Arthur Talmadge Abernethy was born in Burke County on October 10, 1872. Abernethy studied and later taught at Rutherford College, which his father had founded. In addition to working as a Methodist minister and college professor, Abernethy was also a newspaper columnist for the Charlotte Observer and in the 1910s edited the Yellow Jacket, a local newspaper in Moravian Falls (Wilkes County). He died in Burke County on May 15, 1956.