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County History.
 

Formation of the County.— In 1848 George Bower, called "Double Head" because of his wisdom and farsightedness, was in the State Senate from Ashe, and Reuben Mast in the House. Bower lived in Jefferson, while Mast lived near Valle Crucis, thirty-five miles from the county-seat, which rendered it very inconvenient for him and his neighbors to attend court. As Ashe County embraced in its limits not only what is now Watauga, but the present county of Alleghany also, it could very well spare the southern portion, which was too remote for convenience. Besides, Jordan Councill, Jr., lived in the territory which it was sought to detach from the mother county, and his influence, which was great, was thrown for the new county. As he was the brother-in-law of Senator Bower, he naturally "had the ear of the court." A bill for a new county was, accordingly, introduced in the legislature and passed in 1849.

Jordan Councill, Jr's Influence.— This gentleman for years kept the only store in this section. He fixed prices of all things in which he dealt. He bought large steers for as low as nine dollars each, and drove them and the larger cattle to the Valley of Virginia, frequently accompanied by his brother-in-law, George Bower. From Virginia they went north and bought their stocks of goods, shipping them by water to Richmond, VA., and from there by canal boat to Lynchburg, from which point they were brought by wagon to Boone and Jefferson. Other goods were shipped by water to Fayetteville, from which they were brought by wagon to Boone. Councill would load wagons with deer hams and hides, butter, cranberries, dried fruit, beeswax, tallow, etc., and, drawn by six horses, these wagons were hauled to Charleston, SC. With the wagon train went droves of mules and horses, which were sold along the road to planters and goods purchased with the proceeds. He unwittingly hauled

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a rat in a goods box from Charleston to Boone on one occasion. He drove cattle-fat cows and heifers-to Charlotte and Concord. Large droves of cattle, horses and mules passed through Boone from Kentucky to the South and East before and since the Civil War. Hogs were driven through before, but not since the Civil War. When the location of the county seat was to be determined it was the influence of Jordan Councill, Jr., that fixed it near his store and dwelling. Some wanted the court house at Bushy Fork and others at Valle Crucis. It would most probably have been located at the Muster Ground, half a mile east of Boone, if Benjamin Councill, Sr., had been willing to donate the ground for that purpose, but as Ransom Hayes and Jordan Councill, Jr., were willing to donate twenty-five acres each, it was determined to locate the court house where F. A. Linney's residence now stands, Hayes deeding twenty-five acres between the branch above Blackburn's hotel, then called Upper Branch, and the branch that flows by the new post office, then called the Middle and Lower Branches, as the stream that flows west of the Critcher hotel–the old Coffey hotel–was called.

Three New England Visitors.— Watauga has had three distinguished visitors from New England: Dr. Elisha Mitchell, of the North Carolina University; Charles Dudley Warner, and Miss Margaret W. Morley. To our everlasting regret, we pleased only that last of these, but, as she was the most recent, it is hoped that we had improved since the visits of the other two. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," said Solomon thousands of years ago. If so, then Dr. Mitchell and Mr. Warner were our friends indeed, for they "spoke right out." As Dr. Mitchell's remarks were in letters to his wife and not intended for the public, nothing he wrote rankles, but while we are anxious to attribute the Warner strictures to dyspepsia, he certainly "stuck to what he said," having preserved what he wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1884, and repeated it in book form (On Horseback) in 1888.(1) He certainly flayed us, sparing
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Note: (1)"On Horseback."

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nothing and nobody. And if, in this Land of the Sky, he saw a bird or a bee or a sunbeam; if a single pleasant odor from the chalices of the wild flowers was wafted to his nostrils, if a bird sang within his hearing or a child's prattle appealed to him once during the whole of that two hundred miles' journey through the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina in the liquid gold of our summer sunlight, he left no record of it in the saturnine account of his trip which published to the world. On the other hand, Miss Morley, who passed over a part of this same route a few years later, saw the sunshine imprisoned in our flowers, heard the strains of invisible choirs in babbling brook and singing bird, and recognized angel faces in the countenances of little children clinging to those whom Mr. Warner called their "frowsy"mothers.(1) Mr. Warner chief trouble seemed to be flies. Whenever he stopped, there seemed to him to be nothing but flies. They were not only in the ointment, but in the amber also. And no wonder, for on leaving Abingdon, VA., the saddle he rode was discovered to have been smeared the previous winter with tallow. Seat, pommel, cantle, stirrup leathers and saddle skirts, all had been covered with tallow, which had been well rubbed in when they were put away the winter before. Mr Warner discovered this before he started on his journey, and bought white overalls, which served to protect his trousers from the grease. This grease, mixed with the dust of the road, attracted the flies, and hinc illoe lacrimoe, or words to that general effect.

