USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 47
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
THE LINDSAY PATTERSON FARMS. This gentleman, with his Revolutionary War ancestry, and his estimable wife, not content with trying to preserve the history of this section, has purchased two fine farms in Watauga, one on Meat Camp creek, five miles north of Boone, containing 350 acres, and the other, eight miles further north, containing 2,000 acres, and lying in Watauga and Ashe counties. This latter is called the Bald Mountain farm, because the mountain on which it lies is largely bare of forests. Grain, hay, potatoes, and vege- tables are produced in abundance on the Meat Camp farm; while horses, mules, cattle, ponies, sheep, hogs, turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens, flourish and grow fat on the other.
ASHEVILLE SULPHUR SPRINGS. On the last day of February, 1827, Robert Henry and his slave Sam discovered this spring, five miles west of Asheville, and about the year 1830 his son- in-law, Col. Reuben Deaver, built a wooden hotel on the hill above and began taking summer boarders. Such was the patronage that an addition had to be made to the hotel every year. As many as five hundred are said to have been there at one time, and the neighborhood was ransacked for beds, bedding, chairs, and provisions. Most of the visitors came from South Carolina, among whom were the Pinckneys, Elmores, Butlers, Pickenses, Prestons, Alstons, Kerrisons, and others. Mr. John Keitt was the first person buried on Sul- phur Springs hill, August 27, 1836. 19 The fact that the Pinck- neys were almost constant visitors accounts for the prevalence of the given name Pink in the neighborhood of Asheville. The Alstons reserved the corner rooms on the second floor from May till frost every season. Besides the hotel, an L-shaped building, there were cabins on the grounds. There were bowling alleys, billiard tables, shuffle-boards and other games. A large ball-room and a string band, composed of free negroes from Charleston and Columbia, provided the music for dancing. One of these negroes was named Randall, who had been presented with a purse of $5,000 by the white people of South Carolina for having given information about a con- templated negro insurrection at Charleston; 20 and another of these musicians was named Lapitude, who owned a plan- tation near Charleston and forty slaves. He was a man of some education, and the manner of a Chesterfield. 21 From its opening till 1860 there were more summer visitors at
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Deaver's Springs than in Asheville. Col. James M. Ray gives us this picture of Asheville sixty years ago: "Well, what of Asheville in these long past years? It was about like Leicester or Marshall-a very small village on the ‘turn- pike,' midway between the two Greenvilles. The two 'ho- tels', Eagle and Buck, even many years later, not doing near the business of many of the country inns or stock stands on the Warm Springs road. For anyone to stop at either of these two hotels longer than for dinner or for the night was not thought of; though a few summer visitors would sometimes make a short stop in passing through to Deaver's Springs or . to Warm Springs, Wade Hampton and others with fast teams driving from Asheville to Warm Springs for dinner." ?? The old hotel was burned in December, 1862, was rebuilt by E. G. Carrier-of brick this time-in 1887, and known, first as Carrier's Springs and then as The Belmont. It was again burned in September, 1891, while under the management of Dr. Carl Von Ruck. From 1889 till 1894 an electric railway ran from Asheville to the spring, but it was abandoned.
CLOUDLAND HOTEL. In 1878 Gen. J. H. Wilder of Knox- ville built a hotel on the top of the Roan mountain and opened it for guests, having previously constructed a wagon road from Roan Mountain Station on what is now the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad. Later he built a much larger hotel, which met a public want admir- ably, as it afforded sufferers from hay-fever immediate relief. It is built across the State line between Tennessee and North Carolina, and guests frequently sleep with one part of their bodies in one state and the rest in the other. It was very popular till a few years ago, when it was closed, but will soon be reopened.
EAGLE'S NEST, near Waynesville, has divided this patron- age with the Cloudland since 1900. In the year 1900 Mr. S. C. Satterthwait of Waynesville built a hotel on top of one of the highest of the Balsams, calling the range the Junaluskas. It is five miles from Waynesville and is reached by a good wagon road. It is 5,050 feet above sea-level, and is one of the hay-fever resorts in this section, Cloudland hotel on the Roan, 6,000 feet, being the only other. Tents supplement the rooming accommodations when desired. Accommodations for about 100 guests. The magnificent Plott Balsam mountain is in full view.
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BALSAM INN. Soon after the completion of the railroad to Balsam gap, seven miles west of Waynesville, Christie Broth- ers of Athens, Ga., opened a railroad eating house at that point, and furnished venison, wild turkey and mountain trout and the best cuisine in the State. They had only rough and small houses, and did not seek any patronage except from railroad passengers. But about 1905 a large and commodi- ous hotel was erected there, with accommodations for many guests. Baths, acetylene lights, music and other attractions keep the hotel filled during the summer season.
