USA > North Carolina > Watauga County > A history of Watauga County, North Carolina. With sketches of prominent families > Part 14
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signs of flowers once cultivated, gives you a strange impulse to stop here, like a bird that has found its nest, but you go on along a woodsy by-road, whose banks are covered with pale green ferns, and where the large spiræa in snowy bloom stands so close as almost to form a hedge. The velvety dark-green leaves of wild hydrangea crowd everywhere, its broad flat heads of showy buds just ready to open. Enormous wild gooseberries invite you to taste and impishly prick your tongue if you do. The blackberries make a great show, but are not yet ripe. The roadside now and then is bordered with ripe strawberries. This shady way brings you again into the 'main leadin' road' you left some distance back when you climbed the sorrel-red hill to the top of Flat Top Mountain, and which now also has its wealth of flowers, among which the pure-white tapers of the galax shine out from the woods, while here and there a service tree drops coral berries at your feet.
"Soon now you cross the deep, wide ford of Mill River on a footbridge, substantial and with handrail, and where you stop of course to look both up and down the stream overhung with foliage, and just beyond which is a pretty house with its front yard full of roses. It is only two miles from here to Boone, and you breathe a sigh of regret at being so near the end of the day's walk; yet when you find yourself in Mrs. Coffey's little inn with its bright flowers you are glad to sit down and think over the events of the day.2
"Boone is at the foot of Howard Knob; is a pretty snuggle of houses running along a single street. Boone says it is the highest county seat in the United States [she should have added : 'east of the Rockies'] and that Daniel Boone once stayed in a cabin near here, whence its name. However all that may be, the lower slopes of Howard Knob are pleasantly cultivated and valleys run up into the mountains in all directions, as though on purpose to make a charming setting for Boone the county seat.
"That first visit to Boone !- what a sense of peace one had in remembering that the nearest railroad was thirty miles away [it is now at Todd, only ten miles north]; and then-what is
2 This is the identical inn that in 1884 was to Charles Dudley Warner, Anathema and Maranatha.
10
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that ?- a telephone bell rings its insistent call and Boone is talk- ing with Blowing Rock, or Lenoir, or New York City, or Heaven knows where! For though this part of the country was last to get into railroad communication with the outer world, it was by no means the last to grasp the opportunities within reach.
"With what delicious weariness one sinks to sleep after the day's walk over the hills! Your eyes seem scarcely to have closed when a loud noise wakens you with a start-what is it? Nothing excepting that the day's work has begun, broad daylight flooding in at the window. Breakfast is ready, coffee, corn- bread, fish from some near sparkling stream, rice, hot biscuit, eggs, wild-plum sauce, honey and wild strawberries-you can take your choice or eat them all. And what a pleasant surprise to find everything seasoned with the wonderful appetite of childhood that reappears on such occasions as this !
"Your body seems borne on wings, so light it feels as you leave the inn and again take to the road. Back to Blowing Rock? No, indeed; not even though you could return, part way at least, by another road. The wanderlust is on you-the need of walking along the high valleys among the enchanted mountains. That seems the thing in life worth doing. As you leave Boone you notice a meadow white with ox-eyed daisies, and among them big red clover-heads, and, if you please, clumps of black-eyed Susans-for all the world like a summer meadow in the New England hills. Ripe strawberries hang over the edge of the road.
"From Boone to Valle Crucis you must go the longest way, for so you get the best views, the people tell you. And so you go a day's walk to Valle Crucis, where the Episcopal settlement lies in the fine green little valley.""
Old Map of the Town of Boone .- When the town was formed the county court, with Judge Dudley Farthing as its chairman, laid it off into streets and lots, the main street running east and west being called King Street, the first street to the north of it and parallel with it was named Queen Street, while the street running between the present Watauga County Bank
3 In her "Carolina Mountains" Miss Morley says that even our roosters crow with a Southern accent.
MRS. WILLIAM LEWIS BRYAN.
Who has lived in Boone since its organization, and for several years prior thereto.
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Building and the law office of E. S. Coffey, Esq., was designated as Water Street. The broad street running south from King Street and between the present residence of Mr. R. C. Rivers and Fletcher and Lovill's law offices and passing down in front of the present jail was called Burnsville Street, as it led to the Burnsville road.
