- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- May 2002
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
Our State
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tar heel towns
Union Grove
Home of the oldest continuously running, old-time
fiddler's contest in North America, this Iredell County
community proudly passes on this "Local Legacy"
to each succeeding generation of music lovers.
by Susan L. Comer
Dressed l>y his momma in knick¬
ers and a tie. Harper Van Hoy
was live years old rhe first time
he played music for a crowd. “Started
to play." Van I lov recalls, laughing,
“and the tic fell over the strings on the
banjo. It was just making a dead
sound. My uncle came out and threw
the tie over my shoulder and said,
•Take it. Harper!* And. boy. I hit it and
brought the crowd to their feet. I’ve
been a ham ever since." And it's a
good thing because today Van I loy
and his wife Wanona still carry on a
Union Grove music tradition started in
1924 by his daddv Henrv Price Van
/
Hoy. I' very Memorial Day weekend,
the Ole Time Fiddler’s and Bluegrass
Festival blankets the fields of this small
farming community in the Brushy
Mountain foothills with a tapestry of
traditional tunes. Players of all ages and
backgrounds trade licks, jam with the
masters, and pass this legacy of love on
to the next generation.
Autoharp replay
Allen Lunsford has probably never
gone a day in his life without music.
His great-uncle was celebrated minstrel
Bascont Lamar Lunsford, founder of
Asheville's Mountain Dance and Folk
N
Festival, and Ins parents, Kay and Nell
Lunsford, were lifelong troubadours
who taught each of their seven
children to play an instrument. "The
way they did it." says Lunsford, “they
just bought a banjo, a guitar, and a
fiddle and laid them on the bed and
said. ‘Keep your hands off of 'em.’
And every one of us made musicians."
From an early age, Lunsford traveled
the country, performing on stage with
his family. The Lunsford siblings con¬
tinue to play. “But it all really stems
from Mother’s love," he says. And that
love can still be felt and heard through
the strains of her old autoharp, the one
she played at the 1924 Ole Time
Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove.
Only now. Lunsford himself plays it
(list the way she taught him. “I like to
play on the short end like Momma
did." he says. “Most of your harp
players coming up today play on the
big end — cross over vour arm, you
know. But Mom played it (on the
short end), and we followed suit with
her. And I kiiula like that."
Early notes
Scotch-lrish settlers arrived in what
is now Union Grove during the 1760s
and 1770s when Iredell County was
still an untamed wilderness of virgin
land and wild game. The first post
office in the area was established in
1851 at Crater's Mill. Postmaster
Jacob Crater migrated to the area in
1845 from Guilford County.
The Craters and other families of
the era organized what is today Union
Grove United Methodist Church; its
first pastor, the Rev. Quinton Holton,
arrived in 1847. The congregation ini¬
tially met at Crater’s Mill but soon
moved to a brush arbor in a grove of
trees, which, according to A
Sesquicenlennnil History of Union
Grove United Metluntist Church by
Barbara Jones, inspired “such a feeling
of unity among the people meeting
under rhe trees that it became known
as ‘Union Grove.’ **
18 Our Stale
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