Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913, Part 1

Author: Arthur, John Preston
Publication date: 1973
Publisher: Spartanburg, S.C., Reprint Co
Number of Pages: 744

USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 1

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/

US 17023.35 .--

VERS RI

TAS

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

JOHN P. ARTHUR.

1 XI W ESTERN

NORTH

AROLINA

A HISTORY (FROM 1730 TO 1913)

BY JOHN PRESTON ARTHUR

PUBLISHED BY The Edward Buncombe Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of Asheville, N. C.

RALEIGH, N. C. EDWARDS & BROUGHTON PRINTING COMPANY 1914

US 19283, 35

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY DEC 2.3 1914 CHARLES ELLIOTT PERKINS MEMORIAL COLLECTION

. :

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The references are to the names of authors or works as follows:

Allen: means "A History of Haywood County," by W. C. Allen, Waynes- ville, 1908.

Asheville's Centenary: means an article by that name which was pub- lished in the Asheville Citizen in February, 1898, by Foster A. Sondley, Esq., of the Asheville Bar.

Balsam Groves: means "The Balsam Groves of the Grandfather Moun- tain," by Shep. M. Dugger of Banner Elk, Watauga county.

Byrd: means the "Writings of Col. Wm. Byrd of Westover," 1901. Carolina Mountains, by Margaret W. Morley, 1913

Col. Rec .: means Colonial and State Records of North Carolina.

Draper: means "Kings Mountain and Its Heroes," by Dr. L. C. Draper. Dropped Stitches: means "Dropped Stitches in Tennessee History," by Hon. John Allison, Nashville, 1896.

Dugger: means "The Balsam Groves" named above.

Fifth Eth. Rep .: means the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-'84.

Foote's Sketches: means "Foote's Sketches of North Carolina."

Hart: means "Formation of the Union, " by A. B. Hart, 1901.

Heart of the Alleghanies: means a work of that name by Zeigler & Gross- cup, 1879.

Herndon: means "Abraham Lincoln," by W. H. Herndon and J. W. Weik, 1892. Vol. I.

Kerr: means W. C. Kerr's Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina, 1875.

McClure: means "The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln," by Ida M. Tarbell, 1896.

McGee: means "A History of Tennessee," by R. G. McGee, American Book Company, 1900.

Nineteenth Eth. Rep .: means the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1897.

Polk: means "North Carolina Hand-Book," by L. L. Polk, 1879, Raleigh.

Ramsey: means "Annals of Tennessee," by Dr. J. G. Ramsey.

Roosevelt: means "The Winning of the West," by Theodore Roose- velt, 1905, Current Literature Publishing Company.

Tarbell: means "Life of Abraham Lincoln," by Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, 1900.

Thwaites: means "Daniel Boone," by Reuben Gold Thwaites.

Waddell: means the "Annals of Augusta County, Va., " by Joseph A. Waddell, 1886, or the second volume, 1902.

Wheeler: means "Historical Sketches of North Carolina," by John H. Wheeler, 1851.

Woman's Edition: means the "Woman's Edition of the Asheville Citi- zen," published by the women of Asheville, November 1895.

Zeigler & Grosscup: means "The Heart of the Alleghanies," by them, 1879.

(5)

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I-Introductory

CHAPTER II-Boundaries

CHAPTER III-Colonial Days 60

CHAPTER IV-Daniel Boone

CHAPTER V-Revolutionary Days

CHAPTER VI-The State of Franklin.

113

CHAPTER VII-Grants and Litigation

131

CHAPTER VIII-County History

143

CHAPTER IX-Pioneer Preachers

215

CHAPTER X-Roads, Stage Coaches and Taverns

229

CHAPTER XI-Manners and Customs

248

CHAPTER XII-Extraordinary Events 292

CHAPTER XIII-Humorous and Romantic 327

CHAPTER XIV-Duels 356

CHAPTER XV-Bench and Bar 373 CHAPTER XVI-Notable Cases and Decisions 407

420

CHAPTER XVIII-Newspapers 449

CHAPTER XIX-Swepson and Littlefield 457

CHAPTER XX-Railroads 469

CHAPTER XXI-Notable Resorts and Improvements. 491

CHAPTER XXII-Flora and Fauna 512

CHAPTER XXIII-Physical Peculiarities 528

CHAPTER XXIV-Mineralogy and Geology 542

CHAPTER XXV-Mines and Mining 552

CHAPTER XXVI-The Cherokees

566

CHAPTER XXVII-The Civil War Period 600

CHAPTER XXVIII-Political 628

APPENDIX

652

INDEX

659

CHAPTER XVII-Schools and Colleges

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA A HISTORY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

