USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 9
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HENDERSON AND DANIEL BOONE. "In the meantime, Daniel Boone grew impatient over the delay . . . and on September 25, 1773, started from the Yadkin Valley . . . for Kentucky, with a colony numbering eighteen men, besides women and children;" but, being attacked by Indians, and some of Boone's party, including his own son, having been killed, "the whole party scattered and returned to the set- tlements. This incident is significant evidence that Boone was deficient in executive ability, the power to originate and execute schemes of colonization on a grand scale . . . Boone lacked constructive leadership and executive genius. He was a perfect instrument for executing the designs of others. It was not until the creative and executive brain of Richard Henderson was applied to the vast and daring project of West- ern colonization that it was carried through to a successful termination. " 3 0
HENDERSON'S SCHEME DENOUNCED. "When, on Christmas Day, 1774, there was spread broadcast throughout the colony of North Carolina 'Proposals for the encouragement of set- tling the lands purchased by Messrs. Richard Henderson & Co., on the branches of the Mississippi river from the Chero- kee tribe of Indians,' a genuine sensation was created." Archi- bald Neilson, deputy auditor of the colony, asked : "Is Richard Henderson out of his head?" and Governor Josiah Martin
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issued "a forcible-feeble proclamation against Richard Hender- son and his confederates in their daring, unjust and unwar- rantable proceeding. In letters to the Earl of Dartmouth, Martin speaks scathingly of 'Henderson, the famous invader,' and of 'the infamous Henderson and his associates' whom he dubs 'an infamous company of land Pyrates.' He denounced their project as a 'lawless undertaking,' and 'an infraction of the royal prerogative.' But these 'fulminations' were un- heeded and 'the goods already purchased were transported over the mountains in wagons to the Sycamore Shoals.' " 3 1
FAILURE OF THE TRANSYLVANIA COLONY. "Serious dan- gers from without began to threaten the safety and integrity of the colony. While the Transylvania legislature was in session, Governor Josiah Martin of North Carolina inglori- ously fled from his 'palace', and on the very day that his emissary, a British spy, arrived at Boonesborough, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, escaped to the pro- tection of the British vessel, the 'Fowey' . . . At Oxford, N. C., on September 25, 1775, the proprietors of the Tran- sylvania company drew up a memorial to the Continental Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, for the recognition of the Transylvania company as the fourteenth American colony; but this was refused "until it had been properly ac- knowledged by Virginia." Application was then made to the Virginia convention at Williamsburg for recognition, but the effort of Henderson, assisted by Thomas Burke, was "de- feated chiefly through the opposition of two remarkable men : George Rogers Clark, who represented the rival settlement of Harrodsburg in Kentucky, and Patrick Henry, who sought to extend in all directions the power and extent of the 'Ancient Dominion of Virginia.' Under pressure of Henderson's repre- sentations, Virginia finally acknowledged the validity of the Transylvanians' claims against the Indians; but boldly con- fiscated the purchase, and made of Transylvania a county of Virginia. Instead of the 20,000,000 acres obtained by the treaty of Sycamore Shoals, Virginia granted the company 200,000 acres between the Ohio and Green rivers, and North Carolina later granted to the company a like amount on Powell and Clinch rivers in Tennessee." 3 2
HENDERSON AND JAMES ROBERTSON. Dr. Archibald Hen- derson claims for his kinsman the honor of "having accom-
