USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 23
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drive or ride faster than a walk over the new double-track bridge at Asheville."
CARRIER'S BRIDGE. This was built about 1893, crossing the French Broad at the mouth of the Swannanoa river. It was afterwards sold to the county. Pearson's Bridge, near Riverside Park, was built by Hon. Richmond Pearson about this time, but afterwards taken over by the county. The Concrete bridge below the passenger depot was finished and opened in 1911.
GORMAN'S BRIDGE. This is about five miles below Ashe- ville and was erected long before the war, but was washed away. It was replaced by the present iron structure, about 1900.
THE ANDERSON ROAD. About the year 1858 a road was made from the head of Cade's Cove in Blount county, Tenn., around the Boat mountain to what is now and was probably then the Spence Cabin at Thunderhead mountain. It was finished to this point, in the expectation that a road from the mouth of Chambers creek, below Bushnel, would be built over into the Hazel creek settlement, and thence up the Foster ridge and through the Haw gap to meet it. But North Caro- lina failed to do its part, and the old Anderson road in a ruin- ous condition, but still passable for footmen and horsemen, re- mains a mute witness to somebody's bad faith in the past.
GREAT ROAD ACTIVITY. Between 1848 and 1862, while the late Col. W. H. Thomas was in the legislature, the statute books are full of charters for turnpike and plankroad com- panies all through the mountains. Many of these roads were not to be new roads but improvements on old roads which were bad; and some of the roads authorized were never built at all. The Jones gap road to Cæsar's head, the road from Bakersville to Burnsville, the road from Patterson to Valle Crucis and on to Jonesboro, the road up Cove creek by trade and Zionville to what is now Mountain City, the road over Cataloochee to Newport, the road up Ocona Lufty, the road through Soco gap, the road up Tuckaseegee river and the Nantahala, through Red Marble gap, etc., were all chartered during that time. And Col. Thomas was especially interested in the road from Old Valleytown over the Snowbird moun- tain, via Robbinsville (Junaluska's old home) down the Che- owah river to Rocky Point, where he had built a bridge across
W. N. C .- 16
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
the Little Tennessee and was confidently awaiting the ap- proach of the Blue Ridge railroad, which has not arrived yet.
OLD STAGE COACH DAYS. "From Greenville to Greenville" was the watchword when bids were made for the mail lines in those days. Each Greenville was sixty miles from Asheville. The stops between Greenville, S. C. and Asheville were, first, at C. Montgomery's, ten miles north of Greenville, then at Garmany's, twenty miles; then at Col. John Davis's, near the State line, where Col. David Vance was taken to die after his duel with Carson in 1827; then at Hendersonville; then at Shufordsville, or Arden, 12 miles, then at Asheville. Col. Ripley sold out to John T. Poole, of Greenville, S. C., about 1855, and he ran hacks till 1865 when Terrell W. Taylor bought him out and continued to run hacks till the Spartanburg & Asheville Railroad reached Tryon, about 1876.
OLD STAGE COACH CONTRACTORS. J. C. Hankins of Green- ville, Tenn., used to have the line from that point to Warm Springs, his stages starting out from Greenville nearly oppo- site the former residence of the late Andrew Johnson, once President of the United States, and whose son, Andrew John- son, Jr., married Elizabeth, the second daughter of Col. J. H. Rumbough of Hot Springs. He stopped running this line, however, when the railroad reached Wolf Creek in 1868. The late Wm. P. Blair of Asheville, who used to run the old Eagle hotel, also ran the stage line from Asheville to Greenville, Tenn., (this was at the beginning of the Civil War) until his stock and coaches were captured by Col. G. W. Kirk. In July, 1866, Col. Rumbough ran the stage line from Greenville, Tenn., to Greenville, S. C. The "stands," as the stopping places were called, were breakfast at Warm Springs, dinner at Marshall, supper at Asheville. Owing to the condition of the roads Col. Rumbough cut down the toll gate at Marshall in July, 1866, and the matter was compromised by allowing him to apply the tolls to keeping the road in condition, in- stead of letting the turnpike company do it.
KEEN COMPETITORS. Col. Rumbough ran the line about a year and a half, when Hon. A. H. Jones, congressman, got the contract, but failed to carry it out, and Col. Rumbough took it again.
THE MORGANTON LINE. The stage line from Morganton to the "head of the railroad," as the various stopping place 8
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along the line as the road progressed toward Asheville were called, was running many years before the Civil War. After that, the late E. T. Clemmons of Salem came to Asheville and operated the line from Old Fort to Asheville.