OUR LORDLY DOMAIN. Lying between the Blue Ridge on the East and the Iron, Great Smoky and Unaka mountains on the West, is, in North Carolina, a lordly domain. It varies in width from about forty miles at the Virginia line to about seventy-five when it reaches Georgia on the Southerly side. Running Northeast and Southwest it borders the State of Tennessee on the West for about two hundred and thirty miles, following the meanderings of the mountain tops, and embraces approximately eight thousand square miles. No- where within that entire area is there a tract of level land one thousand acres in extent; for the mountains are every- where, except in places where a limpid stream has, after ages of erosion, eaten out of the hills a narrow valley. Between the Grandfather on the east and the Roan on the west, the distance in a straight line is less than twenty miles, while from Melrose mountain, just west of Tryon, to the corner of North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, is over one hundred and fifty miles.

THE APPALACHIANS. According to the Smithsonian Insti- tution, the name Alleghany is from the language of the Dela- ware Indians, and signifies a fine or navigable river.1 It is sometimes applied to the mountain ranges in the eastern part of the United States, but the Appalachians, first applied by De Soto to the whole system, is preferred by geographers. ?

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. The Blue Ridge reaches its culmination in this hoary pile, with its five-peaked crown of archæan rocks, and nearly six thousand feet of elevation. (7)

HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

Of this mountain the following lines were written in 1898:

TO THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN. &

Oldest of all terrestrial things still holding Thy wrinkled forehead high;

Whose every seam, earth's history enfolding, Grim Science doth defy-

Teach me the lesson of the world-old story, Deep in thy bosom hid; Read me thy riddles that were old and hoary Ere Sphinx and Pyramid!

Thou saw'st the birth of that abstraction Which men have christened Time;

Thou saw'st the dead world wake to life and action Far in thy early prime;

Thou caught'st the far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space first was hurled,

The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, This atom, called the World! Gray was thy head ere Steam or Sail or Traffic Had waked the soul of Gain,

Or reed or string had made the air seraphic With Music's magic strain!

Thy cheek had kindled with the crimsoned blushes Of myriad sunset dyes Ere Adam's race began, or, from the rushes, Came Moses, great and wise!

Thou saw'st the Flood, Mount Arrarat o'er-riding, That bore of old the Ark;

Thou saw'st the Star, the Eastern Magi guiding To manger, drear and dark. Seething with heat, or glacial ices rending Thy gaunt and crumbling form;

Riven by frosts and lightning-bolts-contending In tempest and in storm- Thou still protesteth 'gainst the day impending, When, striving not in vain, Science, at last, from thee thy riddles rending, Shall make all secrets plain!

THE PECULIARITIES OF THE MOUNTAINS. Until 1835 the mountains of New Hampshire had been regarded as the loftiest of the Alleghanies; but at that time the attention of John C. Calhoun had been drawn to the numerous rivers which come from all sides of the North Carolina mountains and he shrewdly reasoned that between the parallels of 35° and 36° and 30', north latitude, would be found the highest pla-

INTRODUCTORY

teau and mountains of the Atlantic coast. The Blue Ridge is a true divide, all streams flowing east and all flowing west having their sources east or west of that divide. The Linville river seems to be an exception to this rule, but its source is in Linville gap, which is the true divide, the Boone fork of the Watauga rising only a few hundred feet away flowing west to the Mississippi. There are two springs at Blowing Rock only a few feet apart, one of which flows into the Yadkin, and thence into the Atlantic, while the other goes into the New, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico; while the Saddle Moun- tain Baptist church in Alleghany county is built so exactly on the line that a drop of rain falling on one side of the roof goes into the Atlantic, while another drop, falling on the opposite side ultimately gets into the Gulf.