Dr. Mitchell's Geological Tour.(2) — In July, 1828, this gentleman of New England birth and North Carolina adoption, for he was then a slave-owner, made a tour of the mountain counties at the expense of the State, and "determined" several specimens of minerals that were submitted to him. He passed over the Ballou iron mines, the Ore Knob copper mines, the mica mines near Beaver Creek, the porcelain clay on Howard's Creek, and was near the Elk Mountain copper vein; he visited the
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Note: (1) "The Carolina Mountains," Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston, 1913
(2) This diary was published by the University of North Carolina in its James Sprunt Historical monograph, No.6, 1905. It should be widely read.

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Grandfather and did not recognize the tamarack tree nor the great age of the rocks of that ancient pile, thinking they "belonged to the transition of Tennessee," whatever that may or may not mean. But he made no report of his journey and seemed never to have suspected that copper, iron and mica of great wealth and abundance existed at the points indicated. But he did find fault with one of our ladies because she wiped her soiled hands on her clean apron just before she began to mix the meal for his bread, and called some of the women with whom two hunters were living illicitly "schquaws, very pretty ones, but schquaws notwithstanding." He visited Robert Shearer's where he met his "pretty daughter and her husband, a good-hearted fellow, not half good enough for her." He preached at Three Forks Baptist Church, stopped at Jordan Councill's store, which he found open on Sunday, and visited Noah Mast, David Miller and several others.

The Tennessee Boundary Line.— In 1784 North Carolina passed an act to give Congress twenty-nine million acres lying between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River. Congress needed the money with which to pay off debts incurred during the Revolutionary War, but that was not the principal reason for the cession of this great territory, much of the best portions of which had been already granted to settlers. Up to that time the people of the ceded territory had presented many claims for compensation for military services, supplies, etc., in campaigns against the Cherokees, in the strict justness of which the mother State did not altogether believe. On the score of poverty North Carolina had refused to establish a Superior Court in this territory, called the Watauga Settlement, or to appoint a prosecuting officer. The four counties comprising the settlements west of the mountains were Davidson, Washington, Sullivan, and Greene, and their representatives voted in the legislature for the cession. The act of cession provided, however, that the sovereignty and jurisdiction of North Carolina should continue over the ceded territory until it should be accepted by Congress, and made the act void if Congress should not accept the gift within two years. As most of the Watauga settlers were originally

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from Virginia, the majority were anxious for an excuse to withdraw from North Carolina and set up a government of their own. The result was the attempt to establish the independent State of Franklin, with John Sevier at its head. This attempted secession failed and North Carolina resumed full jurisdiction over the disputed territory before March, 1788. Congress accepted the cession of the territory, and in 1796 the State of Tennessee was organized. In 1796 North Carolina ordered a survey of the boundary line between the two States.

Boundary Line and Land Grand Disputes.— Any map of North Carolina will show that the line between it and Tennessee runs due south from the Hiawassee River, instead of following the general southwestern direction with the trend of the mountains. The case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1914, between Tennessee and North Carolina, grew out of a dispute over the line at the head of Telico and Citico Creeks, just north of the Hiawassee River, being what is called Rainbow Country. Telico and Citico Creeks rise much further east than the points at which the State line crosses those streams, the mountain range bending eastward instead of following the general southwestern course of the range. The Supreme Court decision is to the effect that, as it was originally run and marked there, and both States adopted that line soon thereafter as being in accord with the Act of Cession, each State is bound thereby. Why Tennessee consented to this loss of territory may be accounted for by the fact that the line runs due south from the Hiawassee River to the Georgia line. There is, however no evidence that the commissioners agreed to exchange what North Carolina gained in the "Rainbow" country for what Tennessee gained south of the Hiawassee. But, in making that trade, North Carolina lost the Ducktown copper mines!

Military Land Warrants.— When the Tennessee territory was ceded to Congress the act provided that all military land warrants that had been given to soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and all entries previously made in the ceded territory,
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Note: (1) Archiblad D. Murphey anticipated trouble on this account because of the claim Tennessee was making in November, 1819, that the mountain range did not extend south of the Hiawassee river. Murphey's papers, Vol. II, p. 190.

