Perry to talk about White Sulphur Springs on Sunday

Local author and historian Tom Perry will be presenting part of his Tom Talks History series on Sunday, discussing his new book, “White Sulphur Springs North Carolina: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”

“This 100 page book tells the history of the White Sulphur Springs on Riverside Drive, Highway 104, just north of Mount Airy,” he said of the new publication. Perry said there was once a nearly 200 room resort hotel along the Ararat River, where people came to drink sulphur water that smelled like rotten eggs.

“Hydrotherapy was once a big thing for our region,” he said. “The history of the place goes back to before the Civil War when J. E. B. Stuart’s mother wrote about people coming to take the waters just downstream from her home at the Laurel Hill Farm, the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace.”

The Sunday talk corresponds with the official release of the book. The Tom Talks History series “is something the Ararat Ruritan Club allows me to do at their building as a fundraiser for the Perry Family Scholarship that I started to honor my late parents,” he said. “I will give a talk about the White Sulphur Springs and have the new book and my others that will be used to raise money for the scholarship.”

While some of those initial talks were on Saturday mornings, Perry said he has moved them to Sunday afternoons “to attract people when their schedules might not be so hectic. These programs are free. It would be appreciated if those attending wish to purchase a book or donate to the scholarship,” he said.

Additional dates in the series include July 28, when Beverly Belcher Woody, who writes the Patrick Pioneers for The Enterprise, in Stuart, Virginia, will be on hand; and Sept. 29, when Perry will do a program about J. E. B. Stuart and his brothers, William Alexander Stuart and John Dabney Stuart, in the Civil War, This will be the weekend before the Oct. 5-6 Civil War Encampment at Laurel Hill.

Perry’s books are available in paperback and Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/…/Thomas-David…/author/B002F4UJGE

Autographed books are available via Square at https://laurel-hill-publishing-llc.square.site/