THROUGH HICKORY-NUT GAP. In 1834 Bedford Sherrill secured a four years' contract to haul the mails from Salis- bury via Lincolnton, Schenck's Cotton mills, and Ruther- fordton to Asheville. He moved shortly afterwards to Hick- ory Nut gap, for years thereafter famous as one of the old taverns of the mountains. Ben Seney of Tennessee succeeded him as mail carrier on this route, but he did not complete his contract, giving it up before the expiration of the four years. Old fashioned Albany stage coaches were used.
HACKS TO MURPHY. As the railroads approached Ashe- ville the hacks and stages were taken off. The late Pinckney Rollins ran a weekly hack line, which carried the mail, from Asheville to Murphy from about 1870, and shortly afterward changed it to a daily line. But he failed at it, and lost much money. The stopping places in 1871 were Turnpike for dinner, Waynesville for supper, where a stop was made till next day. Then to Webster for dinner and Josh Frank's, two miles east of Franklin, for supper and night. The third day took the mail through Franklin to Aquone for dinner at Stepp's, at the bridge23; and to Mrs. Walker's, at Old Val- ley Town, for supper. The next day the trip was made to Murphy for dinner, and back that night to Old Valley Town. As the railroad progressed toward Waynesville the hacks ran from the various termini to that town.
FROM SALEM TO JONESBOROUGH. As far back as 1840 stages or hacks ran from Salem via Wilkesboro, Jefferson, Creston, through Ambrose gap, Taylorsville, Tenn., to Jonesboro, Tennessee; but they were withdrawn at least ten years before the Civil War, after which Samuel Northington ran a line of hacks from Jefferson to Taylorsville, now Mountain City, Tennessee. Stages were run from Lenoir via Blowing Rock, Shulls Mills and Zionville from 1852 to 1861.
MOONLIGHT AND THE OLD STAGE HORN. In 1828, when "Billy" Vance kept the Warm Springs hotel, old fashioned stage coaches ran between Asheville and Greenville, Tenn., and Greenville, S. C.24 According to the recollection of Dr. T. A. Allen of Hendersonville, N. C., "the old stage line back
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
in 1840 was operated by the Stocktons of Maryland from Augusta, Ga., "via Greenville, S. C., Asheville, N. C., the Warm Springs and across Paint Mountain to Greenville, Tennessee. "The line from Greenville, S. C., to Greenville, Tenn., was sold to the late Valentine Ripley, who bought it and settled in Hendersonville about 1845." They ran Con- cord coaches sometimes called Albany coaches-which were swung on leather braces and carried nine passengers inside, with a boot behind for trunks, and space on top and beside the driver for several additional passengers. The driver was an autocrat, and carried a long tin horn, which he blew as stopping places were approached, to warn the inn-keepers of the number of passengers to be entertained. Nothing was lovelier on a moonlit, frosty night than these sweet notes echoing over hill and dale:
"O, hark, O, hear, how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O, sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!"
When the railroad was completed to Greenville, S. C., in 1855, Col. Ripley ran stages from Greenville, Tenn., to Green- ville, S. C., daily, though in 1853 he had been limited to the run from Greenville, S. C., to Asheville, N. C."25
JEFFERSON AND WILKESBOROUGH TURNPIKE. In 1901 the Wilkesborough and Jefferson Turnpike company was incorporated. (Private Laws, ch. 286) and the road was completed in five years. The State simply furnished the convicts and the stockholders the provisions and the expenses of the guard.
OTHER COUNTIES GET GOOD ROADS. In 1911 Hon. J. H. Dillard secured the passage by the legislature of a road law under which Murphy township is authorized to issue $150,- 000.00 of six per cent bonds for the improvement of the roads, and the four main streets of the town and roads leading into the country. Haywood had already done much for the improvement of its roads, while Watauga has undoubtedly the best roads west of the Blue Ridge, the roads to Blowing Rock, Shull's Mills, Boone, Valle Crucis and Banners Elk and Elk Cross roads being unsurpassed anywhere.
CARVER'S GAP ROAD. Chapter 63 of the Private laws
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of 1881 amended chapter 72 of Private laws of 1866-67 by allowing John L. Wilder, John E. Toppan and others to build a turnpike from Wilder's forge on Big Rock creek across Roan mountain to Carver's gap on the Tennessee State line; and to make a turnpike from Carver's gap down the valley of Little Rock creek to the ford of said creek at John G. Burli- son's dwelling house.
