USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 6
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1.Col. Rec., Vol. III, p. 23 et seq.
11Ibid., Vol. II, p. 790.
1ªIbid., p. 794.
1"' 'The line thus run was accepted by both Colonies and remains still the boundary between the two states." Hill, 89.
l'Byrd, 190.
1 Col. Rec., Vol. II, p. 223.
"Ibid., Vol. I, p. xxiv.
17Col. Rec., Vol. IV, p. xiii.
1"The large green, treeless spot on the top of this mountain, covered with grass, is sur- rounded by a forest of singular trees, locally known as "Lashorna." From a sketch of Wilborn Waters, "The Hermit Hunter of White Top," by J. A. Testerman, of Jefferson, Ashe Co., N. C., the following description of these trees is taken: "They have a diameter of from 15 to 30 feet, and their branches will hold the weight of several persons at one time on their level tops. They resemble the Norway Spruce, but do not thrive when trans- planted." The diameter given above refers to that of the branches, not of the trunks.
1ºCh. 144, Laws 1779, 377, Potter's Revisal; W. C. Kerr in Report of Geological Survey of N. C., Vol. I, (1875), p. 2, states that this survey carried the line beyond Bristol, Tenn .- Va.
"A glance at any map of Tennessee reveals the fact that the line does not run "due west" all the way; but that does not concern North Carolina now.
11Roosevelt, Vol. I, 217.
"Oglethorpe did not sail for Savannah till November 17, 1732.
"Its head waters are in Rockingham and Guilford counties.
" "The mouth of the Waccamaw river must be 90 miles southwest from that of the Cape Fear.
"Col. Rec., Vol. IV, 8.
"Mear means a boundary, a limit.
"Col. Rec., Vol. IV, p. vil, and W. C. Kerr's Report of the Geological Survey of N. C., (1875).
"It was in the Waxhaw settlement that Andrew Jackson was born, March 15, 1767. "Potter's Revisal, p. 1280.
""Potter's Revisal, 1131.
"Ibid., 1280.
""Ibid., 1318.
"Ellicott's Rock is on the west bank of Chatooga river. Rev. St. N. C., Vol. II, 145. Andrew Ellicott had been previously appointed to survey the line under the Creek treaty of 1790, according to Fifth Eth. Rep., p. 163.
"Fifth Eth. Rep., p. 182.
"N. C. Booklet, Vol. III, No. 12.
"Ibid. ""Ibid.
"By the late C. D. Smith, 1905.
""Draper, 259.
"In the Narrative of Vance and Henry of the Battle of Kings Mountain, published in 1803 by T. F. Davidson.
"iAmbrose gap is a few miles southwest, and is so called because a free negro of that built a house across the State line in this gap, and when he died his grave was dug " 3 Tennessee and half in North Carolina, according to local tradition. Draper, 176. " Tilson, p. 4.
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"Robert Henry had gone to get Robert Love as a pilot; and a few years later he mar- ried Love's daughter Dorcas.
""Zeigler & Grosscup, pp. 271-2-3.
"Bishop Asbury's diary shows that he was at Barnett's Station, November 4, 1802.
47Fifth Eth., 219, 220.
"Laws 1850-51, ch. 157. But there was a road of some kind, for Bishop Asbury mentions crossing Cataloochee on a log in December, 1810. "But O the mountain- height after height, and five miles over!"
"0114 N. C. Rep., 909, and 115 N. C., 811. Also Laws 1895, ch. 169.
&#Thwaite, 69.
"1Fifth Eth., 181.
""Ibid. "Ibid.
"Ibid., 181.
"Ibid., 168.
""Ibid.
""Ibid., 168.
$8154 N. C. Rep., 79.
"Nineteenth Eth., 214.
"Fifth Eth., 146.
"Ibid.
"?Ibid., 156-157.
"Ibid., 158-159, 169.
"Ibid., 219.
""Ibid., 253.
