Robert Earl Thrasher, more familiarly known as “Bo”, moved his family from West Virginia in 1914, purchased 10,000 acres of farmland in Norfolk County and established a dairy farm.
To add a little income he contracted with northern nursery companies to grow nursery stock on some of his land. When the Great Depression hit in the 1930′s the nursery companies were unable to pay and Bo found himself in the nursery business. Since farmers were generally doing poorly in the economic climate of the depression he figured he had little to lose by converting completely to nursery farming and did so, eventually becoming the largest nursery on the East Coast.
When the land became more valuable as developed property than for growing trees the Thrasher family sold the original farm and moved the nursery to Hickory.
The area is now called Greenbrier because the nursery was Greenbrier Nursery and the farm was called Greenbrier by Bo Thrasher in fond remembrance of the home they left behind in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.