Welcome to Asheville Heritage Sisters Antiques

How a Life, a Friendship, and Forty Cats Led Us to Asheville’s History
Our love for antiques and Asheville history began long before we ever realized it. It started with a woman who wasn’t born into our family, but became family in every way that mattered.
She was born in 1942, though the details of her earliest years were always hazy. Her mother never fully shared where she was born or who her father was. For decades she carried only fragments — small clues, half‑answers, and quiet mysteries. It wasn’t until 1994 that her mother finally revealed the name of her father. She found him, but heartbreakingly, he passed away shortly after.
Despite the uncertainty of her beginnings, she grew up in Asheville, raised mostly by her grandmother while her mother worked as a medical technician. Asheville was her world — its dirt roads, its early buildings, its beginnings. She was fortunate enough to travel when she was young, but Asheville was always home.
During her youth she formed a friendship that shaped the rest of her life. Her closest friend — the woman she always called her sister — was the daughter of Francis Coxe and Thomas Humphries, part of the historic Coxe family lineage that helped build Asheville. This was the same Coxe family connected to Frank Coxe, the man who built the Battery Park Hotel and supported the railroad development that transformed Asheville from a mountain town into a thriving destination.
The two girls grew up like sisters, sharing stories, memories, travels, and eventually heirlooms passed down through generations. Their friendship lasted a lifetime.
In 2020, her sister‑friend passed away after a battle with cancer. She left behind not only her memories, but more than 40 beloved cats she had rescued over the years. Elderly neighbors who had promised to help could no longer care for them. The estate attorney planned to send the cats to shelters — where, because of their age and behavioral challenges, most would have been euthanized.
We were not “cat people,” but we loved all living things. And we could not let that happen.
So my mother and I made a decision that changed our lives: We built a tiny home for the cats — a safe place where they could live out their lives with dignity and love. It was difficult, expensive, and exhausting, but we made it happen. Today, only a few remain, and they are family.
In November 2025, our dear friend — the woman whose stories shaped our understanding of Asheville — passed away. She left us her memories, her history, and the treasures she had inherited from her sister and collected throughout her life. For a long time, grief kept us from going through her belongings. Only recently have we found the courage to open the boxes, read the letters, and rediscover the pieces of Asheville’s past that she preserved.
Many of these items have been forgotten by time, overlooked as generations change. But they deserve to be remembered.
To honor her life, her friendship, and the legacy she carried, we decided to share these treasures with the public. We research the families she knew — including the Coxe family — and we continue learning about Asheville’s beginnings so we can bring these memories back to life.
This is how our dedication to Asheville history, antiques, and vintage art began: Not as a hobby, but as a promise — to preserve the stories entrusted to us, and to share them with the community she loved.