"He Fell Off His Mule and Died" by Joel Stegall

a life well-lived

North Carolina writer Joel Stegall shares an ancestor's story he uncovered in researching his family history. This Baptist minister from the 1700s and early 1800s led a remarkably long life, spanning a century, perhaps too determined and blessed to pass away.   

As a music professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall authored more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, and other such long-forgotten documents. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he has completed a family history dating from the early Colonial Era. Delighted to discover in his bloodline ingenuity, inventiveness, devotion to duty, self-sacrifice and uncommon love, he was at the same time distressed to find insanity, murder, suicide and cattle rustling.