Alfred Nixon, the eldest of twelve children, was born on May 26, 1856, to Robert and Millie Womack Nixon. He was reared on his family’s farm in eastern Lincoln County, in an area known as Triangle. He was the eldest of twelve children. His father was a blacksmith, carpenter, cobbler, and a mason. From his father, Nixon learned the essential skills of a young man living on a farm in a rural area of the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. Upon the death of his father, Alfred considered his early life to be uneventful and full of continued labor, but believed his father to be the greatest man he ever knew. Alfred worked in a cotton gin during the winter months, made crops, and threshed wheat in the summer. He also built chimneys, plowed, hauled manure and compost, pealed tan bark, made agricultural implements such as wheelbarrows, killed and scalded hogs, made coffins and bee-gums. A descendant of German and Scotch-Irish immigrants, Nixon learned about his ancestors, early settlers in Lincoln County, and the value of time and place at an early age from his father, mother, and other members of his community. He learned about local history and traditions by visiting and dining with his family and adjoining property owners with whom he worked on small farms, attended church and religious camp meetings, and assisted on the construction of chimneys, wood kilns, and barns. Nixon attended baptisms in the creek at Reinhardt Furnace, discussed historical matters with local businessmen and amateur historians such as John Barnett Smith, Wallace Reinhardt, and John Franklin Reinhardt, for whom Nixon wrote memoriams upon their deaths. Each of these men were from prominent, pioneer Lincoln County families whose sons fought in the Revolutionary War battle at Ramsour’s Mill in Lincolnton on June 20, 1780, who owned large tracts of land, iron furnaces and forges, and maintained a deep conviction for the preservation and dissemination of a “heroic” past.