by bluewaters | May 16, 2018 | Uncategorized
Our tour of the history of the 19 counties that comprise western North Carolina continue with Madison, that was formed in 1851 and named for President James Madison.
McDowell, formed in 1842, was named for Col. Joseph McDowell who appended “P.G.” to his signature and was called Pleasant Gardens Joe to distinguish him from his cousin “Quaker Meadows Joe”.
Mitchell, formed in 1861, was named in honor of Dr. Elisha Mitchell, a scientists and professor at the University of North Carolina, who measured the peak now known as Mountain Mitchell in 1835 and discovered it to be higher than Mount Washington in New Hampshire, then considered the highest peak in Eastern America.
Polk, formed in 1855 was named for Colonel William Polk of Revolutionary War fame.
Rutherford, in 1779, was named for Gen. Griffith Rutherford who led an expedition against the Cherokee in 1776 and wiped out some thirty towns in the first scorched earth policy on the American continent.
Swain, formed in 1871, was named for the first lawyer of Buncombe County, a man who had two nicknames “Old Warping Bars” and “Old Bunk”. His name was David Lowrie Swain. He was the state’s youngest governor, taking office when he was only thirty one years old. Later he became president of the University of North Carolina where students bestowed upon him the name “Old Bunk” since he came from Buncombe County. When Sherman’s army entered the state without resistance in April 1865, Swain, as president of the university and in absence of the governor, delivered the key of the Capitol to the victorious Union general.
Transylvania, formed in 1861, derived its name from a couple Latin words meaning “across the woods”, which is quite appropriate since much of its territory is in the forests and beautiful mountains laced with waterfalls. Incidentally, back in colonial days the high hat industry flourished in Brevard and a tax was levied on those who wore the “beavers” made in the now Transylvania County seat.
Watauga, formed in 1849, was not name for an Indian tribe as some historians argue, but for a Creek word meaning “broken waters”.
Yancey, formed in 1833, was named in honor of one of the first men in the state to favor public schools for all people, Bartlett Yancey. He was an eloquent orator, many times a member of the legislature, speaker of the State Senate, and a member of Congress. Burnsville, the county seat of Yancey, was named for Captain Otway Burns of Beaufort who won fame in the War of 1812 against England.
These then are the nineteen counties that make up Western North Carolina and how they got their names.
by bluewaters | May 9, 2018 | Uncategorized
There’s a heap of unfamiliar history behind the names of the nineteen counties that form Western North Carolina. Strangely enough, these names are as familiar to us as their origin and meaning are unfamiliar and the search for their source and significance reflect images of past people. Most folks native to the region can reel off the names of our nineteen mountain counties with the ease of a first grader reciting his or her letters, but when it comes to identifying them with the men they honor there’s a scratching of heads.
Except for genealogists and historians, chances are not one person in a hundred can identify the county named for a man known as “Old Bunk” or the county honoring “Pleasant Gardens Joe.” If you know the county named for a man who could have kept Andrew Jackson out of the history books, go to the head of the class. But we will give odds you’ll never guess the name of the county which would bear a different name if the man it honors hadn’t quarreled with his family and left Ireland.
The first in order was the 100th and the last county created in North Carolina. Avery, established in 1911, was for Colonel Waightstill Avery, Revolutionary patriot and the state’s first attorney general, who, challenged to a duel by young Andrew Jackson, allowed the young red head to fire and miss and then marched up to lecture him on his hotheadedness instead of shooting him.
Buncombe, formed in 1792, once extended to the western boundary of the state and was named for Col. Edward Buncombe who came from St. Kitts in the West Indies to Tyrrell County in 1766 where he built a mansion of 55 rooms called Buncombe Hall. He was a Revolutionary War figure, wounded at Germantown and died of his wounds while on parole in Philadelphia.
Burke, formed in 1777, extended to the Mississippi River and was named for Thomas Burke who emigrated to America because of a family quarrel. He was governor of the sate from 1781 to 1782 and is buried near Hillsborough.
Cherokee, formed in 1839, was given its name from the Indians whose lands the county encompassed. Some folks wanted to name it Junaluska, after the famous Cherokee chief.
Clary, formed in 1861, was name in honor of Henry Clay, the great patriot and orator.
Graham became a county in 1872 and named for William A. Graham, U.S. Senator, Governor, Secretary of the Navy and Confederate States Senator. Incidentally, Robbinsville, its county seat is nearer to the capitals of six other states than to its own.
Haywood, formed in 1808, was named for John Haywood, State Treasurer from 1787 to 1827, and Waynesville, the county seat, was named for General “Mad Anthony” Wayne of Revolutionary War fame.