CONVICTS TO MAKE COUNTY ROADS. On the 6th of Feb- raury, 1893, the Buncombe county commissioners approved a bill which had been introduced in the legislature by Gen. R. B. Vance to use convicts for working county roads, which has proven beneficent, except that negroes and whites are crowded together in too small quarters. Convicts prefer work in the open air to confinement in jails and penitentiaries.
END OF TOLL GATES. On the 5th of September, 1881, the old Buncombe Turnpike company surrendered and the commissioners accepted its charter. The turnpike down the French Broad river having been turned over to the Western North Carolina railroad company for stock in that enterprise in 1869, all that was left to be surrendered was the road from the Henderson county line to Asheville, passing through Lime- stone township. Gradually each county took over the great Western Turnpike from Asheville to Murphy, thus abolishing toll gates along the road, the legislature having authorized this change. There are still toll gates on some roads, but they have been specially authorized by legislative enactment, and are comparatively few, Yonahlossee and Elk Park roads being of the number.
RIP VANWINKLE BUNCOMBE. From 1880 to 1896 Asheville had gone ahead by leaps and bounds, having in that time paved its streets, built electric railroads, hotels and private residences that are still the pride of all; but the county had stood still. Its old court house, jail and alms house were a reflection on the progress of the times. But in 1896, "Cousin Caney" Brown was elected chairman of the board of county commissioners, and graded a good road from Smith's bridge in the direction of his farm, using the county convicts for the work.26 He had a farm at the end of the road, it is true, and was criticised for building the road; but it was such a well graded thoroughfare and such an object lesson that the people not only forgave him for providing a better road to
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his home, but all commissioners who have followed him have been afraid not to contribute something to what he began.
MARK L. REED. Profiting by the example set by "Cousin Caney," M. L. Reed spent a lot of good money building other roads which were macadamized, placing good steel bridges over creeks and rivers where they had long been needed, and in replacing the disgraceful old court house by a modern structure, and providing a jail that is ample for the demands of humanity and the times. A decent home was provided for orphan children of the county. The old alms house was given up and better quarters provided for the old and infirm of the county. "Cousin Caney" had set the pace, and soon other good roads and good roads sentiment followed.
BUNCOMBE GOOD ROADS ASSOCIATION. The Good Roads Association of Asheville and Buncombe county was organized March 6, 1899, Dr. C. P. Ambler was the president and B. M. Jones secretary and treasurer. These officers have been continued in their positions ever since. Their object is the construction and improvement of roads. They have suc- ceeded in accomplishing much good-not the least of which are mile posts and sign boards. They raised $5,000.00 to improve the road from Asheville to Biltmore soon after its organization and $550 for the survey of the "crest of the Blue Ridge highway;" and constructed a horse-back trail to Mitchell's Peak. They are advocating the construction of other highways.
YONAHLOSSEE TURNPIKE. About 1890 the Linville Improve- ment company was formed, having among its stockholders Mr. S. T. Kelsey, formerly of Highlands, N. C., and before his building of that town, of Kansas. Through his instru- mentality, largely, assisted by the Messers. Ravenel and Don- ald Macrae, the latter of Wilmington, there was constructed the most picturesque and durable highway in the mountains or the State. It begins at Linville City, two miles from Monte- zuma, Avery county, and runs around the eastern base of Grandfather mountain to Blowing Rock, a distance of twenty miles. It cost about $18,000 complete. It gave an impetus to other road-builders. A road was soon thereafter built from Blowing Rock to Boone, and from Valle Crucis to Ban- ners Elk. There are no finer roads in the State, and none
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built on more difficult ground. In 1912 they were the delight of numerous automobile owners.
NOTES.
1Asheville's Centenary.
"The first brakes were made of hickory saplings whose branches were twined around the front axle and bent around the hind wheels; afterwards came "locking chains" attached to the body of wagons and then passed between the spokes of the wheels to retard the vehicle's going down steep grades. Young trees dragged on the road also served at times. 'Asheville's Centenary.
"Roosevelt (Vol. I, 225) records the fact that on his return from his first visit to Watauga, in the fall of 1770, James Robertson lost his way, and for 14 days lived on nuts and berries, and abandoned his horse among impassible precipices. If he followed up the left bank of the Watauga and did not see that the Doe came into the former stream at what is now Elizabethton, it is easy to see how he followed up the left bank of the latter and got lost amid the precipices of what is now Pardee's Point.
'Roosevelt, Vol. III, pp. 97-98.
"" Dropped Stitches in Tennessee History," p. 4.
"Letter from Col. W. L. Bryan of Boone to J. P. A., December 3, 1912.
