H. E. Taliaferro
Hardin Edwards Taliaferro, born on March 4, 1811, in Surry County, North Carolina, was a prominent figure who blended his religious vocation with a passion for storytelling. Raised on a farm as one of eight children, he later moved to Tennessee at eighteen to work in his brothers' tanning yard. Deeply influenced by his Baptist upbringing, Taliaferro became a licensed preacher by 1832. He eventually relocated to Alabama, where he garnered a reputation for his preaching while continuing his work in tanning.
His literary contributions began in the mid-1840s with sermons, but his notable work came in 1859 with the publication of "Fisher's River Scenes and Characters," written under the pseudonym "Skitt." This book captured the essence of North Carolina's hill country through humorous and sentimental tales, reflecting his own childhood experiences and regional culture. Taliaferro's work is recognized as a significant contribution to Southern frontier humor and local color literature. After dedicating much of his life to ministry and church initiatives, including efforts to train newly freed slaves for ministry, Taliaferro passed away on November 2, 1875, in Tennessee. His life's work remains a valuable cultural document encapsulating the customs and experiences of his time.
On this Page
Subject Terms
H. E. Taliaferro
Writer
- Born: March 4, 1811
- Birthplace: Surry County, North Carolina
- Died: November 2, 1875
- Place of death: Loudon, Tennessee
Biography
Hardin Edwards Taliaferro was born March 4, 1811, on a large family farm along the Little Fisher River in Surry County in northwestern North Carolina. Taliaferro (regionally pronounced Tolliver) grew up happily attending to the difficult work of a farm (he was one of eight children). At eighteen, Taliaferro relocated to Roane County, Tennessee, where he worked at the tanning yard his three older brothers ran. Taliaferro was baptized into the Baptist faith—his father had been a devout Baptist and his grandfather a Baptist preacher—and by 1832 he had earned a license to preach. To pursue the ministerial career, Taliaferro moved his family (a wife and a daughter) south near Talladega, Alabama, then a wilderness outpost. He worked rural congregations and quickly earned a reputation for gifted preaching (although he continued working as a tanner)—indeed his first publications in the mid- 1840’s were his occasional sermons.
Despite Taliaferro’s strong religious upbringing and his own commitment to his faith, his first book, The Grace of God Magnified: An Experimental Tract (c. 1845), told of his profound doubts, his early conviction of himself as a sinner, and his eventual conversion. In 1855, Taliaferro was invited to serve as co-editor of the South Western Baptist, the influential periodical that served the growing Southern Baptist community.
It was during a sentimental trip back to Surry County in 1857 that Taliaferro conceived of gathering the tales he had heard throughout his childhood from the colorful and eccentric locals who had worked his father’s farm. The collection—Fisher’s River (North Carolina) Scenes and Characters, by "Skitt," "Who Was Raised Thar"—became a landmark in the emerging school of backwoods local color humorists who used regional vernacular and loquacious yarn-spinners to capture with humor and sentimentality the feel and flavor, and customs and culture of a given region. Perhaps uneasy over such a collection of tales appearing under his name, Taliaferro published the work in 1859 under the pseudonym Skitt, a childhood nickname. The book’s twenty- three chapters offer a rich assortment of tales from the North Carolina hill country on a wide range of subjects, including hunting and courting, family life and religion, and drunkenness and feuding. Taliaferro included wildly funny tall tales as well. Unlike other local colorists who drew on regional materials secondhand, Taliaferro drew on his own memories, which makes his collection particularly valuable as a regional cultural document.
Although he planned on a second volume, Taliaferro never completed the work. He dedicated his enormous energies to his church and to his work as editor of South Western Baptist, until its publication was suspended toward the end of the Civil War. For the next decade, Taliaferro continued his church work, including helping to found a pilot program to train newly freed slaves for the ministry. In 1873, Taliaferro returned to minister in Tennessee, where he died on November 2, 1875. In the easygoing humor and rich folkloric ambience of Fisher’s River, Taliaferro transformed the engaging anecdotes of his childhood into a defining volume of Southern frontier humor.