Henderson, formed in 1838, was named for Leonard Henderson who served as Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court from 1772 until 1833. Upon his death, his successor was chosen by the toss of a coin.
Jackson, formed in 1851 was named for President Andrew Jackson and the first county seat was at Webster, named for Old Daniel, which lost out to Sylva in 1913 when the railroad bypassed it. Incidentally, the present county seat was named for a wandering Dane, William D. Sylva, who paused there briefly.
Macon, formed in 1828, was named for a statesman who argued that five dollars a day was ample pay for a Congressman and who had a rule while in Congress that “if a measure did not arouse great enthusiasm in any one section of the nation” he would consider voting for it, but not otherwise. His name was Nathaniel Macon. He was a Jeffersonian Republican and sat in Congress for 37 years, believing that government should be a policeman for the protection of life and property and nothing more. Macon was a fancier of wine made from scuppernong grape and, when sending Thomas Jefferson a couple bottles in 1819, described it as “the best in America”.
by bluewaters | May 3, 2018 | Uncategorized
Sassafras Diggin’ time is here. And the folk of the hills, who cling to some of the old customs, are searching out the tender roots of the tree that in another age rated with the spices of Ormuz and Araby as a precious substance.
They are the ones who take sassafras tea, or sass tea as a spring tonic. They will tell you that it thins the blood and prepares the body to better stand the coming heat of summer. But some are so foolish about the flavor of sassafras tea that they drink it throughout the year. For the roots can be used fresh or left to dry for later use.
Sassafras tea is simple to make. Just put a handful of the roots into a kettle, add a bit more water than you want tea, and boil it until it turns a nice red color. Take it straight or sweeten to taste, and drink hot or cold. The same roots can be used to make tea several times before the flavor is expended.
Some folks – mostly those who didn’t grow up on sass tea object to the medicinal flavor of it. Actually they have things backward. Some medicines are flavored with sassafras, but this merely mean some medicines taste of sassafras and not that sassafras tastes of medicine.
The role of the sassafras in folklore and early exploration is unique. About it have hung fantastic hopes and promises of gain and superstitions that have not yet wholly departed.
The wood appealed to the pioneer for fences, because it has less shrinkage in drying than any other hardwood and because it is durable.
Its odor was reputed to drive away bedbugs. Hen-roosts made of sassafras are supposed to keep out chicken lice.
Mountain women who used to make their own soap wouldn’t think of turning out a batch without stirring the kettle with a sassafras stick. They argued that the difference between good and bad soap was the sassafras stirring stick. Stirring with a sassafras stick did give the soap a sassafras scent.
by bluewaters | Apr 26, 2018 | Uncategorized
This is the time of year in the hills when the jaded appetite turns to turnip greens and poke sallet, speckled dock and branch lettuce. To mountain folks, weary from a dreary winter-long diet of store-bought vittles, it is a very special season. They call it green up time.
And in the hills green up time, which comes when spring starts bustin’ out all over , sends folks into the old fields and along the branches in search of wild greens. There they pick themselves a mess of creases or a bait of ramps, a poke of crow’s foot or a batch of pepper grass.
The first of the wild greens to come along is field cress, which mountain folks call creases. Found only in the fields where last year’s corn crop stood, it grows in dense, light green clusters and makes for good eating when served up with hot cornbread and buttermilk. To prepare creases, you parboil them in a kettle and then cook them in a skillet with bacon or fat back drippings.
After creases come in, there’s a heap of other wild greens for the gathering and the eating. Old time turnip sallet comes next and then crow’s foot, which some folks call Indian mustard. This potherb, which grows along branches, is easily identified by its leaves which resemble crow’s feet. The way to prepare it is to take the tender leaves and scald them with hot grease like you do lettuce that comes from the garden.
One of the favorites of all the wild greens is branch lettuce, which is quite rare and something to behold in its habitat. In the right hands, branch lettuce can be made into a dish that is mouth watering. It grows in the winding hollows where the water flows warm from the earth, or in and near the edge of a branch where the earth is dark and damp. To the botanist, its genus name is saxifrage and its species name is microanthidifolia. However, since time out of memory, mountain folks have called it branch lettuce. It is easy to recognize. It grows in beautiful pale clumps. And as the heads form and mature, a pale tint of pinkish purple edges the leaves. The leaves form a loose head, much like a relaxed open hand, palm up and fingers pointing up. They are thick and light-colored, creamy white at the center.
