I’m ending a chapter in my writing life this week. On Christmas Eve, I received an e-mail informing me that as of December 30, 2012, Harrisburg Horizons weekly newspaper will cease publication. I have written a local history column for the paper every other week since its second issue in May of 2006. I have learned far more about the history of Cabarrus County’s Township #1 than I could have anticipated when I set out on this journey. I enjoyed doing most of the research and loved doing the writing. The little bit of income this freelancing job gave me was icing on the cake.
It is time to start a new chapter, or perhaps return to an unfinished chapter as a writer. The manuscript for The Spanish Coin, my first attempt at writing an historical novel, has been on the back burner far too long. It is time to look at it with fresh eyes and get it published. It is time to look at other avenues of writing and see where that road takes me.
As I count down to my birthday in January… one of those dreaded birthdays that ends in a “0,” it seems fitting to take stock of what I have and have not accomplished and step into the next chapter of my life with boldness and enthusiasm!
Janet's Writing Blog 
You’ve written on the early post offices of Harrisburg, NC. I found a newspaper article from the Sunday, April 28, 1895 edition of the Charlotte Observer entitled “A Walker From Walkerville” concerning a “mail carrier from the star route from Harrisburg to Clear Creek”. It spoke of him plowing and then walking from Harrisburg to Pioneer Mills, to Clear Creek and back again before dark delivering the mail. I am a descendant of Robert B “Bob” Lemmonds and his wife Margaret “Leavy” Starnes Lemmonds. They lived in Township One near her father Frederick Fincher Starnes or “Finch” or “F. F Starnes”. Bob Lemmonds died sometime in the 1890’s, but I don’t know of what circumstances or exactly when. I found papers where a Harrisburg merchant, a Mr. M. Oglesby sued his estate for a mortgage of 6 black hogs, but that FF Starnes and a judge who had previously tried the case said that the mortgage had been balanced against what Oglesby owed him for working and building buildings and selling cotton and that the settlement ended with Oglesby owing the Lemmonds estate $7. From land records, I know that the family lived near Rocky River Presbyterian and that F. F Starnes had actually sold some land to Dr. Grier and other church elders for another addition to the cemetery. And from these legal documents that Bob Lemmonds would board at Harrisburg at Oglesby for a few days and pay him $1 a day boarding for that, when he was working in that area. I believe the super-walker they were speaking of may have been Bob Lemmonds, because his family and other Lemmonds were centered more in Mint Hill and Mecklenburg, he was in this part of Cabarrus because the Starnes were. He and his children were the only Lemmonds around Pioneer Mills/Harrisburg in those days that I can find. Do you have any information on Mr. Lemmonds the mail carrier?
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