"Rev. St. N. C., Vol. III, 96-97.
CHAPTER III
COLONIAL DAYS
Though the mountains were not settled during colonial days except north of the ridge between the Toe and Watauga rivers, the people who ultimately crossed the Blue Ridge lived under colonial laws and customs, or descended from those pioneers who did. Therefore, colonial times in North Carolina, especially in the Piedmont country, should be of interest to those who would know how our more remote ances- tors lived under English rule. This should be especially true of those venturesome spirits who first crossed the Blue Ridge and explored the mountain regions of our State, what- ever may have been the object of their quest. For "when the first Continental Congress began its sittings the only frontiersmen west of the mountains and beyond the limits of continuous settlement within the old thirteen colonies were the two or three hundred citizens of the Little Watauga com- monwealth. 1 For they were a commonwealth in the truest sense of the word, being beyond the jurisdiction of any gov- ernment except that of their own consciences. In these circumstances they voluntarily formed the first republican government in America. "The building of the Watauga commonwealth by Robertson and Sevier gave a base of oper- ations and furnished a model for similar commonwealths to follow.' ?
For the first written compact that, west of the mountains, Was framed for the guidance of liberty's feet, Was writ here by letterless men in whose bosoms, Undaunted, the heart of a paladin beat.
EARL OF GRANVILLE. There were eight Lords Proprietors to whom Carolina was originally granted in 1663. Among them was Sir George Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville. ' On the 3d of May, 1728, the king of England bought North Carolina and thus ended the government of the Lords Pro- prietors. But he did not buy the interest of the Earl of Gran- ville, who refused to sell; though he had to give up his share
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COLONIAL DAYS
in the government of the colony. Hence, grants from Earl of Granville are as valid as those from the crown; for in 1743 his share was given him in land. It included about one-half of the State, and he collected rents from it till 1776, his dis- honest agents giving the settlers on it great trouble.
MORAVIANS. The Moravians were a band of religious brethren who came to America to do mission work among the Indians and to gain a full measure of religious freedom. Their plan was to build a central town on a large estate and to sell the land around to the members of the brotherhood. The town was to contain shops, mills, stores, factories, churches and schools. After selecting several pieces of lowlands, Bishop Spangenberg bought from the Earl of Granville a large tract in the bounds of the present county of Forsyth, and called the tract Wachovia, meaning "meadow stream."4 On November 17, 1753, a company of twelve men arrived at Wachovia, and started what is now Salem. This Bishop Spangenberg is spoken of in Hill's "Young People's History of North Carolina" as Bishop Augustus G. Spangenberg; while the Spangenberg whose diary is quoted from exten- sively in the next few pages signs himself I. Spangenberg. He will be called the Bishop, nevertheless, because he "spake as one having authority." 5
FIRST TO CROSS THE BLUE RIDGE. Vol. V, Colonial Rec- ords (pp. 1 to 14), contains the diary of I. Spangenberg, of the Moravian church. He is the first white man who crossed the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, so far as the records show, except those who had prolonged the Virginia State line in 1749. He, with his co-religionist, Brother I. H. Antes, left Edenton September 13, 1752, for the purpose of inspecting and selecting land for settling Moravian immigrants. The land was to have been granted by Earl Granville, and the surveyor, Mr. Churton, who accompanied the expedition, had instructions from that proprietor to survey the lands, and as he was to be paid three pounds sterling for each 5,000-acre tract, he was averse to surveying tracts of smaller acreage. His instructions limited him also to north and south and east and west lines, which frequently compelled the good Bishop to include mountains in his boundaries that he did not par- ticularly desire. Having run three lines this surveyor declined to run the fourth, and the Bishop notes that fact in order
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
to save his brethern the trouble of searching for lines that were never run or marked. The surveyor, however, did sur- vey for the Bishop smaller tracts than those containing 5,000 acres, though reluctantly.