Chopped coarsely or used just as is you take only the smallest leaves and spread upon a serving dish, with a sauce of hot vinegar, a touch of sugar, bacon or ham drippings and covered with sliced boiled eggs, branch lettuce is something to tickle the palate.
by bluewaters | Apr 20, 2018 | Uncategorized
The names are legion and legend. But they are only names on an old map today. Not too long ago, as time is measured, they were bustling little towns and thriving settlements. There is little trace of them now. Most of them lie beneath the vast waters of Fontana Lake. Briars, poplars and sprouts have sprung up to make a tangled wilderness where others once stood in the Great Smokies.
Beneath Fontana’s waters are the sites of hundred of little farms and a score of towns, hamlets and settlements. There was Bushnell, Proctor, Noland, Forney, Wayside, Marcus, Judson, Ecola, Hubbard, Dorsey, Ritter, Medlin, Smokemont and Ravensford. Settlements of Kirkland Creek, Calhoun Branch, Bone Valley,, Walker Creek and Pilkey Creek are all gone – home now only to the bear, the deer, the fox and the owl.
These areas vanished in the great exodus of the 1940’s when the federal government flooded the land for a reservoir and turned the Smokies into a national park.
Along with the houses and the stores went the schools and the churches. Thousands of persons were uprooted and sent packing. Pioneers who had worked hard to bring education into the remote coves and valleys saw their work leveled with the destruction of the school houses at Fairview, Dorsey, Bushnell, Noland Creek, New Fairfax, Wayside, Sugar Fork, Walkers Creek and Proctor. Wiped out, too, were the churches at Proctor, Bushnell, Chambers Creek, Bone Valley and Cable Branch.
The boom town of Proctor, with a gigantic bandmill that turned out 100,000 board feet of timber daily, boasted a population of better than a thousand people, a church, three stores, a school, a clubhouse and a theater. Approximately thousand people lived on the headwaters of Hazel Creek as well and to the west, just across the ridge on Eagle Creek, there was another thousand. To the east, on Forney Creek, there was another thousand residents.
The Smoky Mountain Railroad, charted to carry passengers and freight, ran ten miles up Hazel Creek. The logging trains ran right to the top of the Smokies. The Southern Railway ran from Bryson City to Fontana, as did State Highway 288. Both were abandoned and covered over by the waters of Fontana.
Bushnell, now under water, was known far and wide. It boasted a sizeable population as a trading center and railroad freight center. It had three stores and a boarding house. The town of Judson, also under water now, was at the north side of a Southern Railroad tunnel.
Hundreds of folks ply the waters of Fontana Lake in boats every week and never know they are cruising over lost town and vanished settlements and farms. But the natives know….
by bluewaters | Apr 14, 2018 | Uncategorized
Old timers versed in the lore of moonshining will tell you that cattle and hogs are mighty fond of still-slop but that most horses despise the stuff.
They tell a story here in the mountains of a revenue agent who had a sure fire way for ferreting out corn likker stills. This was back over one hundred years ago when mountain folks looked on moonshining as their inalienable right, tax or no tax.
It was in the horse and buggy days and this revenue agent did his still hunting on horseback. His horse was in the habit of drinking a mouthful of water from every stream they forded. If there was the least taint of still-slop in the water, the horse would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The revenue agent then had only to follow up stream until he found the still.
Cattle and hogs made it difficult, too, for a moonshiner to keep his still a secret. Back in the old days when they ran wild out in the mountains, they could scent still-slop at a great distance. And since a good part of every farmer’s time was taken in keeping track of his stock, there was no place, no secret but that it was liable to be visited at any time.
In the old days, blockaders used sprouted corn in turning out their whiskey. They would put the corn in a barrel and pour hot water over it until it began to sprout. Then they would take it out and dry it. This sweet corn was then ground into meal. A feller had to have his own grist mill or bribe a miller to grind it for him. The miller was running a risk, for it was just as much against the law to grind sprouted corn as it was to make a run of whiskey.
Once ground, the sweet corn meal was made into a mash with boiling water and let stand for two or three days. Rye malt was added and it began to ferment at once.
Blockade whiskey back in the old days fetched from $2.50 to $3.00 a gallon and corn sold at 75 cents to a dollar a bushel. The average yield was two gallons to a bushel of corn.
All the old timer moonshiners double distilled their whiskey. They called it “doublings”. And that was where the real skill of whisky making came in. But even in double distilling a fellow could come up with a bad run of whiskey. If the second distillation was not carried far enough, the whiskey would be rank, though weak. If it was carried too fair it would be pure alcohol.
After they made a run, they poured out the slop from the still. And it was this still-slop that brought the cattle and the hogs running!
