Whisnant, David E., 1938-

David Whisnant is an author and professor in the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He gathered the material in this collection in the course of his research on James Boyd and Susan Chester.

James Boyd (1888-1944), author, was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his life in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Three of his five novels, Drums (1925), Marching On (1927), and Long Hunt (1930), are set in North Carolina. Boyd owned and edited the Southern Pines Pilot . (For further information see Dictionary of North Carolina Biography and James Boyd by David Whisnant.)

Susan Guion Chester [Mrs. A. Hunt Lyman] (1868-1917?) established one of the first southern settlement houses, the Log Cabin Settlement, near Asheville, North Carolina, in 1895. Chester married A. Hunt Lyman (d. 1902) in 1898. In 1917, Chester disappeared from a New York-bound steamer. (For more information see Whisnant's article in this collection.)