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should be reserved for the satisfaction of those warrants and entries in case the holders of the same might not be able to satisfy them out of land fit for cultivation in North Carolina. Many of these warrants had not been so satisfied. Congress accepted these conditions. However, in 1803, at the request of Tennessee, North Carolina granted Tennessee power to issue grants and perfect titles in this reserved territory as fully as could North Carolina, except that North Carolina reserved the right to issue military warrants exclusively, which act Tennessee ratified August 4, 1804, and Congress April 18, 1806. But, as time went on, very little territory was left in Tennessee except Indian lands, to which the Indian rights had not been extinguished. As, however, North Carolina had executed to Tennessee title to all the Tennessee territory by deed dated February 25, 1790, Congress, in order to make this power effective, had to cede to the latter State nearly half of the vacant lands within it limits, which it did by the same act by which it had ratified North Carolina's grant in 1803 to Tennessee of equal with herself to issue grants and perfect titles, except military warrants, namely the act of April 18, 1806. All the territory to which still remained in Congress was the Chickasaw Indian Reservation, which by treaty of 1818 vested in Congress. Congress then empowered Tennessee to satisfy North Carolina claims out of lands lying west and south of the line prescribed in the act of April 18, 1806. North Carolina notified holders of her military warrants of this and caused the muster roll to be published and transcribed, but went on thereafter to issue additional military warrants until the muster roll had been filled. But, in 1840, some of these military land warrants and some entries also remained unsatisfied. Tennessee, claiming that she had already provided for all valid military land warrants, refused to make provision for those still outstanding. But this provision had required the submission of such claims to a commission which had been appointed by Tennessee alone, and had ceased to exist from October 22, 1822, so that no North Carolina military land warrants issued after that date could be submitted to that commission. Under these circumstances

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Robert Love, of Haywood County, prepared and submitted to Congress a memorial in 1816, and succeeded, apparently, in getting these claims satisfied, and another memorial was drawn up and sent to Congress by Archibald Murphey January 29, 1824, according to Murphey's Papers (Vol. II pp. 320, 328). Many of these military land warrants were held by the descendants of Revolutionary soldiers in Ashe, afterwards Watauga County.

Running the State Line.— As the Cherokees occupied the territory southwest of the Big Pigeon River in what is now Haywood County, no provision was made for running the line beyond this point. Generally speaking, the line was to follow the tops of the Stone, the Smoky and the Unaka Mountains from Virginia to Georgia, but to be surveyed and marked only from Virginia to the Pigeon. The surveying party consisted of Col. Joseph McDowell, David Vance, Mussendine Matthews, speaker of the House, commissioners. John Strother and Robert Henry were the surveyors. The party met May 19, 1799, at Captain Isaac Weaver's, near what is now Tuckerdale, a station on the new Virginia-Carolina Railway, in Ashe County. The chain bearers and markers were B. Collins, James Hawkins, George Penland, Robert Logan, George Davidson, and J. Matthews. James Neely was commissary. In addition, there were two pack horse men and a pilot. The survey began on the 20th of May and ended the 28th of June, 1799. They camped on the night of the 23d of May in the Cut Laurel Gap, whence they sent John Strother down to David Miller's on Meat Camp to get a young man to act as pilot, but Strother failed to do so, and then went on "to Cove Creek, where I got a Mr. Curtis and met the company in a low gap between the waters of Cove Creek and Roan's Creek, where the road crosses the same." This road must have been the Indian trail which passes over the low gap between what is now Zionville, NC and Trade, TN. Traces of this trail can still be seen to the right of the present wagon road. It was this trail that Boone followed on his first trip to Kentucky. The new pilot was discharged on the 28th because he proved "not to be a woodsman;" and on June 1st

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they came to the Wattogoo River. This was a short distance above Watauga Falls, where they killed a lean bear, just out of winter quarters, which they ate "with bacon and johnny cake on Sunday morning." As the act of cession required the line to be run from the "place where the Watauga River breaks through the mountain a direct course to the top of the Yellow Mountain where Bright's Road crosses the same," and the Yellow was not visible from the river bed, the surveyors had to go back to the peak overhanging the Falls and get the bearing of the Yellow from that point. The diaries of Strother and Henry show that the line was actually run and marked from the Watauga Falls to the top of the Yellow, though a local tradition maintains that the party simply found the easiest path to the top of the Yellow, without surveying or marking a straight line from the point where the river breaks through the mountain. It was here that the Cranberry vein deflected their compasses. It was on Saturday, June 1st, that they came across a very large rattlesnake, which Strother called a rattlebug. They tried to kill it, but "it was too souple in the heels for us." In Robert Henry's diary he mentions Gideon Lewis as the guide from White Top Mountain to the place where they sent for another, when they got to the head of Meat Camp. One of his descendants, David Lewis, lives near Ashland, and Rev. Gideon Lewis, a Dunkard minister, lives now in Taylor's Valley, TN. Most of the Lewises of Watauga are descended from the same Gideon who piloted these surveyors along the State line in 1799.