WHEN THE ALLEGHANIES WERE HIGHER THAN THE ALPS. What is by some called The Portal is the depression between the Grandfather on the East and the Roan mountain on the West. When it is remembered that the Gulf of Mexico once extended further north than Cairo, Illinois, and that both the Ohio and the Mississippi once emptied into that inland sea without having joined their waters, it will be easy to under- stand why these mountains must have been much higher than at present, as most of their surface soil has for untold ages been slowly carried westward to form the eastern half of the valley of the Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans. Thus, the Watauga first finds its way westward, followed in the or- der named by the Doe, the Toe, the Cane, the French Broad, the Pigeon, the Little Tennessee and last by the Hiwassee. The most northerly section of this western rampart is called the Stone mountains, and then follow the Iron, the Bald, the Great Smoky, the Unaka, and last, the Frog mountains of Georgia. The Blue Ridge, the transverse ranges and the western mountains contain over a score of peaks higher than Mount Washington, while the general level of the plateau between the Blue Ridge and the mountains which divide North Carolina from Tennessee is over two thousand feet above sea level. Where most of these streams break through the western barrier are veritable canons, sometimes so nar- row as to dispute the passage of wagon road, railroad and river. For a quarter of a mile along the Toe, at Lost Cove, the railroad is built on a concrete viaduct in the very bed of

HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

the river itself. The mountains are wooded to their crests, except where those crests are covered by grass, frequently forming velvety mountain meadows. The scenery is often grand and inspiring. It is always beautiful; and Cowper sings:

"Scenes must be beautiful that, daily seen, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years."

THE ABORIGINES. This region was, of course, inhabited from time immemorial by the Indians. The Catawbas held the country to the crest of the Blue Ridge. To the west of that line, the Cherokees, a numerous and warlike tribe, held sway to the Mississippi, though a renegade portion of that tribe, known as the Chicamaugas, occupied the country around what is now Chattanooga. " Old pottery, pipes, arrow- and spear-heads are found at numerous places throughout these mountains; and only a few years ago Mr. T. A. Low, a lawyer of Banner Elk, Avery county, "picked up quite a num- ber of arrow-heads in his garden, some of which were splen- did specimens of Mocha stone, or moss agate, evidently brought from Lake Superior regions, as no stones of the kind are found in this part of the country."' None of the towns of these Indians appear " to have been in the valleys of the Swan- nanoa and the North Carolina part of the French Broad." " Parties roamed over the country. Since many of the arrow- heads are defective or unfinished, it would seem that they were made where found, as it is unlikely that such unfinished stones would be carried about the country. The inference is that many and large parties roamed through these unsettled regions. 7 Numbers of Indian mounds, stone hatchets, etc., are found in several localities, but nothing has been found in these mounds except Indian relics of the common type. 8

ASHEVILLE ON AN OLD INDIAN BATTLE GROUND? "There is an old tradition that Asheville stands upon the site where, years before the white man came, was fought a great battle, between two tribes of aborigines, probably the Cherokees and the Catawbas, who were inveterate enemies and always at war. There is also a tradition that these lands were for a long while neutral hunting grounds of these two tribes." 9

INDIAN NAMES FOR FRENCH BROAD. According to Dr. Ram- sey this stream was called Agiqua throughout its entire length;

INTRODUCTORY

but Zeigler & Grosscup tell us that it was known as the Agiqua to the Over Mountain Cherokees [erati] only as far as the lower valley; and to the Ottari or Valley Towns Indians, as Tahkeeosteh from Asheville down; while above Asheville "it took the name of Zillicoah." But they give no authority for these statements.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME "FRENCH BROAD." Mr. Sondley 1 º states that "as the settlement from the east advanced towards the mountains, the Broad river was found and named; and when the river, whose sources were on the opposite or western side of the same mountains-which gave rise to the Broad river {on the east]-became known, that . . . its course tra- versed the lands then claimed by the French, and this new- found western stream was called the French Broad."

