Dorothea Mauldin (Dot) Jackson
Although she was born in Florida in 1932, Dorothea Mauldin Jackson (“Dot” Jackson) had deep roots in Appalachia. Her parents, William Walter Woodin Mauldin and Doretta Eulalia Thode, were both born and reared in the Keowee River Valley of South Carolina. Her mother, a teacher and professional artist, was an offspring of the German Colonization Society that founded Walhalla.
From earliest childhood, Dot Jackson was aware that her family revered Ben Robertson, one of their cousins who became a war correspondent and worked with Edward R. Murrow. After his last furlough home, he wrote the best seller Red Hills and Cotton, a family history of life in the Carolina hills.
Jackson lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for over twenty years. She worked as a proofreader, copy editor, reporter, and columnist for the Charlotte Observer. She also wrote for the Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail. Her investigative reporting included murder trials, snake-handling churches, and environmental battles. Jackson’s work earned her two Pulitzer Prize nominations, induction in the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, and the award for National Conservation Writer of the Year. She also won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship to study the economics of southern Appalachia.
With Frye Gaillard, Dot Jackson co-authored The Catawba River (1983); and with Michael Hembree, she wrote Keowee: The Story of the Keowee River Valley in Upstate South Carolina (1995). She also provided commentary in two films by Neal Hutcheson: The Last One, about Popcorn Sutton and his last moonshine run, and The Outlaw Lewis Redmond, featuring the Upcountry’s most wanted nineteenth-century outlaw.
In late 1984, Dot Jackson moved to Pickens County, where her ancestors lived for over 200 years, to work on a project for the Anderson Independent Mail. Her stellar career in journalism was followed by the publication of Refuge: A Novel (2006). Jackson noted that after years of working for newspapers, writing fiction took a “different set of muscles.” This regional tale with a thick local accent uncovers family secrets about Mary Seneca (“Sen”) Steele, a determined and independent woman from Charleston who leaves an abusive husband and flees to the Appalachian Mountains.
In 2010, Dorothea Mauldin Jackson was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. A cofounder and on-site manager of the Birchwood Center for Arts and Folklife in Sunset, South Carolina, she died in 2016.
From earliest childhood, Dot Jackson was aware that her family revered Ben Robertson, one of their cousins who became a war correspondent and worked with Edward R. Murrow. After his last furlough home, he wrote the best seller Red Hills and Cotton, a family history of life in the Carolina hills.
Jackson lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for over twenty years. She worked as a proofreader, copy editor, reporter, and columnist for the Charlotte Observer. She also wrote for the Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail. Her investigative reporting included murder trials, snake-handling churches, and environmental battles. Jackson’s work earned her two Pulitzer Prize nominations, induction in the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, and the award for National Conservation Writer of the Year. She also won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship to study the economics of southern Appalachia.
With Frye Gaillard, Dot Jackson co-authored The Catawba River (1983); and with Michael Hembree, she wrote Keowee: The Story of the Keowee River Valley in Upstate South Carolina (1995). She also provided commentary in two films by Neal Hutcheson: The Last One, about Popcorn Sutton and his last moonshine run, and The Outlaw Lewis Redmond, featuring the Upcountry’s most wanted nineteenth-century outlaw.
In late 1984, Dot Jackson moved to Pickens County, where her ancestors lived for over 200 years, to work on a project for the Anderson Independent Mail. Her stellar career in journalism was followed by the publication of Refuge: A Novel (2006). Jackson noted that after years of working for newspapers, writing fiction took a “different set of muscles.” This regional tale with a thick local accent uncovers family secrets about Mary Seneca (“Sen”) Steele, a determined and independent woman from Charleston who leaves an abusive husband and flees to the Appalachian Mountains.
In 2010, Dorothea Mauldin Jackson was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. A cofounder and on-site manager of the Birchwood Center for Arts and Folklife in Sunset, South Carolina, she died in 2016.