QUAKER MEADOWS. In Judge Avery's "Historic Homes" (N. C. Booklet, Vol. IV, No. 3) he refers to the fact that these meadows were so called from the fact that a Quaker (Mora- vian) once camped there and traded for furs. This Quaker was Bishop Spangenberg. He reached on November 12, 1752, the "neighborhood of what may be called Indian Pass. The next settlement from here is that of Jonathan Weiss, more familiarly known as Jonathan Perrot. This man is a hunter and lives 20 miles from here. There are many hunters about here, who live like Indians: they kill many deer, sell- ing their hides, and thus live without much work." On the 19th of November he reached Quaker Meadows, "fifty miles from all settlements and found all we thought was required for a settlement, very rich and fertile bottoms. Our survey begins seven or eight miles from the mouth of the 3d river where it flows into the Catawba. What lies further down the river has already been taken up. The other [west- ern] line of the survey runs close to the Blue Ridge. . . . This piece consists of 6,000 acres. We can have at least eight set- tlements in this tract, and each will have water, range, etc.
. I calculate to every settlement eight couples of brethren and sisters."
BUFFALO TRAILS. There were no roads save those made by buffaloes. The surveyor was stopped by six Cherokees on a hunt, but they soon became friendly. November 24th they were five miles from Table Rock, which with the Hawk's Bill is so conspicuous from Morganton, where they surveyed the fifth tract of land, of 700 or 800 acres.
MUSICAL WOLVES. "The wolves, which are not like those in Germany, Poland and Lapland (because they fear men and do not easily come near) give us such music of six differ- ent cornets, the like of which I have never heard in my life. Several brethren, skilled in hunting, will be required to exter- minate panthers, wolves, etc."
OLD INDIAN FIELDS." On November 28th they were camped in an old Indian field on the northeast branch of Middle Little river of the Catawba, where they arrived on
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COLONIAL DAYS
the 25th, and resolved to take up 2,000 acres of land lying on two streams, both well adapted to mill purposes. That the Indians once lived there was very evident-possibly be- fore the war which they waged with North Carolina-"from the remains of an Indian fort: as also the tame grass which was still growing about the old residences, and from the trees." On December 3d they camped on a river in another old Indian field at the head of a branch of New river, "after passing over frightful mountains and dangerous cliffs."
WHERE MEN HAD SELDOM TROD. On the 29th they were in camp on the second or middle fork of Little river, not far from Quaker Meadows "in a locality that has probably been but seldom trodden by the foot of man since the creation of the world. For 70 or 80 miles we have been traveling over terrible mountains and along very dangerous places where there was no way at all." One might call the place in which they were camped a basin or kettle, it being a cove in the mountains, rich of soil, and where their horses found abun- dant pasture among the buffalo haunts and tame grass among the springs. The wild pea-vines which formerly covered these mountains, growing even under the forest trees most luxuri- antly for years after the whites came in, afforded fine pas- turage for their stock. It also formed a tangled mat on the surface of the earth through which it was almost impossible for men to pass. Hence, the pioneers were confined gener- ally to the Indian and buffalo trails already existing. These pea-vines return even now whenever a piece of forest land is fenced off a year or two.
ON THE GRANDFATHER? It would seem that they had been misled by a hunter whom they had taken along to show them the way to the Yadkin; but had missed the way and on De- cember 3d came "into a region from which there was no out- let except by climbing up an indescribably steep mountain. Part of the way we had to crawl on our hands and feet, and sometimes we had to take the baggage and saddles from the horses, and drag them up, while they trembled and quivered like leaves. The next day we journeyed on: got into laurel bushes and beaver dams and had to cut our way through the bushes. Arrived at the top at last, we saw hundreds of mountain peaks all around us, presenting a spectacle like ocean waves in a storm." The descent on the western side
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
was "neither so steep, nor as deep as before, and then we came to a stream of water, but no pasture. . . . The next day we got into laurel bushes and beaver dams and had to cut our way through the bushes. . ."