OUR FIRST LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. Our first settlers sought house sites near springs, caring little for views or being. viewed. Knolls and commanding eminences were too far from water, as a rule, and required a climb up-hill to reach. In 1821 the late Dr. J. F. E. Hardy came to Asheville from Newberry District, S. C., where he had been born in 1802. His first residence was on the southwest corner of Eagle and South Main streets, at one time the finest residence in Ashe- ville, where he resided for fifteen years after his marriage to Miss Jane Patton in 1824. In 1840 he married Miss Erwin of Morganton, and soon afterwards moved to Swannanoa Hill at the corner of Biltmore road or South Main street and the Swannanoa river. This is on a hill, and the roads and approaches, lined with white pines, cedars and other trees and shrubbery, still make this one of the prettiest places in this section. But when he first improved it, it was far in advance of anything theretofore seen in these parts. It commands a fine view. Here he lived till 1860, when he bought Belle- view on the eastern side of South Main street, another com- manding hill with a splendid view. The winding roadway, bordered by pines and cedars, which led from the road to the house, is still intact except at the lower end, where the former road, now street, has been dug down far below its former level, leaving the entrance to the approach road high in the air. Mrs. Bucannon now owns this property. Soon after the Civil War Dr. Hardy built the brick house on the west side of the Hendersonville road beyond Biltmore, which com- manded another fine view. Here he died at the age of eighty. He was one of the most eminent physicians of his day. He was of commanding presence, with the manner of a lord. At his home was dispensed much of the hospitality for which
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this section was noted, distinguished strangers finding there entertainment and intelligence at least equal to that of larger places. His son, Dr. J. Geddings Hardy, succeeded to his practice, and no call ever went unanswered by him.
BILTMORE. Soon after the opening of the Battery Park Hotel Mr. George W. Vanderbilt of New York visited Ashe- ville and was at once struck with its possibilities. He tried at first to secure Fernihurst, owned by Mrs. J. K. Connally, but failing, turned his attention to the land south of the Swannanoa and east of the French Broad. Charles McNamee, Esq., a lawyer of New York, and a kinsman, first took options and deeds in his own name; but it soon became noised about that he was buying for Mr. Vanderbilt and prices began to soar. The first deed recorded is from J. G. Martin, trustee and commissioner, to the Williams property, and is dated September, 1889, followed by many others till the 16th of June, 1890, when Henry Allen White conveyed 134 acres directly to Mr. Vanderbilt, after which there was no attempt to disguise the fact that this gentleman, "having all the world before him where to choose," had chosen Buncombe as the site of his future home. The influence of this choice on the outside world was immense. These purchases of small tracts have resulted in the accumulation of about 12,500 acres in what is called Biltmore House tract, and about 100,000 acres in Buncombe, Transylvania and Henderson counties in what is known as Pisgah Forest. The services of Frederick Law Olm- stead, the distinguished landscape architect of New York, were secured, and he planned the roads, bridges, forests, lakes, water- falls, etc., on the Biltmore House tract. Those roads are un- surpassed by even the drives in Central Park, New York, being kept in perfect condition at all times. Biltmore house was begun in 1891 and completed in 1896. This house was modeled after Chateau Blois, France; and the Rampe Douce, or gentle slope, immediately in front of the house but beyond the lawn known as the Esplanade, is a close imitation of a like construction at Vaux le Vicomte, France. The garden to the right of the front of the house and on a lower level than the esplanade is called the "walled garden," and the stone images or sphinxes on the four gate posts at the entrances were brought from Egypt, and are the busts of women on the bodies of lions couchant. They are said to be of great
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age. Fine tapestries, paintings, statuary and other objects of aft, with a large library of rare books, have been gathered into the house. Fountains, conservatories, dairies, vegetable gardens, model farms, and other attractions add to the beauty and charm of the place, probably the finest private residence in America. Birds and wild animals are protected on this estate, and on the lakes wild ducks are seen in winter when they cannot be found on the rivers nearby. Pisgah Forest was bought for its forests, and Hon. Gifford Pinchot was placed in charge as forester.
PISGAH FOREST. Mr. Vanderbilt was the first to see the paramount necessity for forest . conservation. Pisgah Forest prospered under the expert guidance of Mr. Pinchot till he was succeeded by Mr. Schenck, who for years con- ducted a school of forestry. Biltmore village, at the end of South Main street of Asheville, is planned after English villages, with the ivied church, the hedges and the "simple village green." But it is not probable that any English vil- lage is as spick and span as Biltmore is every day, where streets, lawns, hedges, sidewalks, drains and shrubbery are constantly on dress parade-an object lesson in municipal government without politics.
