BOONE—A two-day symposium on the people and history of Flat Top Manor, part of the Moses Cone Memorial Park near Blowing Rock, will be held Sept. 28-29 in Watauga County. The programming is supported by funding from the N.C. Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The free symposium is sponsored by the Blowing Rock Historical Society, Appalachian State University and the Department of History, and the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation

Programs will be held at the Hayes Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock and the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center in Boone. For more information and registration materials, call (828) 262-2753.

“The symposium will address issues of class, gender, race and religion,” said Neva Specht, an associate professor in Appalachian’s Department of History and the liaison between the university and Blue Ridge Parkway.

“Raising awareness of the history of the estate and the people who worked there is important to area residents and those visiting the area,” she said. “The estate brought work and economic prosperity to the region. Cone’s wife, Bertha, built a school on the estate to educate the children of the tenants. Moses Cone’s heritage as the son of Jewish-German immigrants, his work to keep unions out of his mills, and his interest in agriculture provide a valuable insight into the life and activities of the working class and well-to-do North Carolinians of the late 19th and the 20th centuries.”

The symposium will include a Sept. 28 keynote lecture by former National Park Service interpreter Phil Noblitt who is the author of “Mansion in the Mountains: The Story of Moses and Bertha Cone and their Blowing Rock Manor.” Noblitt will talk about the estate and Bertha Cone’s role in running the estate following her husband’s death in 1908. The lecture will begin at 3 p.m. in the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center’s Helen Powers Grand Ballroom.

A series of panel discussion will be held Sept. 29 at the Hayes Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock. Noblitt will direct a panel discussion on life at the manor house featuring Judith Lindau McConnell and Nancy Lindau Lewis, grandnieces of the Cones who spent summers at the house. The discussion will begin at 9:30 a.m.

At 10:45 a.m., Lucas Clawson, who received a master of arts degree in history from Appalachian and now a doctoral student at the University of Delaware, and former employees of the of the estate will discuss what it was like to work at Flat Top Manor.

A discussion of the Appalachian Jewish community and the Cones will be led by Dr. Deborah Weiner, research historian and family history coordinator with the Jewish Museum of Maryland,; Dr. Patricia Beaver, professor of anthropology at Appalachian and director of the Center for Appalachian Studies; and Specht. The panel discussion begins at 11:15 a.m.

Symposium registrants will have the opportunity to tour the Cone Manor House, including areas not typically open to the public on a regular basis, on Sept. 28 from 11a.m.-2 p.m. Rangers from the National Park Service will lead the 30-minute tours, which will be limited to 15 people per tour. Information about obtaining reservations for the tours will be included in symposium registration materials.

National Park Service personnel also will lead tours of the upstairs of Cone Manor Sept. 29 on the hour from 2-4 p.m. Reservations will be required and can be made on Sept. 29 by calling (828) 295-3782 or by signing up at the Cone Manor House information desk.

Lucas Clawson will lead tours of the estate grounds and Apple Barn on the hour from 2-4 p.m. Symposium participants can sign up for a tour through their registration materials.

Cone, was known as “the Denim King” due to the popularity of the denim cloth manufactured by his mills in Greensboro and surrounding towns. He wanted Flat Top Manor to be more than a retreat from the Piedmont’s summer heat and used the estate to showcase his knowledge of scientific farming techniques. The 3,500-acre estate had extensive orchards, gardens and livestock. Designed to be self sustaining, the estate also was home to 30 tenant families who tended the orchards, gardens and livestock, and took care of the daily activities in the house.

The estate was given to the National Park Service in 1947.

###