WANDERING BEWILDERED IN UNKNOWN WAYS. "Then we changed our course left the river and went up the mountain, where the Lord brought us to a delicious spring, and good pasturage on a chestnut ridge. . . . The next day we came to a creek so full of rocks that we could not possible cross it; and on both sides were such precipitous banks that scarcely a man, certainly no horse could climb them . . . but our horses had nothing-absolutely nothing. . . . Directly came a hunter who had climbed a mountain and had seen a large meadow. Thereupon, we scrambled down . and came before night into a large plain. . . .
CAUGHT IN A MOUNTAIN SNOWSTORM. "We pitched our tent, but scarcely had we finished when such a fierce wind- storm burst upon us that we could scarcely protect ourselves against it. I cannot remember that I have ever in winter anywhere encountered so hard or so cold a wind. The ground was soon covered with snow ankle deep, and the water froze for us aside the fire. Our people became thoroughly dis- heartened. Our horses would certainly perish and we with them."
IN GOSHEN'S LAND. "The next day we had fine sunshine, and then warmer days, though the nights were 'horribly' cold. Then we went to examine the land. A large part of it is al- ready cleared, and there long grass abounds, and this is all bottom. Three creeks flow together here and make a con- siderable river, which flows into the Mississippi according to the best knowledge of our hunters." There were countless springs but no reeds, but "so much grass land that Brother Antes thinks a man could make several hundred loads of hay of the wild grass. . . . There is land here suitable for wheat, corn, oats, barley, hemp, etc. Some of the land will prob- ably be flooded when there is high water. There is a mag- nificent chestnut and pine forest near here. Whetstones and millstones which Brother Antes regards the best he has seen in North Carolina are plenty. The soil is here mostly lime- stone and of a cold nature. . . . We surveyed this land and took up 5,400 acres. . . We have a good many mountains,
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COLONIAL DAYS
but they are very fertile and admit of cultivation. Some of them are already covered with wood, and are easily acces- sible. Many hundred-yes, thousand crab-apple trees grow here, which may be useful for vinegar. One of the creeks presents a number of admirable seats for milling purposes. This survey is about 15 miles from the Virginia line, as we saw the Meadow mountain, and I judged it to be about 20 miles distant. This mountain lies five miles from the line between Virginia and North Carolina. In all probability this tract would make an admirable settlement for Christian In- dians, like Grandenhutten in Pennsylvania. There is wood, mast, wild game, fish and a free range for hunting, and admir- able land for corn, potatoes, etc. For stock raising it is also incomparable. Meadow land and pasture in abundance." After "a bitter journey among the mountains where we were virtually lost and whichever way we turned we were literally walled in on all sides," they came on December 14, 1752, to the head of Yadkin river, after having abandoned all streams and paths, and followed a course east and south, and "scrambling across the mountains as well as we could." Here a hunter named Owen, "of Welch stock, invited us into his house and treated us very kindly." He lived near the Mulberry Fields which had been taken up by Morgan Bryant, but were uninhabited. The nearest house was 60 miles distant.