The National Park Commission and Mr. Vanderbilt could not agree on a price for Pisgah Forest in June, 1913, but after Mr. Vanderbilt's death, March 5, 1914, his widow sold the entire tract.
"THE BEAUTIFUL SAPPHIRE COUNTRY." The completion of the railroad to Lake Toxaway in 1900 led to the following developments, and were due largely to the energy and enter- J prise of Mr. J. F. Hays : The Toxaway property as a whole was made up of property purchased from the receivers of the Sapphire Valley Company, and other smaller properties. The Fairfield Inn, on Lake Fairfield, was built, together with the dam for the lake, in 1896. The Franklin Hotel at Brevard, which was a part of this same operation, was built in the year of 1900. Later the Franklin was sold to a Mr. Robinson and associ- ates, of Charlotte, N. C., and they are at present owners of that property. The Toxaway property was sold in 1911 under foreclosure, and is now held as the property of Mr. E. H. Jennings of Pittsburgh, Pa. Toxaway Inn, as well as Fairfield Inn, and The Franklin, had their greatest success in the years 1904-1907.
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WAYNESVILLE WHITE SULPHUR SPRING. This spring was discovered by "Uncle" Jerry, a slave of the late James R. Love, in 1845 or 1846. Col. Love soon after built a large residence there, which he occupied till his death in 1864. It was burned in August, 1885. Col. W. W. Stringfield, who had married his daughter Maria, built a brick hotel on the site of this residence after it had been burned, about 1886. 23 It is now owned by Ben Johnston Sloan. It is less than one mile from Waynesville.
EPP's SPRING. This was the property of the late Epp Everett of Bryson City, and is about five miles from that town on the right bank of the Tuckaseegee river, at the mouth of Cane Brake branch. It is a chalybeate spring, and there are one or two cabins there.
OLD VALLEY TOWN TAVERN. This famous hostelry was kept by the late Mrs. Margaret Walker for a number of years after the Civil War, and was popular with lawyers and their clients. Although there was no court house there, the lawyers would hurry through Graham, Cherokee and Clay county courts in order to get to spend as much time at this hotel as possible.
THE LANGREN HOTEL. This fine structure of reinforced concrete was finished and thrown open July 4, 1912. It is near the Pack Square, Asheville, and stands on the much litigated Smith property on the corner of North Main and College streets, where formerly stood the old Buck hotel. It is a commercial and tourist hotel, and popular.
KENILWORTH INN. This handsome hotel was opened about 1890. It stood on the eminence above the junction of South Main street and the Swannanoa river road, and from it Craggy and the Blacks were visible. It was popular until its de- struction by fire at 3 a. m., April 14th, 1909, J. M. Gazzam of Philadelphia, chief owner, escaping at the risk of his life and the expense of great injuries from which he afterwards re- covered. It was insured for $70,000.
OAKLAND HEIGHTS. This hotel was built by the late Alex- ander Garrett and his son, Robert U. Garrett, in 1889. It afterwards became a girls' school, and then a hotel, having passed into the hands of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. It then became Victoria Inn, and during 1911 was purchased by the Catholic Church and is now St. Gene- vieve's College, a most excellent school for girls.
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THE GRAND CENTRAL HOTEL. This was built by the late S. H. Chedester. It was afterwards operated as the Hotel Berkeley, but in 1911 was converted into a department store by Solomon Lipinsky.
MARGO TERRACE. This home-like hotel was built by Miss Gano in 1889. In 1904 it became the property of Pat Branch, who in 1912 doubled its capacity and greatly improved its outward appearance.
VANCE'S MONUMENT. This handsome granite column was erected on the Public Square at Asheville in 1897, George W. Pack, after whom the Square was soon named, having con- tributed $2,000-and the public, $1,300-for its erection to the memory of Zebulon Baird Vance, Buncombe's most dis- tinguished and honored citizen and great "War Governor."
GEORGE W. PACK MEMORIAL LIBRARY. This was estab- lished in 1879, and had many homes before the late George W. Pack donated the fine building on Pack Square in 1899.
BATTERY PARK HOTEL. Having a railroad did not by any means complete Asheville's happiness; for it had no hotel accommodations at all commensurate with the tide of travel which immediately set in. At this juncture came the late Col. Frank Coxe, who built the present Battery Park Hotel. It was opened July 12, 1886, with Col. C. H. Southwick manager. It has remained the principal hotel of Asheville ever since. It has been twice enlarged and frequently im- proved. For several years it was managed by the late E. P. McKissick. It is a credit to this community, and has become an indispensable asset.