First Residents of Boone and Vicinity .- The land on which Boone stands, from about the present Methodist parsonage to the forks of the road near I. W. Gross's residence, belonged originally to John and Jerry Green, two brothers. One of them lived in a large log house between the present Judge Green's residence and the storehouse just west of it, and the other in the orchard on the lot where Dr. J. W. Jones now lives. One of them sold to Jordan Councill, Jr., and the other to Ransom Hayes. Then Jordan Councill, Jr., built the present large old Councill house and the store in which Richard Green now lives. These were the first houses in Boone proper, if we except the log residence of Jordan Councill, Sr., which stood a few hundred yards east, at the Buck Horn Tree place. There was another house which stood in the orchard near the present Blackburn hotel. It was a small clapboarded house, with only one room. Ben Munday and family occupied it first and afterwards Elling- ton Cousins and family, dark of skin, lived there till Cousins built a house up the Blackburn branch in rear of the Judge Green house. It is still known as the Cousins Place. Then B. J. Crawley built the store and residence across the branch in rear of W. R. Gragg's house and above the Watauga County Bank. The next house, now occupied by R. C. Rivers and family, was first occupied by Jesse McCoin. Prior to 1857 Jesse McCoin and Robert Sumter moved away and Col. J. B. Todd rented the Rivers house from Jordan Councill, Jr., after he was elected clerk. Then Captain J. L. Phillips moved in and remained till Dr. J. G. Rivers came in 1865. Next was the James Tatum storehouse, which stood where W. L. Bryan now lives.
The First Builders .- Soon after Boone was formed Jordan Councill, Jr., built a residence on the lot now occupied by R. C. Rivers as a home. Indeed, the front rooms of that residence are
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the same that Jordan Councill, Jr., had erected there. He also built a house on the site now occupied by the new post office, just west of the middle branch. This house was afterwards moved to the rear of the residence and used as a kitchen. It still stands to the south of the wing added to the front by Mr. Rivers. Mr. Councill also built, between the dwelling and the last named house, a small room for Solomon Crisp, where the latter made boots and shoes and sold whiskey. He came from Caldwell County, and continued in business in that store from about 1850 till about 1857, when Myrick and White took it. Crisp was in the Civil War and still lives near Patterson. The residence which Jordan Councill, Jr., built was used by his tanner, Jesse McCoin, and the house he erected on the present post office site was used as a residence by Robert Sumter, another tanner. They lived there till about 1856, when they returned to the east of the Blue Ridge, from which they had come. B. J. Crawley came from Forsythe County early in the fifties, and built a storehouse and dwelling on Water Street, just across the branch from the Watauga County Bank. He soon afterwards let M. T. Cox have the buildings. Cox after leaving Boone had a store at Soda Hill also, where Joel Norris sold goods for him. Crosby returned to Forsythe before the Civil War. Cox then closed out and went into business at Rutherwood, now Virgil, with Henry Blair, under the firm name of Cox & Blair. J. C. Blair, Henry's son, was chief clerk. But the firm became involved and Cox left some of his creditors in the lurch and went to Arkansas. The Soda Hill store was sold out by the sheriff. Elisha Green, however, followed Cox to Arkansas and succeeded in collecting some money for a few of his creditors, while Henry Blair, at great sacrifice, succeeded in paying off the firm debts of Cox & Blair. Allen Myrick and Noah White, of Guilford, moved into Crisp's store about 1857, and ran till about 1862, when they married, closed up their busi- ness and moved to Texas. Both had been widowers, but Myrick married a Miss Coffin, of Guilford County, the marriage being performed at High Point, while White married Titia Moore, a daughter of Reed Moore, of Three Forks.
Then was built the James W. Council house and store, oppo-
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site the Blair hotel. Next came the house just east of the Blair hotel. It was built by Levi Hartley, of near Lenoir, for a whiskey saloon. His sons, Nathan and Samuel, conducted the business, however, Levi never having moved to Boone. His sons carried on the rum business there till just before the Civil War. Nathan Hartley married Louisa McGhee and died in the Civil War. Samuel Hartley married a daughter of a man who lost his mind trying to invent an augur which would bore a square hole. Sam died in Lenoir after the Civil War. He was a good citizen and much respected. T. J. Coffey and brother bought the property and added to it, and T. J. Coffey lived there after his marriage till he moved to the Hall house. George and Phillip Grubb then built a residence on the corner now occupied by the law offices of Lovell and Fletcher, and a blacksmith shop near the present jail. They swapped this prop- erty to John Fraser for property in Taylorsville, N. C. Frazer moved in, went to the War of 1861, returned to Boone, and afterwards moved to Caldwell County. George Grubb quit the blacksmith business and went to carpentering. His brother, Phillip, left this country about 1860 and never returned.