ORIGIN OF THE NAME "SWANNANOA." The same writer (Mr. Sondley), after considering the claims of those who think Swannanoa means "beautiful", and of those who think it is intended to imitate the wings of ravens when flying rapidly, is of opinion that the name is but a corruption of Shawno, or Shawnees, most of whom lived in Ohio territory, and he seems to think that Savannah may also be a corruption of Shawno, which tribe may have dwelt for a time on the Savannah river in remote times. He then quotes Mr. James Mooney, "that the correct name of the Swannanoa gap through the Blue Ridge, east of Asheville, is Suwali Nunnahi, or Suwali trail," that being the pass through which ran the trail from the Cher- okee to the Suwali, or Ani-Suwali, living east of the moun- tains. He next quotes Lederer (p. 57) to the effect that the Suwali were also called Sara, Sualty or Sasa, the interchange of the l and r being common in Indian dialects.

THE FIRST WHITE MEN. It is difficult to say who were the first white men who passed across the Blue Ridge. There is no doubt, however, that there are excavations at several places in these mountains which indicate that white men car- ried on mining operations in years long since passed. This is suggested by excavations and immense trees now growing from them, which when cut down show rings to the number of several hundred. It is true that these excavations may have been made by the Indians themselves, but it is also possible that they may have been made by white men who were wandering through the mountains in search of gold, sil-

HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

ver or precious stones. Roosevelt (Vol. i, 173-4) says that unnamed and unknown hunters and Indian traders had from time to time pushed their way into the wilderness and had been followed by others of whom we know little more than their names. Dr. Thomas Walker of Virginia had found and named Cumberland river, mountains and gap after the Duke of Cumberland in 1750, though he had been to the Cumber- land in 1748 (p. 175). John Sailing had been taken as a captive by the Indians through Tennessee in 1730, and in that year Adair traded with the Indians in what is now Ten- nessee. In 1756 and 1758 Forts Loudon and Chissel were built on the headwaters of the Tennessee river, and in 1761 Wallen, a hunter, hunted near by . . . In 1766 James Smith and others explored Tennessee, and a party from South Caro- lina were near the present site of Nashville in 1767.

DE SOTO. It is considered by some as most probable that De Soto, on the great expedition in which he discovered the Mississippi river, passed through Western North Carolina in 1540. 11 In the course of their journey they are said to have arrived at the head of the Broad or Pacolet river and from there to have passed "through a country covered with fields of maize of luxuriant growth," and during the next five days to have "traversed a chain of easy mountains, covered with oak or mulberry trees, with intervening valleys, rich in pas- turage and irrigated by clear and rapid streams. These mountains were twenty leagues across." They came at last to "a grand and powerful river" and "a village at the end of a long island, where pearl oysters were found." "Now, it would be impossible for an army on the Broad or Pacolet river, within one day's march of the mountains, to march westward for six days, five of which were through mountains, and reach the sources of the Tennessee or any other river, without passing through Western North Carolina." 12 But the Librarian of Congress says: "There appears to be no au- thority for the statement that this expedition [Hernando De Soto's] entered the present limits of North Carolina." 13 In the same letter he says that Don Luis de Velasco, "as vice- roy of New Spain, sent out an expedition in 1559 under com- mand of Luna y Arellano to establish a colony in Florida. One of the latter's lieutenant's appears to have led an expe- dition into northeastern Alabama in 1560." Also, that the

INTRODUCTORY

statement of Charles C. Jones, in his "Hernando De Soto" (1880), that Luna's expedition penetrated into the Valley river in Georgia and there mined for gold is questioned by Wood- bury Lowery in his "Spanish Settlements within the pres- ent limits of the United States" (New York, 1901, p. 367). 14 There are unmistakable evidences of gold-mining in Macon and Cherokee counties which, apparently, was done 300 years ago; but by whom cannot now be definitely determined. How- ever, there is no Valley river in Georgia, and the probability is that the Valley river of Cherokee county, N. C., which is very near the Georgia line, was at that time supposed to be in the latter State.