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plished for Tennessee, in the same constructive way as he had done for Kentucky [at Boonesborough], the pioneer task of establishing a colony in the midst of the Tennessee wilder- ness, devising a system of laws and convening a legislature for the passage of those laws." This was nothing less than the settlement of Nashborough (now Nashville) and the coun- try surrounding it; for he claims that "under Henderson's direction Robertson made a long and extended examination of the region in the neighborhood of the French Lick, just as Boone in 1769-1771 had made a detailed examination under Henderson's direction of the Kentucky area. Upon his re- turn to the Watauga settlements on the Holston, Robertson found many settlers ready and eager to take the great step towards colonization of the new lands, inspired by the prom- ise of Henderson and the enthusiastic reports of Robertson and his companions." It was while Henderson was engaged in surveying the line between Virginia and North Carolina- "the famous line of latitude of 36° 30' "-"that the Watauga settlers set out for the wilderness of the Cumberland. Part of these settlers went by water-down the Tennessee and up the Cumberland rivers-under the leadership of Col. John Donelson, father of Mrs. Andrew Jackson, and the others, under Robertson, overland. Donelson's diary records the meeting of Richard Henderson on Friday, March 31, 1780. Henderson not only supplied the party with all needed in- formation but informed them that "he had purchased a quan- tity of corn in Kentucky to be shipped at the Falls of Ohio (Lousville) for the Cumberland settlement. James
Robertson's party had already arrived and built a few log cabins on a cedar bluff above the 'Lick', when Donelson's party arrived by boat, April 24,1780. Henderson himself ar- rived soon afterwards, and, assisted by James Robertson, drew up and adopted a plan of civil government for the col- ony. A land office was established; the power to appoint the entry-taker was vested in Henderson, as president of the Transylvania company, and the Transylvania company was to be paid for the lands at the rate of 26 lbs., 13 shillings and 4 pence, current money, a hundred acres, as soon as the com- pany could assure the settlers a satisfactory and indisputable title. This resulted in perpetual non-payment, since in 1783, North Carolina, following Virginia's lead, expropriated the
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lands of the Transylvania company, granting them in com- pensation a tract of 200,000 acres in Powell's Valley." Hen- derson returned to North Carolina, and died in 1785, aged fifty; and although memorials in his honor have been erected in Tennessee and Kentucky, his grave at Nutbush creek in North Carolina is unmarked; "and North Carolina has erected no monument as yet to the man who may justly be termed the founder of Kentucky and Tennessee." 3 3
THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS. 34 "One sentence of this backwoods constitution [of Nashborough], remarkable in its political anticipation, is nothing less than that establishing for the first time in America the progressive doctrine of which so much is heard today, the recall of judges . . . and must for- ever be associated in American history with the names of Henderson and his coadjutor, Robertson : 'As often as the people in general are dissatisfied with the doings of the judges or triers so to be chosen, they may call a new election in any of the said stations, and elect others in their stead, having due respect to the number now agreed to be elected at each station, which persons so to be chosen shall have the same power with those in whose room they shall or may be chosen to act.'"
BOONE'S TRAIL. The North Carolina Society of the Daugh- ters of the American Revolution marked Boone's trail in North Carolina by planting iron tablets bolted to large boulders at Cook's Gap, Three Forks' Church, Boone Village, Hodge's Gap, Graveyard or Straddle Gap, and at Zionville, in October, 1913. Addresses were made at Boone courthouse October 23, 1913, by Mrs. W. N. Reynolds, State Regent, Mrs. Lindsay Patterson, chairman of committee on Boone's trail, and Mrs. Theo. S. Morrison, Regent of Edward Buncombe Chapter.
RECORD EVIDENCE OF THE RESIDENCE OF THE BOONES. Jonathan Boone sold to John Hardin (Deed Book No. 5, p. 509, Ashe county) 245 acres on the 15th of September, 1821, for $600-on the North side of New river and on both sides of Lynches' Mill creek, adjoining Jesse Councill's line, and running to Shearer's Knob. This was near the town of Boone. The John Hardin mentioned above was the father of John and Joseph Hardin of Boone, and his wife was Lottie, the daugh- ter of Jordan Councill, Sr., and the daughter of Benjamin Howard. On the 7th of November, 1814, Jesse Boone entered
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100 acres on the head waters of Watauga river, beginning on a maple, Jesse Coffey's corner, and obtained a grant therefor on the 29th of November, 1817. (Deed Book "F," Ashe county, p. 170.)