Saw Mills for Boone .- Jordan Councill, Jr., bought a saw mill from David Sands on the east prong of New River, two miles from George H. Blair's present home. Councill after- wards sold it to Michael Cook, the second. William Elrod built a saw mill over the north or Boone fork of New River, near where the bridge now crosses that stream on the turnpike, two miles southeast of Boone, and in front of J. Watts Farthing's present home. Thomas Blair, who lived where William Trivett now lives, near where the three forks of New River join, built a saw, grist and carding mill near where the Turnpike turns up the Middle Fork of New River. He swapped to Harrison Ed- misten for a farm on John's River soon after the Civil War. These three mills were bought or built for the sole purpose of producing lumber with which to build the new town of Boone, and must have been in operation about 1849 or 1850.
John and Ellington Cousins .- These brothers came from near East Bend, Forsythe County, soon after Boone was formed, bringing white women with them. Ellington's wife was Mar-
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garet Myers and John's was named Lottie. Ranson Hayes sold Ellington an acre of land up the Blackburn branch, where he built a house and lived in 1857, having moved from the house in the orchard below the road near the present Blackburn hotel. He had two daughters. Sarah married Joseph Gibson and moved to Mountain City, Tenn., where he carried on a tannery for Murphy Brothers, but he afterwards returned to this State and lived at or near Lenoir, finally going West, where he remains. Ellington died at Boone and his widow and daughter, nicknamed "Tommy," went with Gibson and his wife to Mountain City, where she also married. John lived near Hodges Gap and at other places, dying at the Ed. Shipley place, near Valle Crucis. He had several children.
Other Builders .- Joseph C. Councill built the brick house now used as the office of the Watauga Democrat long before the Civil War. The workmen employed in its construction were Bartlett Wood and J. C. McGee. Wood was a mason, carpenter and cabinet maker. Councill moved to Texas after the Civil War, where he married, but he returned to Boone and died there. Bartlett Wood helped build the first court house and a dwelling house which stood between the present residence of W. L. Bryan and what is now the Blair hotel, among the first houses built in Boone. Wood resided in this house till shortly before the Civil War, when he took a contract and moved to Shouns Cross Roads, Tenn., where he remained till his death.
Hotels .- Jordan Councill, Jr., and Ransom Hayes, who lived where Mrs. L. L. Green now lives, kept boarders before the Civil War and took care of such travelers and court attendants as came to Boone till about 1870, when T. J. and W. C. Coffey opened their hotel, soon followed by W. L. Bryan, who built and conducted the present Blair hotel in December, 1870. It is not generally known, but Squire James W. Councill and Elisha Green built the frame of a large hotel on the site of the Blair hotel at the beginning of the Civil War, but were not able to complete it. When Kirk's regiment came in March or April, 1865, they took the timbers and made a stockade around the court house, using also for the same purpose the timbers of the
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incomplete house built by William F. Fletcher and which then stood on the lot where M. B. Blackburn now has a bee yard. J. J. Horton built a store and dwelling where the Blackburn hotel now stands about 1880 and where he carried on merchan- dising for several years. When M. B. Blackburn was elected clerk of the Superior Court in 1894, he moved to Boone and occupied the dwelling which now stands above and to the north of the new residence of Dr. H. McD. Little, which was completed in 1913. Then M. B. Blackburn sold goods in a store near Mrs. L. L. Green's residence and bought the hotel property, having exchanged his Meat Camp farm for it. He enlarged and im- proved the original house considerably, and has conducted a mercantile establishment and hotel there ever since.
One of the first houses built in Boone was that which stands above Dr. Little's present residence. The frame of that house was cut and put together by Jacob Cook at Cook's Gap about 1850, when Sheriff Jack Horton bought it and moved it to its present location. Jack Horton married a Mast and lived on Cove Creek, where his son, James Horton, now lives, but when he was elected sheriff in 1852 he came to Boone, Michael Cook having been appointed sheriff by the court when the county was organized. Horton and Cook tied in the race before the people and the tie was cut by the casting vote of Squire James Reagan, a justice of the peace, who voted for Horton in the contest be- fore the county court. Horton then moved into the house above Dr. Little's.