THE TELEGRAPH LINE. The first telegraph line reached Asheville July 28, 1877, with Samuel C. Weldon as operator. Through the efforts of the late Capt. C. M. McLoud, the line was soon afterwards extended to Hendersonville. Then Mr. Weldon became the owner and operator thereof till the railroad company took it off his hands.
OTHER ENTERPRISES. The Asheville Cemetery Company was incorporated August 4, 1885; the Telephone Company, October 1, 1885; the Western North Carolina Fair, January 30, 1884; the Gas and Light Company, May 25, 1886. In 1887 Alex. and R. U. Garrett built the Oakland Heights Hotel. The Swannanoa Hotel was completed in 1879 and opened for business in the summer of 1880.
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ASHEVILLE STREET RAILWAY. This most necessary com- mon carrier was built by Dr. S. Westray Battle, James G. Martin, W. T. Penniman, and E. D. Davidson, the latter of New York, and began to run in January, 1889. It failed in 1893 and was sold out in 1894, and bid in by White Brothers of New York. It finally went into the Asheville Electric Company's properties, and is now part of the Asheville Power and Light Company.
"THE DRUMMER'S HOME." This hotel at Murphy, pre- sided over by Mrs. Dickey for years, has made a name for itself that will endure. It was for years the most popular house west of Asheville.
WEST ASHEVILLE. In 1885 Mr. Edwin G. Carrier and fam- ily moved to Asheville from Michigan. He soon afterwards bought several hundred acres of land west of the French Broad river, including the Sulphur Springs and the J. P. Gaston tracts of land. In 1887 he built a large brick hotel on the site of the wooden structure that was burned during the Civil War, and soon thereafter, 1891, constructed an electric rail- way from Asheville to Sulphur Springs, crossing the French Broad river near the mouth of the Swannanoa on a fine steel bridge. This railway first ran only to the passenger station; but, on October 13, 1891, it was granted a franchise by the city to extend its line through Depot street, Bartlett street and French Broad avenue to the corner of West College and North Main streets. It stopped, however, at what is now the corner of Haywood street and Battery Park Place, then called Government street. It was called the West Asheville and Sulphur Springs Railway Company.
A race track was established just south of Strawberry Hill and between the Sulphur Springs railway and French Broad river. A grand-stand was erected and a high fence built around the race track. There were several exciting races, all of which were well attended.
SUNSET MOUNTAIN. During the summer of 1889, Capt. R. P. Foster and the late Walter B. Gwyn, Esq., completed a railway from Charlotte street to a point on Sunset mountain, known as the "Old Quarry," near which is a fine spring, and from which can be had one of the finest views in this section. This road was operated by a small steam engine, called a "dummy," and was chartered as the "Asheville & Craggy
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Mountain Railway Company," its objective being the top of Craggy mountain. On November 28, 1890, the city granted this company a charter to build its track and operate its cars along Charlotte street northward to the city limits in that .direction. This line was quite popular.
RICHARD S. HOWLAND. In 1904 Lewis Maddux, as receiver of the Asheville Street Railway Company, strung a trolley wire from Chestnut street along Charlotte street to what used to be known as the "Golf Club" and operated cars to that point by an arrangement with Mr. Gwyn. In 1901 Richard S. Howland, Esq., came from Providence, R. I., and bought property near the foot of Sunset mountain and erected a fine residence there. He acquired control of the Craggy Mountain Railway and completed it to the top of the mountain, where he erected a music and dance hall. He also obtained the right to operate his cars to the public square. The terminus of the railroad was called Overlook Park.
COGGINS SPRINGS. These springs are near Bull creek, and are chalybeate and sulphur water. There are no hotels or boarding places, except farm houses, near. They are about eight miles east of Asheville.
THE GROVE PARK HOTEL. This unique and costly series of grottoes, built of rough mountain rock, was completed in 1913 (July), in the E. W. Grove park, near Asheville. It is said to have cost one million dollars.
ASHEVILLE'S GRAVITY LINE. During Mayor Miller's ad- ministration Charles T. Rawls was chairman of the finance committee, and was most active and energetic. He visited Atlanta and studied the system of municipal government of that city and succeeded in getting its best features adopted by Asheville, especially the manner of keeping the books and accounts. At his instance, and largely through his influence, the city voted $200,000 of four per cent bonds for the adoption of a gravity water works system, by which the water of the North Fork of theSwannanoa river is conveyed through a sixteen- inch pipe to the city. The contract for constructing this line was awarded to M. H. Kelly in August, 1903. The. city ac- quired about 9,500 acres of land above the intake on which there is no human habitation. Certain patriots did what they could to force the city to pay them an exorbitant price for land claimed or controlled by them, and litigation followed.