NOTES.
"Thwaites' "Daniel Boone," pp. 22, 69.
Ibid., 23.
"Ibid., 73.
"Ibid., p. 66.
"Statement of James M. Isbell to J. P. A. in May, 1909, at latter's home.
"It "could still be seen, a few years ago, at the foot of a range of hills some seven and a half miles above Wilkesboro, in Wilkes county." Thwaites' "Daniel Boone," p. 68.
"That inscription is not legible now. The picture of it opposite page 56 of Thwaites' "Daniel Boone" shows that. If it had been made in 1760 it would not have been legible in 1856 when Captain W. T. Pritchett of Jonesboro, Tennessee, was a boy, as he stated was the case in June, 1909, to J. P. A.
"Some think Boone went down Brushy Fork to Dr. Phillips's present home on Cove creek and crossed Phillipe' gap to Beaver Dams and thence by Baker's gap to Roan's creek. This, however, would not have brought him to Shoun's Cross Roads, below which about three-fourths of a mile he is said to have made a camp on the old Wagner farm, now owned by Wiley Jenkins.
.Dr. Jordan B. Phillips has always heard that George's gap is so called from George Finley who so often hunted with Boone.
1.Holland Hodges says Dog Skin creek is so called because settlers on it used to kill all stray dogs to get their skins for tanning.
11Thwaites, 25.
11 Martin's North Carolina, Vol. II, p. 339, cited in Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84, p. 149.
18Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee, p. 204, cited in Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84, p. 149.
14Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84, p. 153.
1"Thwaites' "Life of Boone," p. 21.
"The only evidence of that is the inscription on the beach tree nine miles north of Jonesboro, Tennessee, about killing a bear on that tree in 1760.
17Thwaites, pp. 1, 2, 25, 43.
""Thwaites' "Daniel Boone," p. 117.
"Ibid., p. 1356.
"Ibid., p. 143.
?! Ibid., p. 158.
"Ibid., p. 165-7.
""" Footprints on the Sands of Time," by Dr. A. B. Cox, p. 106.
"Statement of T. C. Bowie, Esq., to J. P. A., in September, 1912.
?'" Life and Times of Richard Henderson," Charlotte Observer, April 6, 1913. "] bid., May 11, 1913.
?"Ibid. 18Ibid.
"›Ibid.
** Ibid.
"Ibid.
"2Ibid.
"Ibid., June 1.
"Ibid.
CHAPTER V REVOLUTIONARY DAYS
OUR PART IN THE REVOLUTION. 1 In the summer of 1880 "the British were making a supreme effort to dismember the colonies by the conquest of the Southern States." "They thought," says Holmes, "that important advantages might be expected from shifting the war to the rich Southern colonies, which chiefly upheld the financial credit of the Confederacy in Europe, and through which the Americans received most of their military and other supplies." "The militiaman of Western North Carolina was unique in his way. Regarded by his government, in the words of Governor Graham, as 'a self-supporting institution,' he went forth to service gener- ally without thought of drawing uniform, rations, arms or pay. A piece of white paper pinned to his hunting cap was his uniform; a wallet of parched flour or a sack of meal was his commissariat; a tin-cup, a frying-pan and a pair of sad- dle-bags, his only impedimenta; his domestic rifle-a Deckard or a Kutter-and sometimes a sword, made in his own black- smith shop, constituted his martial weapons; a horse capable of 'long subsisting on nature's bounty' was his means of rapid mobilization or 'hasty change of base'; a sense of manly duty performed, his quarter's pay. Indeed, his sense of propriety would have been rudely shocked by any suggestion of reward for serving his endangered country. . . An expert rider and an unerring shot, he was yet disdainful of the discipline that must mechanaze a man into a soldier or convert a mob into an army . . . he was so tenacious of personal freedom as to be jealous of the authority of officers chosen by his vote."
THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES. Alamance was but the forerunner of the declaration of independence at Mecklen- burg, the proof of which follows :
Hon. George Bancroft, the historian, and at the time Min- ister to England, wrote to David L. Swain, at Chapel Hill, July 4, 1848, as follows : "The first account of the Resolves 'by the people in Charlotte Town, Mecklenburg County,' was
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Robert Henry
(From a daguerreotype taken when he was in his 94th year.)
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sent over by Sir James Wright, then Governor of Georgia, in a letter of the 20th of June, 1775. The newspaper thus trans- mitted is still preserved, and is in number 498 of the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. 1 Tuesday, June 13, 1775. I read the Resolves, you may be sure, with reverence, and immediately obtained a copy of them, thinking myself the sole discoverer. I do not send you the copy, as it is iden- tically the same with the paper you enclosed to me, but I for- ward to you a transcript of the entire letter of Sir James Wright. The newspapers seem to have reached him after he had finished his dispatch, for the paragraph relating to it is added in his own handwriting, the former part being written by a secretary. . . It is a mistake if any have supposed that the Regulators were cowed down by their defeat at Ala- mance."
THE MEN OF ASHE AND BUNCOMBE. As many of those who had taken part in the Mecklenburg Resolves bore their part in the Revolutionary War which followed, and then moved into Ashe and Buncombe counties, west of the Blue Ridge, the interest of their descendants in the reality of that heroic step is intense. As, also, many of these men were with Sevier and McDowell in the expedition to and battle of Kings Mountain, the following account of their experiences through the mountains of Western North Carolina and of the landmarks which still mark their old trails must be of equal importance.
WESTERN NORTH CAROLINIANS WON THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.3 After the battle of Alamance, the defiance declared at public meetings, the declaration of independence at Meck- lenburg and at Halifax; after Gates' defeat at Camden, Au- gust 16, 1780, and Sumter's rout at Fishing creek, Corn- wallis started northward to complete the conquest of Vir- ginia and North Carolina. "At this dark crisis the Western North Carolinians conceived and organized and, with the aid which they sought and received from Virginia and the Wa- tauga settlement [the latter being then a part of North Caro- lina] now in Tennessee, carried to glorious success at Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, an expedition which thwarted all the plans of the British commander, and restored the almost lost cause of the Americans and rendered possible its final triumph at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. This
W. N. C .- 7
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expedition was without reward or the hope of reward, under- taken and executed by private individuals, at their own instance, who furnished their own arms, conveyances and supplies, bore their own expenses, achieved the victory, and then quietly retired to their homes, leaving the benefit of their work to all Americans, and the United States their debtors for independence."
VANCE, MCDOWELL AND HENRY. "The white occupation of North Carolina had extended only to the Blue Ridge when the Revolution began"; but at its close General Charles McDowell, Col. David Vance and Private Robert Henry were among the first to cross the Blue Ridge and settle in the new county of Buncombe. ' As a reward for their services, no doubt, they were appointed to run and mark the line between North Carolina and Tennessee in 1799, McDowell and Vance as commissioners and Henry as surveyor. While on this work they wrote and left in the care of Robert Henry their narra- tives of the battle of Kings Mountain and the fight at Cowan's ford. After his death Robert Henry's son, William L. Henry, furnished the manuscript to the late Dr. J. F. E. Hardy, and he sent it to Dr. Lyman C. Draper, of Wisconsin. On it is largely based his "King's Mountain and its Heroes" (1880).