Watauga County Lines.— In order to determine the lines of Watauga County it is necessary to give the various calls of several counties, as follows:

Of Burke: Beginning at the Catawba River on the line between Rowan and Tyron Counties; thence running up the meanders of said river to the north end of an island known by the name of the "Three Cornered Island;" thence north to the ridge that divides the Yadkin and Catawba waters; thence westerly along the ridge to the mountains that divides the eastern and western waters, commonly known by the name of the Blue Mountains (sic). All that part of Rowna County which

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lies west and south of the said dividing line shall thenceforth be erected into a new county by the name of Burke, while that part east of the dividing line shall remain Rowan County. Laws of 1777.

Of Buncombe: Beginning on the extreme height of the Appalachian Mountain where the southern boundary of the State crosses the same; thence along the extreme height of said mountain to where the road from the head of Catawba River to "Swannanoe" (sic) crosses; thence along the main ridge dividing the waters of South Toe from those of "Swannanoe" unto the Great Black Mountain; thence along the mountain to the northeast end; thence along the main ridge between South Toe and Little Crabtree to the mouth of said Crabtree Creek; thence down Toe River to where it empties into the Nolechucky River (sic)'(1) thence down the said river to the extreme height of the Iron Mountain and Cession Line; thence along the Cession Line to the southern boundary; thence along said boundary to the Blue Ridge, and thence to the beginning. Laws of 1791.

Of Ashe: "That all that part of the county of Wilkes lying west of the extreme height of the Appalachian Mountains shall be and the same is hereby erected into a separate and distinct county by the name of Ashe." Potter's Revisal, Vol. II p. 98, Laws 1799. This is the shortest act creating a new county on record, and the supplemental acts required to make it clear shows that while brevity may be the soul of wit, it is not that of perspicuity.

In 1814 (Rev. Stat. Vol. II, p. 98) an act was passed to establish permanently the dividing line between the counties of Burke and Ashe, which was to be as follows: Beginning at the Yadkin Spring (which is fifty yards southeast of Green Park Hotel, Blowing Rock); thence along the extreme height of the Blue Ridge to the head spring of the Flat Top Fork of Elk Creek (on the right of Linville River after passing Linville Gap); thence down the meanders of said creek to the Tennessee State line, shall be and the same is hereby declared to be the permanent dividing line between the counties of Burke and Ashe.
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Note: (1)This river is now called the Toe or Estatoe till after it passes into Tennessee when it becomes the Nollechucky, or simply ‘the Chucky."

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Of Yancey: That all that part of Burke and Buncombe included within the following bounds, to wit: Beginning on the extreme height of the Black Mountain, running thence alone said mountain to Ogle's improvement; thence along the dividing ridge to Daniel Carter's Fork field; thence a direct course to the mouth of Big Ivy Creek; thence with the Warm Springs Road by Barnard's Station to the Three Forks of Laurel; thence a direct line, so as to include James Allen's house to the Tennessee line; thence with said line to the county of Ashe; thence with the line of said county to the Grandfather Mountain; thence a direct course to the extreme height of the Hump Backed Mountain (just east of Linville River above the Falls); thence with the Blue Ridge to where it intersects the Black Mountain; thence with the ridge of said mountain to the beginning, be and the same is hereby erected into a separate and distinct county by the name of Yancey. Laws of 1833.

A Supplemental Act, passed in 1813 (Rev. Stat. Vol. II, pp 170, 171), provided that the county courts of Buncombe and Yancey should appoint commissioners to ascertain the dividing line between said two counties whenever the same shall be necessary, and that they should commence their survey at Daniel Carter's Fork field and run a direct line from thence to Barnard's Station, from which point the line shall run along the old Warm Springs Road to James Allen's Road, so as to include his house, and thence to the Tennessee line.