'Asheville's Centenary. Wheeler's History of North Carolina, p. 476.
'Deed Book E., p. 121-2, Buncombe.
"Statement of Francis Marion Wells to J. P. A., July 15, 1912. Old Newport is three miles above the present town, the railroad does not pass the former at all.
11This must have been a local name for this part of the range, for the real Unaka moun- tains are southwest of Little Tennessee river.
1?This is spelled Neilson.
18Deed Book E, Buncombe, p. 122.
14Ibid., p. 123.
1$ Asheville's Centenary.
1.From Asheville's Centenary.
17See chapter on Cherokee Indians.
18Deed Book E, Reg. Deeds, Buncombe county, pp. 122-123.
"'Davenport's Diary quoted in chapter on boundaries.
"Sketch of Graham County by Rev. Joseph A. Wiggins, February 3, 1912. "Capt. James W. Terrell in The Commonwealth, Asheville, June 1, 1893. "?Condensed from Asheville's Centenary, 183 8.
"But from 1872 dinner was taken at Capt. A. R. Munday's.
"Col. J. H. Rumbough to J. P. A., November 13, 1912.
"Dr. T. A. Allen to J. P. A., November 12, 1912.
""This was T. Caney Brown.
CHAPTER XI
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
THEN AND Now. Probably there was no more difference in the manners and customs of the early days than we should now see in a community of modern people situated as were our ancesters one hundred and fifty years ago. There was a spirit of co-operation then that made conditions much easier to bear than they might otherwise have been. Those who remember the Civil War times in the South will recall that it is possible to get on without many things ordinarily consid- ered indispensible; and that when it is the "fashion" to do without, simplicity becomes quite attractive. Calico gowns and ribbonless costumes used to look well on pretty women and girls during the war, and hopinjon was far better than no hopinjon. We imagine that we are far removed from a state of nature, but when the occasion arises we readily adapt ourselves to primitive manners and customs.
THE RUSH FOR THE MOUNTAINS. Long before the treaty of 1785 white men had passed beyond the Blue Ridge to hunt and trap. Ashe was sparsely settled long before Buncombe; but as soon as the land between the Blue Ridge and the Pigeon river was open for settlement legally, white men began to settle there, too.
WHERE THEY CAME FROM. Most of these early settlers came from east of the Blue Ridge, though many came from the Watauga Settlements in what is now Tennessee. Wolf Hill, now Staunton, contributed its quota, most of them going into what are now Ashe, Alleghany and Watauga counties. The charm of hunting lured many, but most who sought the mountains doubtless came from the mountainous regions of Scotland. After the French and Indian War several families that had gone into the Piedmont region of South Carolina, came through the Saluda gap and settled in what was then Buncombe, though now called Henderson and Transylvania. The Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania late in the Eighteenth century is also credited with having sent many good citizens into the mountains of western North Carolina.
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THE PIONEER SPIRIT PERSISTS. Roosevelt was the first historian that gave to the pioneers of western North Carolina and Tennessee their rightful place in reclaiming from savage Indians the boundless resources of the Great West. Sam Houston, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone went from our sacred soil, and added Texas and Kentucky to the galaxy of our starry flag; while Joseph Lane of Oregon first saw the light of day through the chinks of a dirt-floor cabin that once stood in the very shadow of what is still called Lane's Pinnacle of the rugged Craggies-a mute, yet eloquent, monument to that spirit of liberty, enterprize and adventure that still fills our army and navy with recruits for the Sandwich and Phil- ippine Islands of the Pacific. Yet, what visitor to that match- less canon beyond Hickory Nut pass, knows that in passing through Mine Hole gap six miles east of Asheville, he was within a stone's throw of the spot where Lane's father in the dawn of the last century spent laborious days while mining for the precious ore that was to furnish horse-shoes, plough-shares and pruning-hooks for those who first tilled the savannahs of the Swannanoa and the French Broad? Did the pearls of Henry Grady's eloquence, erstwhile, drop scintilant, and thrill the nation from the Kennebeck to the Willamette, because his lightest gem was "shot through with sunshine"? Then know, O ye fools and blind, ye who never cast one longing, lingering look behind, that his grandfather was once sheriff of that Bun- combe county whose people are classed by such self-styled "national journals" as Collier's Weekly, with the scorners of all law and order, because, forsooth, of the sporadic Allen epi- sode in Virginia. Who discovered that wonderland-the matchless valley of the far-famed Yosemite? James M. Roan of Macon county, North Carolina, in March of Fifty-one.1 He, with the Argonauts of the world, won his way to the Pacific coast, and left to others to dig from the dim records of the past some frail memorial of his heroic deeds. The spirit that drove him forth has never died, and today, the mountains and hills of Idaho, Montana, Washington and Col- orado, are dotted with the homes and ranches of those whose feet first trod "where rolls the Oregon." And Onalaska's ice- ribbed hills are peopled with our kin, as will be every frontier region till Time shall be no more. Our ancestors were the Crusaders of American civilization, and "as long as the fame
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of their matchless struggle shall linger in tradition and in song should their memories be cherished by the descendants" of the peerless "Roundheads of the South." Still, the incredulous may ask "Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flat- tery soothe the dull, cold ear of death"? No; but if we will but heed while yet we may the silent voices of our worthy dead, and learn the lesson of the days now gone, we, taking hope, with Tennyson may cry :
"Forward to the starry track, Glimmering up the heights beyond me, On, and always on!"