DAVID VANCE. He was the grandfather of Governor and General Vance; "came south with a great tide of Scotch-Irish emigration which flowed into the Piedmont country from the middle colonies between 1744 and 1752, and made his home on the Catawba river, in what is now Burke, and was then Rowan county, where he married Miss Brank about 1775; and here, pursuing his vocation as a surveyor and teacher, the beginning of the Revolutionary war found him. He was one of the first in North Carolina to take up arms in support of the colonies, and in June, 1776, was appointed ensign in the second North Carolina regiment of Regular Continental troops, and shortly thereafter was promoted to a lieuten- ancy, and served with his regiment until May or June, 1778, "when the remnant of that regiment was consolidated with other North Carolina troops. He served at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and was with Washington at Val- ley Forge through the terrible winter of 1777-78. In command of a company he fought at Ramseur's Mill, Cowpens, and King's Mountain in 1780-81. His son David was the father
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of Zebulon and Robert B. Vance, the United States senator and Confederate general respectively, was a prominent and influential citizen of his time, and a captain in the War of 1812, which, however, terminated before his regiment reached the theater of war.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM MOORE. He was from Ulster county, Ireland, and was the first white man to settle west of the Blue Ridge in Buncombe. He was with his brother-in-law, Griffith Rutherford when that officer came through Buncombe in 1776 on his way to punish the Cherokees, and was struck with the beauty and fertility of the spot on which he after- wards settled, six and a half miles west of Asheville, the pres- ent residence, remodeled and enlarged, of Dr. David M. Gudger. He was a captain of one of Rutherford's com- panies. He returned in 1777 and built a fort on the site above referred to, obtaining a grant for 640 acres from Gov- ernor Caswell soon afterwards, for "land on Hominy creek, Burke county." But he had to leave his new home for the Revolutionary War, in which he served gallantly, returning at its close with his own family-his wife being Gen. Ruth- erford's sister-and five others. He had three sons, William, Samuel, and Charles, and three daughters, all of whom mar- ried Penlands, brothers. William and Samuel moved to Georgia, and Charles, the youngest, fell heir to the home place. Of him Col. Allen T. Davidson says in The Lyceum for April, 1891, page 24, that he had been born in a fort on Hom- iny creek "and was one of the most honorable, hospitable, open-hearted men it was my good fortune to know, whom I was taught by my parents to revere and respect; and I can now say I never found in him anything to lessen the high es- timate placed upon him by them."
MOUNTAIN TORIES. There was a man named Mills men- tioned in "The Heart of the Alleghanies" as living in Hen- derson county during the Revolutionary War; local tradi- tion says there was a Tory named Hicks who at some time during the Revolutionary War built himself a pole cabin on what is now the Meadow Farm near Banners Elk; but which was for years known as Hick's Improvement. Benjamin How- ard built what is known as the Boone cabin for the accommo- dation of himself and his herders when they were looking after the cattle grazing on the mountains near what is now the
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town of Boone. Howard's Knob, where he is said to have had a cave, and Howard's creek are named for him. His daughter Sarah married Jordan Council, Sr., a prominent citizen, and they lived near the oak tree that has buck-horns embedded in its trunk, near Boone village. There is also here, at the spring, a large sycamore tree which grew from a switch stuck in the moist soil by Jesse Council, eldest son of Jordan Council, about one hundred years ago. Howard was a Tory. Some of the Norris family are said to have been Tories also; and two men, named White and Asher, were killed by the Whigs near Shull's Mills during the Revolutionary War. 5 There were, doubtless, other Tories hidden in these mountains during those troublous times. Daniel Boone himself was not above suspicion, and escaped conviction under charges of dis- loyalty at Boonesborough, Ky., by pleading that his acts of apparent disloyalty were due to the fact that he had been "playing the Indians in order to gain time for getting rein- forcements to come up." "
THE NORRIS FAMILY. William Norris settled on Meat Camp, and his brother Jonathan on New river, about 1803, probably, as William was less than ninety when he died in 1873.
