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About Ashe County

Ashe County is located in the northwestern corner of the state. It was established in North Carolina General Assembly in 1799. The county was named for Samuel Ashe, a Revolutionary War patriot. It lies west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and its border with Wilkes County is defined by the Blue Ridge Parkway.

About 1740, Major Abraham Wood led a surveying party west into the Virginia wilderness. They discovered a previously unknown river that flowed north. They named this the Wood River, but the name was later changed to the New River. Another early explorer to the present-day Ashe County area was Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, a Moravian leader on a search for a new home for group. He arrived in 1752. The settlement was later built in Winston-Salem. Settlers began to settle the area around 1770.

Due to boundary changes and formation of counties, Ashe County had at one time been part of Anson County, Rowan County in 1753, Surry County in 1771 and Wilkes County in 1777. The area had also been claimed by both North Carolina and the State of Franklin. Alleghany County and Watauga County were formed from Ashe County.

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To post your Queries, Biographies, Bible Records, Deeds, Obituaries, Pensions, and Wills, please visit the Ancestry Message Board for Ashe County, North Carolina.

  Ashe County Message Board

HELLO - WELCOME!

My name is LaRae Halsey-Brooks, and my daughter,
Eireann Brooks, and I are the County Co-Coordinators
for the Ashe County NCGenWeb Project.

I've been researching our Ashe, Alleghany and Grayson County families --
Halsey, McMillan/McLamont, Gambill, Landreth, Wyatt,
Hackler/Hechler, Grayson, Nall, Davenport, Peak, Young, Weaver --
for 30+ years, and now I take great pleasure
in transcribing and posting records for all of Ashe County.

If you would like to contribute Biographical Sketches of your 
Ashe County families to this website, please let us know. 
We will be happy to create a special page for your material 
and include any photographs, scanned documents, 
or other items you'd like to add to the page.

We also would like a list of your Ashe County Surnames
with dates and townships. We'll include a link back 
so others researching your families can contact you.

If you live in or near Ashe County and would like to 
take digital photographs of cemeteries and tombstones, 
please let us know. 

If you have access to existing cemetery transcriptions, 
land records, tax rolls, school class rosters/photos, etc., 
we would be most grateful for any and all submissions.

If you are interested in hosting another county
in North Carolina for the NCGenWeb Project,
please visit the Adoptable Counties page.

Please check back from time to time
as we add more information to the page!

Thank you!
LaRae & Eireann

Ashe County Co-Coordinators:
LaRae Halsey-Brooks & Eireann Brooks

This page was last updated April 13, 2024.

© 1997-2024 by the Ashe County Coordinator
for the NCGenWeb Project