From Holy Smoke, The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The Definitive Guide to the People, Recipes, and Lore:
“The humble creators of the Eastern tradition are known to God alone, but the pioneers of Piedmont-style have names: John Blackwelder of Salisbury; George Ridenhour, Jess Swicegood, and Sid Weaver of Lexington; and, a little later, Warner Stamey of Lexington, Shelby, and finally Greensboro. It’s said that you are what you eat, but it’s equally true that you eat what you are – and in one respect these men were all the same thing:
John Blackwelder’s family had been in Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, and Rowan counties since soon after Gottlieb Schwartzwalder came from Germany to British North America before the Revolution.
George Ridenhour’s people came to Salisbury in 1779 from Pennsylvania, where the Reitnaurs first settled after coming from German-speaking Alsace in 1719.
Jess Swicegood’s family came to America from Germany in 1724 and also passed through Pennsylvania before settling in Davidson County in 1775 and Americanizing their name from Schweissgouth.
Sid Weaver’s antecedents are a little more elusive, although many North Carolina Weavers started as Webers, and his ancestor Andrew was listed as “Andras” in the 1860 census.
The North Carolina Stameys, Warner included, are all descended from a Peter Stemme who came from Germany in 1734 and made his way down the valley of Virginia to what is now Lincoln County in 1767.
Can you spot the common element? Of course you can. When you add maternal lines, these family trees are as full of Germans as a Munich beer hall at Oktoberfest. Compare those family names to the big names in Eastern barbecue, good British ones like King, Parker, Jones, Ellis, Shirley, and Melton, no matter whether they’re affixed to white families or black ones. (Did we point out that Pi0edmont barbecue is a business conducted mostly by white folks?)”
From HOLY SMOKE: THE BIG BOOK OF NORTH CAROLINA BARBECUE by John Shelton Reed, Dale Volberg, Reed, and William McKinney. Copyright (c) 2008 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. http://www.uncpress.unc.edu
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