THE FIRST HUNTERS. The hunters who assisted the Bishop in finding the different bodies of suitable land were Henry Day, who lived in Granville, John Perkins, who lived on the Catawba, "and is known as Andrew Lambert, a well-known Scotchman," and Jno. Rhode, who "lives about 20 miles from Capt. Sennit on the Yadkin road." John Perkins was especially commended to the Brethren as "a diligent and true worthy man, and a friend to the Brethren." The late Judge A. C. Avery said he was called "Gentleman John," and that Johns river in Burke was named for him. 7
SETTLERS FROM PENNSYLVANIA. "Many of the immi- grants were sent to Pennsylvania, and they had traveled as far west as Pittsburg early in the 18th century. The Indians west of the Alleghanies were, however, fiercer than any the Quakers had met; but to the southwest for several hundred miles the Appalachians "run in parallel ranges . . . through
W. N. C .- 5
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
Virginia, West Virginia, the Carolinas and East Tennessee . . " and through these "long, deep troughs between these . . ranges . . . Pennsylvanians freely wandered into the South and Southwest . .. "and "between the years 1732 and 1750, numerous groups of Pennsylvanians-Germans and Irish large- ly, with many Quakers among them-had been . . . grad- ually pushing forward the line of settlement, until now it had reached the upper waters of the Yadkin river, in the north- west corner of North Carolina."8 "Thus was the wilder- ness tamed by a steady stream of immigration from the older lands of the northern colonies, while not a few penetrated to this Arcadia through the passes of the Blue Ridge, from eastern Virginia and the Carolinas." 9
NICK-A-JACK'S CAVE. Almost the first difficulties those who first crossed the mountains encountered was from the depredations of renegade Indians and desperate white men defiant of law and order. There was at this time (1777-78) a body of free-booters, composed of "adventurous and unruly members from almost all the western tribes-Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Indians from the Ohio, generally known as Chickamaugas. Many Tories and white refugees from border justice joined them and shared in their misdeeds. Their shifting villages stretched from Chicka- mauga creek to Running Water. Between these places the Tennessee twists down through the somber gorges by which the chains of the Cumberland range are riven in sunder. Some miles below Chickamauga creek, near Chattanooga, Lookout mountain towers aloft into the clouds; at its base the river bends round Moccasin Point, and then rushes through a gap between Walden's Ridge and the Raccoon Hills. Then, for several miles, it foams through the winding Narrows between jutting cliffs and sheer rock walls, while in its boulder- strewn bed the swift torrent is churned into whirlpools, cata- racts, and rapids. Near the Great Crossing, where the war parties and hunting parties were ferried over the river, lies Nick-a-jack's cave, a vast cavern in the mountain-side. Out of it flows a stream up which a canoe can paddle two or three miles into the heart of the mountain. In these high fastnesses, inaccessible ravines, and gloomy caverns the Chickamaugas built their towns, and to them they retired with their prisoners and booty after every raid on the settlements."
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FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR LAND WARRANTS. 10 The Chick- amaugas lived on Chickamauga creek and in the moun- tains about where Chattanooga now stands; they were kins- men of the Cherokees. In 1748 Dr. Thomas Walker and a party of hunters came from Virginia into Powell's Valley, crossing the mountains at Cumberland gap, and named it and the river in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, Prime Minister of England. In 1756-7 the English built Fort Lou- don, 30 miles from Knoxville, as the French were trying to get the Cherokees to make war on the North Carolina set- tlers. After the treaty of peace between France and England in 1763 many hunters poured over the mountains into Ten- nessee; though George III had ordered his governors not to allow whites to trespass on Indian lands west of the moun- tains, and if any white man did buy Indian lands and and the Indians moved away the land should belong to the king. He appointed Indian commissioners; but the whites persisted, some remaining a year or more to hunt and were called Long Hunters. Land warrants had been issued to officers and soldiers who had fought in the French and Indian wars and those issued by North Carolina wanted to settle in what is now Tennessee. The Iroquois complained that whites were killing their stock and taking their lands, and at a great Indian council at Fort Stanwix, at Rome, N. Y., the northern tribes gave England title to all their lands between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers in 1767. But the Indian commissioners for the southern tribes called a council at Hard Labor, S. C., and bought title to the same land from the Cherokees. These treaties were finished in 1768. William Bean in 1769 was living in a log cabin where Boone's creek joins the Watauga. In 1771 Parker and Carter set up a store at Rogersville, and people from Abingdon (called Wolf's Hill) followed, and the settlement was called the Carter's Valley settlement. In 1772 Jacob Brown opened a store on the Nollechucky river, and pioneers settling around, it was called Nollechucky set- tlement. Shortly before Bean had settled the Cherokees had attacked the Chickasaws and been defeated, and the settlers got a ten years' lease from Indians for lands they claimed. In May 1771, at Alamance, Tryon had defeated the Regula- tors and many of them had moved to Tennessee. Most settlers in Tennessee thought they were in Virginia, but either
1
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HISTORY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
Richmond or Raleigh was too far off, so they formed the Watauga Association in 1772 and a committee of 13 elected five commissioners to settle disputes, etc., with judicial powers and some executive duties also. It was a free government by the consent of every individual. When the Revolution- ary War began Watauga Association named their country Washington District and voted themselves indebted to the United Colonies for their share of the expenses of the war.
