these are the haunts of the Twin Cities. Local author Bud Phillips takes readers on an eerie, and sometimes humorous, journey through the ghostly lore of Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee. From the terrifying specter of a headless hobo and the spirits of a young couple parted through violence and reunited in death to the organist who played the Sunday after her funeral, Phillips’s collection of tales raises the otherworldly residents of Bristol from the shadows. Includes photos!

Much more than a simple portrait of a pioneer family, this chronicle is actually a history of Bristol from a different perspective. It would be virtually impossible to write a complete history of this city without including a record of the pioneer King family. Likewise, it would be very difficult to write of this family and not become involved in general Bristol history.