THOMAS HODGES came to Hodges' gap one, and a half miles west of what is now Boone, during the Revolutionary War. He came from Virginia, and brought his family with him. He was a Tory and was seeking to keep out of taking up arms against Great Britain when he came to his new home. There was a Norris in this section who was also a Tory. Thomas Hodges' son Gilbert married a daughter of Robert Shearer who lived on New River, three miles from Boone, and died there about 1845. Robert Shearer was a Scotchman who had fought in the American army. In 1787 Gilbert was born, and lived at the place of his birth in Hodges' gap till his death in December, 1862. Hollard Hodges, a son of Gilbert, was born there July 18, 1827, and is still there. He still remembers that about 1856 he and Jordan McGhee in one day killed 432 rattlesnakes on a rocky and cliffy place on the Rich mountain about three miles from Boone; and that he has always heard that Ben. Howard had entered all the land about Hodges gap. His wife was born Elizabeth Councill, and is a grand-doughter of Jordan Councill, Sr., whose wife was Sallie, daughter of Ben. Howard.
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HENDERSON COUNTY HEROES. In her history of Hender- son county, written for this work, Mrs. Mattie S. Candler says, "here are unquestionably numbers of quiet sleepers in the little old and neglected burying grounds all over the county who followed Shelby and Sevier at Kings Mountain," and mentions the grandfather of Misses Ella and Lela McLean and Mrs. Hattie Scott as having fought against his immediate relatives in the British army on that occasion, receiving a se- vere wound there. Elijah Williamson is said to have lived in Henderson county on land now owned by Preston Patton, his great grandson. Williamson was born in Virginia, moved to Ninety-Six, S. C., and afterwards settled on the Patton farm, where he planted five sycamore trees, naming each for one , of his daughters. They still stand. Samuel Fletcher, ances- tor of Dr. G. E. Fletcher and of Mrs. Wm. R. Kirk and Miss Estelle Edgerton of Hendersonville, owned an immense tract adjoining the Patton farm, to which it is supposed he came about the time that Elijah Williamson did.
DESCENDANTS OF REVOLUTIONARY HEROES. Representatives of several Revolutionary soldiers reside in these mountains, among whom are the Alexanders, Davidsons, Fosters, McDowells, Coffeys, Bryans, Penlands, Wisemans, Allens, Welches, and scores of others, who fought in North Caro- lina. Others are descendants of Nathan Horton, who was a member of the guard at the execution of Major Andre, when he carried a shot-gun loaded with one ball and three buck- shot. J. B. Horton, a direct descendant, has the gun now. J. C. Horton, who lives on the South Fork of the New River, near Boone, has a grandfather's clock which his ancestor, Nathan Horton, brought with him from New Jersey over one hundred years ago. The late Superior Court Judge, L. L. Greene of Boone, and the Greenes of Watauga generally, trace their descent directly from General Nathanael Greene, who conducted the most masterly retreat of the Revolutionary War, when he slowly retired before Cornwallis from Camden to Yorktown, and won the applause of even the British. 7
THE OLD FIELD. Where Gap creek empties into the South Fork of New River is a rich meadow on which, according to tradition, there has never been any trees. It has been called the "old field" time out of mind. It was here that Col. Cleveland was captured by a notorious Tory named Riddle
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and his followers during the Revolutionary War. 8 The apple tree under which it is said he was seated when surprised and captured is still standing in the yard of the old Luther Per- kins home, ' now occupied by a son of Nathan Waugh. The tree is said to be 180 years old. It is three feet in diam- eter six feet from the ground, and still bears fruit. It is said that Mrs. Perkins sent her daughter to notify Ben Greer and Joseph Calloway of Cleveland's capture and that they followed him by means of twigs dropped in the river as he was led up stream, having joined the party of Captain Cleve- land, who had gone in pursuit. Greer lived four miles above Old Field and Calloway two miles below. It is said that Greer shot one of the captors at Riddle's knob, to which point Cleveland had been taken, and that the rest fled, Cleve- land himself dropping behind the log on which he had been seated while slowly writing passes for his captors. It is also claimed that Ben. Greer fired the shot which killed Col. Fer- guson at Kings Mountain. 1ºRoosevelt says Ferguson was pierced by half a dozen bullets. (Vol. iii, 170).
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