News Release

Southern Historical Collection donor finds
truth behind 124-year-old mountain legend

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL – On a bone-chilling January night in 1881, a troubling dream disturbed Joshua Young, a justice of the peace living near the South Toe River and what is now North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Parkway.

In the dream, a young Appalachian woman with a broken neck appealed for help. Young kept trying to sleep, but the vision of murder and worse -- hidden murder -- persisted.

The next morning, he halted a passing funeral procession. When he pried open Peggy Effler’s casket, he said he was shocked to see the haunting face from his dream.

And when Young lifted her body, her head fell backward, revealing the trauma that had killed her. He then seized the woman’s husband, Stephen Effler, and sent for the coroner and sheriff. Effler was later tried, convicted and hanged for beating his wife to death.

"I had heard this story about my grandfather’s first cousin from the time I was a child growing up on a farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina," said Chapel Hill author Perry Deane Young. "Like others, I repeated the story as it had been handed down. But recently I went in search of the facts to see if it was just a tall tale."

The result is Young’s ninth nonfiction book, "Hanged by a Dream?", just issued by iUniverse Inc.

"My search led me to the trial documents and the murderer’s own chilling confession written in gory detail the day before he was hanged," he said. "To my amazement, much of the story was proved out by court documents and newspaper accounts."

An earlier book he wrote, "The Untold Story of Frankie Silver," described what happened in the same mountain valley when a woman cut her brutal husband’s head off and was hanged for it.

"I found some similarities and many telling differences in the stories," he said. "Frankie Silver was hanged because she was not allowed to take the stand and explain she killed her husband in self-defense."

Hundreds of people signed petitions to save Frankie from the gallows. Apparently nobody thought Effler innocent.

Young decided the story was worth a book, but he couldn’t interest any of the state’s regional publishers, who described it as "too regional," he said. As a result, he published the volume himself through iUniverse, considered the cheapest and most trustworthy publisher of its kind in the country.

"Having grown up on a farm near Asheville, I’ve been fascinated by the folktales and stories of my Appalachian ancestors," Young said. As a University of North Carolina freshman in 1959, he discovered the Southern Historical Collection of manuscripts in the library and began looking for the facts behind legends he had heard.

The Chapel Hill resident recently gave UNC’s Southern Historical Collection, now celebrating its 75^th year, his own collection of documents and papers supporting his nine books, two plays, one screenplay and career as a journalist in New York, Vietnam and the Middle East. He encourages others with possibly historically significant documentation -- letters, diaries, photographs, etc. -- about their families and other topics to do the same.

"Being able to share my research -- my detective work, if you will -- has been even more rewarding than the joy of collecting these stories to begin with," he said. "Also, I know the materials I gave will be protected forever. People considering donations can call curator Tim West at (919) 962-1345."

Peggy Effler’s murder took place in McDowell County, just over the Blue Ridge and the county line at Buck Creek Gap, but Joshua Young stopped the funeral procession in Yancey County en route to a cemetery in Mitchell County. The execution took place in what is now downtown Marion, the county seat of McDowell.

Copies of "Hanged by a Dream?" are available for $14.95 by contacting Young at P.O. Box 1366, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514 or www.perrydeaneyoung.com. The author will sign books and discuss his mountain stories and self-publishing at the Dead Mule Club, 303 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill Sunday, Aug. 28, from 4-6 p.m.

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Note: Young also can be reached at (919) 942-7179.

News Services contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596