Retracing the Keowee Trail

“In Retracing the Keowee Trail, Stuart Taylor narrates a powerful and painful story about the Cherokee Nation, Scots Irish Presbyterian settlers, and the colonial history of South Carolina. Although parts of this story have been transmitted to us, we struggle to adequately understand this history because of faulty, misleading, and shallow renderings. Taylor is a skillful public historian who illumines a pathway for us to more deeply comprehend our national, regional, and religious origins throughout the pages of this important book.”


—William Yoo, associate professor of American religious and cultural history, Columbia Theological Seminary





“A veteran clergy-activist, Stuart Taylor engages personally and politically in a ‘deep mapping of the multi-layered landscape’ of Scots-Irish Presbyterians in the South and beyond. His compelling family, regional and national storytelling offers a critical alternative to memoir- and genealogical-industrial complexes that perpetuate American mythology. More than a good read, Taylor’s commitments to decolonizing discipleship and anti-racist historiography offers inspiration and models how readers might do similar work on their own landlines, bloodlines and songlines.”


--Ched Myers, co-author of Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization








“J. Stuart Taylor’s exploration of his family’s history exemplifies the curiosity and vulnerability necessary for confronting our national story in which immigrant opportunity so often relied on Native dispossession and African enslavement. His ‘deep map’ of the Keowee Trail invites readers to experience the power of place and the possibilities for telling new American and new Christian stories.”


—Jennifer Graber, professor of religious studies, University of Texas at Austin