Dunn's Rock Township

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On August 15, 1800, Zachariah Candler was granted 640 acres in what was then Buncombe County, NC, on both sides of the French Broad River by the State of North Carolina. Part of the deed identifies the land as being “on the East side of the river above Nathaniel Johnston’s House about twenty or thirty poles east of the place known as the dugroad on the East bank of the river about one hundred poles below the Presbyterian Meeting house.”

During the time that this area was designated as Walton County, GA, a census listed Phoebe Dunn as the head of a family of eight. Joseph A. Dunn was born below Indian Rock in 1793. By the time Zachariah Candler sold 390 acres from his plantation in 1819, the massive outcropping of rock and the nearby stream had been named for the Dunn family.

Zachariah Candler, a Virginian, fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolution. He later served as an officer and surveyor at Fort Prince George on the Keowee River in South Carolina. As a result of the Treaty of Tellico in 1798, Candler was sent into the mountains of North Carolina to survey the southern portion of the Butler Line between the whites and the Cherokee. While at Fort Prince George, he married Mary “Polly” Boone, a grand-niece of Daniel Boone. They settled first in what is now Dunn’s Rock community, where Candler owned vast acreage. Later they moved northward to Hominy Valley in Buncombe County. Candler was said to own nearly 200,000 acres of land when he died in 1845.

The lengthy Dunn’s Rock Falls has also been called Allison Falls for Thomas J. Allison, who bought 15 acres on the creek on 10 Feb 1875 and built a gristmill.

Source: John Dunn’s email, 25 Oct 2005, HPC Box 20, Dunn’s Rock file,  
Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library

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