THE ROUNDHEADS OF THE SOUTH. Towards this primeval wilderness three streams of white people began to converge as early as 1730. 15 They were Irish Presbyterians, Scotch Sax- ons, Scotch Celts, French Huguenots, Milesian Irish, Ger- mans, Hollanders and even Swedes. "The western border of our country was then formed by the great barrier-chains of the Alleghanies, which ran north and south from Pennsyl- vania through Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas." Geor- gia was then too weak and small to contribute much to the backwoods stock; the frontier was still in the low country. It was difficult to cross the mountains from east to west, but easy to follow the valleys between the ranges. By 1730 emi- grants were fairly swarming across the Atlantic, most of them landing at Philadelphia, while a less number went to Charles- ton. Those who went to Philadelphia passed west to Fort Pitt or started southwestward, towards the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia. Their brethren pushed into the interior from Charleston. These streams met in the foothills on the east of the Blue Ridge and settled around Pittsburg and the headwaters of the Great Kanawha, the Holston and the Cumberland. Predominent among them were the Presby- terian Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. They were in the West what the Puritans were in the Northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were in the South. They formed the kernel of the American stock who were the pioneers in the march westward. They were the Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and despised the Catholics, and regarded the Episcopalians with a more sullen, but scarce- ly less intense, hatred. They had as little kinship with the.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

Cavalier as with the Quaker; they were separated by a wide gulf from the aristocratic planter communities that flourished in the tidewater regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. They deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own Bible, and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy. For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been fundamentally democratic. The creed of the back- woodsman who had a creed at all was Presbyterianism; for the Episcopacy of the tidewater lands obtained no foothold in the mountains, and the Methodists and Baptists had but just begun to appear in the West when the Revolution broke out. Thus they became the outposts of civilization; the van- guard of the army of fighting settlers, who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. "They have been rightly called the Roundheads of the South, the same men who, before any others, declared for American independence, as witness the Mecklenburg Declara- tion."16 "They felt that they were thus dispossessing the Canaanites, and were thus working the Lord's will in prepar- ing the land for a people which they believed was more truly His chosen people than was that nation which Joshua led across the Jordan. " 17

A NEW ENGLANDER'S ESTIMATE. In her "Carolina Moun- tains," (Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1913) Miss Margaret W. Morley, of New England, but who has resided about a dozen years in these mountains (Ch. 14) says that although North Carolina was originally settled "from almost all the nations of Europe," our mountain population, in "the course of time, became homogenious"'; that many had come to "found a fam- ily," and "formed the 'quality' of the mountains"; while others, "at different times drifted in from the eastern lowlands as well as down from the North." Indeed, the early records of Ashe county, show many a name which has since become famous in New York, Ohio and New England-such as Day, Choate, Dana, Cornell, Storie and Vanderpool. Continuing, Miss Morley says (p. 140) : "Most of the writers tell us rather loosely that the Southern mountains were originally peopled with refuges of one sort and another, among whom were criminals exported to the New World from England, which, they might as well add, was the case with the whole of the newly discovered continent, America being then the

INTRODUCTORY

open door of refuge for the world's oppressed . . but we can find no evidence that these malefactors, many of them 'indentured servants', sent over for the use of the colo- nists, made a practice of coming to the mountains when their term of servitude expired. The truth is, the same people who occupied Virginia and the eastern part of the Carolinas, peopled the western mountains, English predomi- nating, and in course of time there drifted down from Vir- ginia large numbers of Scotch-Irish, who, after the events of 1730, fled in such numbers to the New World, and good Scotch Highlanders, who came after 1745. In fact, so many of these staunch Northerners came to the North Carolina mountains that they have given the dominant note to the character of the mountaineers, remembering which may help the puzzled stranger to understand the peculiarities of the people he finds here today. . . The rapid growth of slavery, no doubt, discouraged many, who, unable to suc- ceed in the Slave States, were crowded to the mountains, or else became the "Poor White" of the South, who must not be for a moment confounded with the "Mountain White," the latter having brought some of the best blood of his na- tion to these blue heights. He brought into the mountains and there nourished, the stern virtues of his race, including the strictest honesty, an old-fashioned self-respect, and an old-fashioned speech, all of which he yet retains, as well as a certain pride, which causes him to flare up instantly at any suspicion of being treated with condescension. . . " She

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913, Part 1

Author: Arthur, John Preston Publication date: 1973 Publisher: Spartanburg, S.C., Reprint Co Number of Pages: 744

Author: Arthur, John Preston
Publication date: 1973
Publisher: Spartanburg, S.C., Reprint Co
Number of Pages: 744