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The city finally got this land at a reasonable price. The re- turns from this water system, after all expenses have been paid, are sufficient to pay the interest on the city's entire bonded debt of about one million dollars. Mr. Rawls was elected mayor, but his health temporarily broke down before his time expired. He got the legislature to authorize the aldermen to tax the cost of building sewers on the abutting property instead of paying for them out of the general fund. 24 The result has been the most complete and satisfactory sewer system in the South.
COL. JAMES G. MARTIN. He was a son of Gen. James G. Martin, and from 1885 to 1893, when he removed to New York City, was the leader in most of the public enterprises in Asheville and Western North Carolina. He died in 1912, aged about 59 years. He was a most useful citizen.
GEORGE WILLIS PACK, of Cleveland, Ohio, was a most generous friend to Asheville, having donated 11 acres of land for Aston Park, about four acres for a court house, a kinder- garten school, a library building, and most of the money for the Vance Monument.
NOTES.
1Asheville's Centenary.
?Ibid.
"Ibid.
{J. H. Wheeler's "Reminiscenses."
"Buncombe County Deed Book A, p. 491.
"Ibid, Deed Book No. 16, p. 74.
"Ibid, p. 413.
"Statements of Captain B. F. Patton, March 25, 1913. He spent his boyhood at Old Warm Springs. Mrs. M. A. Chambers of Columbia, S. C., now in her ninetieth year, remem- bers visiting this hotel, Hickory Nut Falls, and Flat Rock, when a girl, about 1833.
"Charles Dudley Warner ("On Horseback," p. 135), in 1884, called this hotel "a pala- tial hovel."
10Buncombe County Deed Book No. 16, p. 375.
11 Ibid, p. 193.
12From Mrs. Mattie Smathers Chandler's history of Henderson county.
13As Ashe county was settled in 1755, according to Wheeler's History (p. 27), many white children were born in that county years before James M. Smith was born in Bun- combe county.
14Mrs. Ripley was the mother, by a former marriage, of Hon. Hamilton Glover Ewart, member of Congress from 1887 to 1889, and appointed U. S. District Judge in 1898. 1'Information furnished by T. Baxter White, J. Pierson and others.
16Information furnished by S. P. Ravenel, Esq., of Asheville.
17Watauga County Deed Book R, p. 131.
14Ibid, No. 11, p. 517.
19Robert Henry's diary, now in possession of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. C. C. Henry, of Acton, N. C.
20'' South Carolina Women in the Confederacy," p. 249.
11Statements of Mrs. Eugenia E. Hopson, daughter of Col. Reuben Deaver, and of Mrs. Martha A. Arthur, daughter of Robert Henry.
22Col. James M. Ray in The Lyceum, p. 19, December, 1890.
"Letter of Col. W. W. Stringfield to J. P. A., January 27, 1912.
"4In Justice v. Asheville, decided at the December Term (1912) of the Supreme Court, this act was sustained.
CHAPTER XXII FLORA AND FAUNA
PRIMEVAL CONDITIONS. Exactly what the forests were like in the days of the earliest settlers and what were the kinds and habits of its wild denizens can be known only by the accounts that have come down from our ancestors. Whether the coun- try was more open than now or whether the wild animals were tamer than we now find them, are matters that cannot be absolutely determined by any mathematical process. Some claim that the Indians kept the undergrowth thinned out by annually setting the fallen leaves afire in order that they might see the game the better, while others suppose that there were thickets and saplings beneath the giant forest trees as there are at this time. Following are some thoughts upon this question:
"It is also doubtless true that 150 or 200 years ago the forests were not nearly so well grown up as at present, and that would in a measure account for the presence of such animals as the moose or even elk. Old hunters have told me that when they could first recollect there was scarcely any laurel, with only now and then a small bunch, and that the woods were open and no underbrush at all; that they could see through the forest ever so far, and that the growth of the hemlock was nothing like it is at present. Now and then a giant monarch of the for- est and all around for a considerable distance would be small hemlocks. At the writer's own home at Banners Elk, I had occasion a year or so ago to make a practical demonstration of that fact. There was evi- dence of one of those giant hemlocks that had fallen down perhaps a hundred years ago. It was all decayed but the knots, of which I piled up more than 125. The tree itself must have been 120 feet high when standing. All around, the hemlocks grew thick from two to two and one- half feet in diameter. That the forests have become more thicketty in the last thirty years is the observation of every thoughtful man." 1
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