The First Merchants of Boone .- Jordan Councill, Sr., lived where Jesse Robbins has recently built two cottages, and near which stood the old Buck Horn oak. Jordan Councill, Jr., son of Jordan, Sr., built and occupied the old frame residence which still stands north of the road to Jefferson. It was probably the first frame house built in the county, and was for years the finest house in this section of the State. The store house used by Jordan Councill, Jr., stood west of his residence and between the office building erected by Dr. W. R. Councill and the road. The store house was afterwards moved across the road to its present location, and is now occupied as a residence by R. M. Greene.
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What is now Boone was for years known as Councill's Store, and as early as 1835 a post office was in existence there. Sheriff Jack Horton had a store house which stood on the present court house lot, fronting what is now M. B. Blackburn's hotel. It stood on the same side of the street as the present new court house and nearly in front of where that building now stands. In this store Horton sold whiskey, goods and kept a sort of harness and saddlery shop. He also conducted a tan-yard on the lot near the branch which runs below Blackburn's present upper barn, where traces of the vats are still visible. James Todd, of Rowan County, was the saddler, and William F. Fletcher, of Lenoir, was the tanner and harnessmaker. Fletcher is said to have been related to William Lenoir and married Sarah Dula, of Yadkin Valley. He lived till ten or twelve years ago, when he died in poverty. He had neglected the hides which were being tanned in 1857, and Col. W. L. Bryan was employed to make such hides as had not been too badly damaged into shoes. These hides had been removed from the Horton vats to those of Henry Hardin, which stood where they still stand, in rear of the present residence of Joseph Hardin, one mile east of Boone and on the north side of the Jefferson road. Here these damaged hides were finished. It was soon after this that Jacob Rintels, who had been in copartnership with Samuel Witkowsky above Elkville on the Yadkin River, came to Boone and rented Sheriff Jack Horton's store room, where he remained for about one year, removing his stock of goods to the store room and resi- dence which had been built by Jordan Councill, Jr., for his son, James W. Councill, on the land now occupied by the residence of J. D. Councill, opposite the Blair hotel. James W. Councill had kept goods in this store for awhile, but closed out and rented the store room to his cousin, Joseph C. Councill, son of Benjamin Councill. Rintels got Milly Bass, a respectable white woman, to keep house there for him, and W. L. Bryan boarded there while he clerked for Rintels. He occupied this building for a year or two, when Rintels moved to Statesville. W. L. Bryan bought the debts due Rintels and then, with Moretz Wessenfeld, opened a store in the same building. But Wessenfeld soon had to go to
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the army, when W. L. Bryan bought him out and continued to sell goods there till Stoneman's raid, March 28, 1865. This building was burned late in the fall of 1878, and the present dwelling was erected by Jas. W. Councill, father of J. D. Councill, assisted by his sons, the following spring. James H. Tatum, of Iredell, came soon after Boone was established, and built a store on the lot now occupied by the residence of W. L. Bryan, part of the foundation of that store still serving as part of the foundation for the residence. Tatum ran a store there several years and then rented it to Joseph C. Councill, who sold goods there till shortly before the Civil War, when he moved his goods across the street to the store and residence built by Jordan Councill, Jr., for his son, James W. Then Allen Myrick kept store there for Shilcutt & Bell, of Randolph County. Bell came to Boone several times, but soon closed out and went to Texas. Then Gray Utley, who married Tatum's daughter, got an inter- est in the land and sold it to Col. Wm. Horton and E. S. Blair shortly after the Civil War. Blair was the brother-in-law of Wm. Horton, and sold his interest in the land to him, Col. Jonathan Horton obtaining a one-half interest therein also. Jonathan Horton and Mrs. Rebecca Horton, widow of William, sold the land to W. L. Bryan about 1889. Sheriff Jack Horton occupied this store awhile as an office, and then E. S. Blair sold goods there for Rufus L. Patterson & Co., of Patterson, for a few years after the Civil War. Then Col. William Horton and Blair sold goods there for awhile. The old storehouse was re- moved and a large new store erected in its place. It was well built and greatly admired. Colonel Bryan kept a large stock of goods there till the night of July 4, 1895, when the store and goods, with a dwelling which stood between the store and what is now the Blair hotel, and a large barn in rear, were burned by James Cornell and Marion Waycaster, who had been hired to burn this property by Lloyd, Judd, Tyce and Mack Wagner. Their object was to burn the evidence which Colonel Bryan, who was United States Commissioner, had locked in his safe against Tyce Wagner for robbing the mail. Judd, Lloyd and Mack were sentenced to the State penitentiary for ten years each,
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Waycaster got twenty years and Cornell five years, the latter having turned State's evidence. They were convicted by a jury at Boone, at the spring term, 1896, of Superior Court, presided over by Judge Geo. W. Brown (Minute Docket D, p. 102). Tyce was convicted in the United States Court of robbing the mail and sent to Sing Sing for five years. Governor Russell pardoned all who had been sent to the State penitentiary. By the first of March, 1870, W. L. Bryan had completed the store room at the west end of what is now known as the Blair Hotel, now used as the parlor, and carried on business there till Sep- tember, 1873, for M. V. Moore, of Lenoir, when he bought Moore out and continued the business there till 1889, when he moved into the new store room he had built on the site of the Tatum store.