THE WATAUGA SETTLEMENT AND INDIAN WARS. This caused the British government to attempt the destruction of these settlements by inciting the Cherokees to make war upon them. Alexander Cameron was the Indian commis- sioner for the British and he furnished the Indians with guns and ammunition for that purpose; but in the spring of 1776, Nancy Ward, a friendly Indian woman, told the white settlers that 700 Cherokee warriors intended to attack the settlers. They did so, but were defeated at Heaton's Station and at Watauga Fort. In these battles the settlers were aided by Virginia. James Robertson and John Sevier were leaders in these times. It was after this that Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina sent soldiers into the Cherokee country of North Carolina for the extermination of the sav- age Cherokees. 11 In August 1776 the Watauga Settlement asked to be annexed by North Carolina, 113 men signing the petition, all of whom signed their names except two, who made their marks. There seems to be no record of any formal annexation; but in November, 1776, the Provisional Congress of North Carolina met at Halifax and among the delegates present were John Carter, John Sevier, Charles Robertson and John Haile from the Washington District. It is, there- fore, safe to conclude that Watauga had been annexed, for these men helped to frame the first free constitution of the State of North Carolina. But this Watauga Association seems to have continued its independent government until February, 1778; for in 1777 (November) Washington Dis- trict became Washington county with boundaries cotermi- nous with those of the present State of Tennessee. Magis- trates or justices of the peace took the oath of office in Feb- ruary, 1778, when the entire county began to be governed under the laws of North Carolina. Thus, the Watauga Asso- ciation was the germ of the State of Tennessee, and although
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there is on a tree near Boone's creek an inscription indicating that Daniel Boone killed a bear there in 1760, William Bean appears to have been the first permanent settler of that sec- tion. Indeed, this author states that Col. Richard Hender- son, of North Carolina, induced Boone to make his first visit to Kentucky in the spring of 1769, and that James Robertson, afterwards "The Father of Middle Tennessee, " accompanied him; but stopped on the Wautaga with William Bean and raised a crop, removing his family from Wake county in 1770 or 1771.
FORTS LOUDON AND DOBBS. Fort Loudon was on the Little Tennessee. It was attacked and besieged by the Indians, and surrendered August 9,. 1760, after Indian women had kept the garrison in food a long time in defiance of their own tribesmen. 12 In 1756 Fort Dobbs was constructed a short distance south of the South Fork of the Yadkin. 13 For the first few years Fort Dobbs was not much used, 14 the Catawbas being friendly; but in 1759 the Yadkin and Ca- tawba valleys were raided by the Cherokees, with the usual results of ruined crops, burned farm buildings, and murdered households. The Catawbas, meanwhile, remained faithful to their white friends. Until this outbreak the Carolinas had greatly prospered; but after it most of the Yadkin families, with the English fur-traders, huddled within the walls of Fort Dobbs, but many others fled to settlements nearer the Atlantic. 15 In the early winter of 1760 the governors of Virginia and North and South Carolina agreed upon a joint campaign against the hostiles, and attacked the Cherokee towns on the Little Tennessee in the summer of 1760, com- pletely crushing the Indians and sent 5,000 men, women and children into the hills to starve. 16 With the opening of 1762 the southwest border began to be reoccupied, and the aban- doned log cabins again had fires lighted upon their hearths, the deserted clearings were again cultivated, and the pursuits of peace renewed. 17
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