THE FIRST INDIAN MASSACRES. Samuel Davidson was killed by Indians in 1781 or 1782 at the head of the Swan- nanoa river, near what is now Gudger's ford; and Aaron Burleson was killed on Cane creek in what is now Mitchell county about the same time, probably, though the date has been lost. He was an ancestor of Postmaster-General Burleson of President Wilson's Cabinet in 1914. Davidson had belonged to a small colony of whites which had settled around what is now known as Old Fort at the head of the Catawba river in what is now McDowell county. Among those settlers were the Alexanders, Davidsons, Smiths, Edmundsons, and Gudgers, from whom have come a long line of descendants now residing in Western North Carolina. Burleson probably belonged to the settlers around Morganton, and had ventured beyond the Blue Ridge to hunt deer. Davidson's purpose, however, had been permanent settlement, as he had built a cabin where his family was living when he was killed.2
ASHE COUNTY. Except in a few localities, there are few evidences of Indian occupation by Indians of the territory west of the Blue Ridge and North of the Catawba. At the Old Field on New River, near the mouth of Gap creek, in Ashe county, was probably once a large Indian town, arrow- heads, spear points, pieces of pottery, etc., still being found there; but this section of the mountains had not been popu- lated by the red men for thirteen years before the treaty of 1785, the Indians having leased those lands in 1772, and in 1775, conveyed them outright.3
BUFFALOES. Thwaite's "Daniel Boone" gives much infor- mation as to the buffaloes that once were in this section. "At first buffaloes were so plenty that a party of three or four men
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with dogs, could kill from ten to twenty in a day; but soon the sluggish animals receded before the advance of white men, hid- ing themselves behind the mountain wall" (pp. 17, 18). "They exhibited no fear until the wind blew from the hunters toward them, and then they would dash wildly away in large droves and disappear" (p. 90). Buffalo trails led down the French Broad; and just north of the Toe and near the Indian Grave gap the trail is still distinctly visible where it crossed the mountain. The valley of the French Broad was a well recog- nized hunting ground and probably it had contained many buffaloes; but as the Cherokees occupied most of the territory west of the Pigeon, it is more than likely that the bison family was not so numerous there; although in Graham county there are two large creeks which have been called Buffalo time out of mind. Buffalo used to herd at the head of the Yadkin river, and their trails crossed the mountains into Tennessee at several places. But this part of the mountains had been free of Indians for many years before 1750, when the whites began to settle there. Col. Byrd, in his "Writings" (p. 225), says that when near Sugar-tree creek when running the Divid- ing Line that his party met a lone buffalo two years old-a bull and already as large as an ox, which they killed. He adds that "the Men were so delighted with the new dyet, that the Gridiron and Frying Pan had no more rest all night than a Poor Husband Subject to Curtain Lectures." Roose- velt mentions that "When Mansker first went to the Bluffs (now Nashville) in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous than he had ever seen them before; the ground literally shook under the gallop of the mighty herds, they crowded in dense throngs round the licks, and the forest resounded with their grunting bellows."
ONE VIRTUE IN LEATHER BREECHES. Col. Byrd in his "Writings" (p. 212) has these observations upon the curing of skins by means of "smoak," as he invariably spells it : "For Expedition's Sake they often stretch their Skins over Smoak in order to dry them, which makes them smell so dis- agreeably that a Rat must have a good Stomach to gnaw them in that condition; nay, 'tis said, while that perfume con- tinues in a Pair of Leather Breeches, the Person who wears them will be in no danger of that Villainous insect the French call the Morpion"-whatever that may be.
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