Joseph C. Gaines, of Caldwell, built the Ransom Hayes brick house about 1851 or 1852. It was one story high, with a ground plan of forty by twenty feet, with brick partition through center. It had a chimney at each end, and both gables ran up to the rafters. Hayes' boys waited on Gaines and the latter laid all the brick in eight days. He was paid $70.00 for his work, besides board. This house stood on the north side of the road from Brushy Fork just before it reaches Boone, and its foundations are now the foundations of the two-storied brick house occupied by Mrs. L. L. Green, the Hayes house having been burned. Calvin Church, of Wilkes County, built the brick house occupied by Judge L. L. Green till his death, and since then by his widow. It is two stories high. Church lived on the Watauga River at the Franklin Baird place below Valle Crucis, and died there, and Henry Taylor was executor of his estate.
Post Bellum Boone .- Rev. J. W. Hall was a Baptist preacher and performed the marriage ceremony when Judge L. L. Green was married to Miss Martha Horton, daughter of Sheriff Jack Horton, and when J. Watts Farthing was married to Miss Rivers, daughter of Dr. J. G. Rivers, both marriages having been solemnized in the Masonic Lodge of Boone on the first day of March, 1876. Mr. Hall was also a carpenter and cabinet maker. He did the wood work on the second court house. After going
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to McDowell County, he went to Clay County and thence to Georgia, where he remained. But before leaving Boone finally he went for a time to Mountain City, Tenn., where he learned to frame dwelling and other houses by nailing the uprights to the sills, instead of mortising and tenoning them, as had been the universal practice before that time. On his return from Moun- tain City to Boone he built the dwelling now owned and occupied by W. Columbus Coffey in accordance with the new method. Squire D. B. Dougherty built a small house for the post office just east of the Critcher hotel soon after the Civil War. It was enlarged and improved and used by D. Jones Cottrell as a store room about 1909 and since. St. Luke's, the Episcopal Church, was built about 1882 or 1883. The residence now owned and occupied by J. C. Fletcher, Esq., was built by Dr. L. C. Reeves, of Alleghany County. He married Sallie Councill, daughter of J. W. and Mollie Councill. Dr. Reeves moved to Blowing Rock, where he died. J. C. Fletcher bought this prop- erty about 1896, and has occupied it ever since. He married Miss Carrie H. Bryan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Bryan, December 16, 1896. In 1913 he was appointed examiner of land titles under the Week's law for the acquisition of national forest lands. Soon after the Civil War, in which he had served, Major Harvey Bingham bought the lot of land where Brannock's resi- dence now stands, and laid the foundation for a home there, but Rev. J. W. Floyd, a retired Methodist minister, from east of the Blue Ridge, bought and finished the house and lived there several years, dying there about 1888. Then Joseph F. Spain- hour, Esq., a lawyer, now living in Morganton, bought and enlarged the house and lived there till he sold the place to the Hinckels, of Lenoir (Deed Book N, p. 63). Benjamin Bran- nock then bought the place and has lived there since.
Thomas Greer built the Beech house in rear of the residence of W. C. Coffey, between 1865 and 1868, and died there, having moved there from the head of Elk after the marriage of his daughter with T. J. Coffey. Although weatherboarded now, it is really a hewed log house, in the hewing of the logs for which Captain Cook, a son of Michael Cook, took a large part.
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