Preacher's journals reveal rigors of travel

Kathy N Ross
March 30, 2001

THE ENTERPRISE MOUNTAINEER

Francis Asbury is a name now known best among Methodists, but at one time his face was probably known by more Americans than any other.

Biographers of the Methodist preacher, missionary and bishop estimate he traveled 270,000 miles in the newly formed United States, preached more than 16,000 sermons and ordained about 4,000 preachers. The quarter-million-plus miles that Asbury. traveled by horseback, carriage and on foot included several jourieys into Haywood County just after this county was formed.

Asbury spent much of his time in North Carolina - 72 visits in all - and many of those were in the western part of the state. Of those visits, only two for a certainty included stops in Haywood, though there may have been more. However, this county holds several distinctions when it comes to Asbury's service to humanity.

Haywood could claim the distinction of being among the most adventuresome of Asbury's travels. It is home to a trail named in his honor, maintained by Boy Scouts in honor of one of those harrowing journeys. And it holds one of only two houses still standing in North Carolina that is without a doubt related to Asbury's work.

Like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, Asbury came from England, where be was born near Birmingham in 1745. He had little formal education but was an avid reader. When Wesley asked who among his disciples would go to the New World to preach the news of Jesus Christ, Asbury volunteered.

He arrived in the colonies in 1771, before there was a United States, though Asbury's first visit to North Carolina was not until 1789. He traveled up and down the East Coast, preaching, baptizing, organizing and administering Methodist conferences.

Asbury also performed a service to history by keeping journals of his travels. The North Carolina portions of those journals have been compiled by writer Grady L Carroll.

Asbury usually traveled by horseback, sometimes by wagon or a lightweight carriage known as a chaise. But the roads were often too poor for wagon travel. 'Mat was particularly true for the mountain regions, which Asbury visited frequently. His journal entries give us a glimpse not only into religious fife in the early 19th century but into the tremendous effort and risk it took to travel in this region when roads were few and bridges almost nonexistent.

Conditions were prim~itive, even when Asbury and company could find a cabin or house. In one of his earliest mountain visits, Asbury wrote "we were presented a little flax for our beds on which we spread our coats and blankets," and slept before the fire. A few days later he described his descent down Iron Mountains, "which is steep like the roof of a house and trying to my lungs." Often the group would leap down ledges three and four feet in height At the time, he was in his 50s.

On a later journey, Asbury was traveling from Hot Springs in Madison County up the French Broad River to what is now Asheville, when he described a near calamity.

Their chaise, which was unoccuppied,at that moment, and the horse pulling it went over the side of the road toward the river. Both came to rest, bottom up, caught against a sapling. That slender tree kept both horse and chaise from going into the water. Both were righted, and the horse escaped serious injury. On a short ways farther, Asbury wrote, they spotted a family with its clothing spread out on the ground, "part of the loading of household furniture from a wagon which had overset and was thrown into the stream, and bedclothes, bedding & c. were so wet that the poor  people found it necessary to dry them on the spot"

Early Settlers

Soon after, Asbury's team left the chaise behind.

"This mode of conveyance by no means suits the roads of this wilderness," he wrote.

In 1802, when he was 57 and traveling from Newport to Hot Springs, he wrote that he "grew afraid and dismounted and with the help of a pine sapling worked my way down the steepest and roughest part. I could bless God for life and limbs."

Asbury's entries read like a Who's Who of Western North Carolina early settlers. He visited Jacob Shook, one of the first settlers in Haywood County and Methodism's patron here. He ordained preacher Samuel Edney, who in turn preached throughout the mountains and for whom Edneyville is named. He stayed with the Davidsons, for whom the Davidson River in Transylvania County is named, and with the Fletchers, whose name is now given to a town. The Mills home, whose family gave its name to Mills River, was among his frequent stops.

The Methodist preacher did not make it into Haywood County until 1810, when he was 65 years old, Two years before, his associate, Henry Boehm, had left Asbury at what is now Asheville and gone to "Pigeon Creek to preach to the Dutch," who were actually the German-speaking settlers of Dutch Cove. Boehm preached six times at Dutch Cove before catching up with his mentor in Henderson County.

But Asbury's first journey into Haywood was particularly memorable, given the route he and his companions traveled.

Wilderness Crossing

It was his 62nd visit to North Carolina, and this time Asbury took what was called the Mahon Road from near what is now Pigeon Forge in eastern Tennessee, traveling to Cosby and from there on an old Indian trail through Cataloochee.

On Nov. 30, 1810, the 65-year-old Asbury and company reached the banks of Cataloochee Creek.

"Our troubles began at the foaming, roaring stream which hid the rocks," he wrote. "At Cataloochee, I walked over a log."

Accounts of others on the trip reveal that the group fed the horses and took bread on the stream bank. Then John McGee led the horses through the water while Asbury, Boehm and another man crossed on the log. According to Asbury, however, that was just the beginning.

"0, the mountain - height after height and five miles over!" he wrote. "After crossing over streams and losing ourselves to the woods, we came in, about nine o'clock at night, to Vater (Father) Shuck's. What an awful day!"

Asbury does not specifically mention preaching at Jacob Shook's home on that visit. However, tradition holds that he did, and it was as a result of this preaching that Shook was converted and became a powerful advocate to the Methodist cause, donating land for a camp meeting site and what would become Louisa Chapel, the first Methodist Church in the county.

Asbury did not describe the route the four men took from Cataloochee to the Shook house. The most-used path at the time would have been down Cove Creek, up Jonathan Creek to Dellwood Pass, then on to what is now Clyde.

The traveling preacher/bishop recorded another visit to Haywood County in 1813, when he stopped at "Jarratt's on the Pigeon River"while traveling from Tennessee to North Carolina.

Much of that trip was taken by carriage, a sign the roads may have been improving. However, the carriage was stopped by a large fallen tree across the road. Asbury's companion, John Wesley Bond, leaped from the carriage, grabbed an ax carried on its side, and chopped the tree, limb by limb, until it could be removed.

We know that year was a dry one, for Asbury wrote of a great drought in the mountains."I think I never saw the rivers so low," he wrote.

"The work of God groweth in the neighborhood," he wrote on that same visit. 'here is a house thirty five by forty feet built in the fork of Pigeon River."

During that same visit, Asbury was "hastened to a camp meeting on the bleak hills of Haywood," but he was afflicted with asthma and took to bed, while Bond preached in his stead.

Aging and Ailing

Asbury's dedication was much stronger than his health; as early as 1799, doctors were telling him he needed to give up his evangeism for health's sake. His journals are full of ailments brought on by his travels, particularly his rigorous journeys in the mountains.

I rode, I walked, I sweated, I trembled, and my old knees failed," he wrote in 1806 on another mountain visit. He was compelled to continue by what he often called the "neglected" people of the wilderness settlements.

Though aged and in poor health, Asbury continued to preach. He was sometimes carried into courthouses or churches by his companions to deliver his sermons. He died at Fredericksburg, Va., in 1816 at the age of 70, having made his last visit to North Carolina just months before. For the last 44 years of his life, Asbury had no place to call his home. Mail from England sent to him was simply sent to Francis Asbury/United States, for it was assumed that wherever it arrived it would be held for him until a visit.

Sources for this history include "Francis Asbury in North Carolina" by Grady L. E. Carroll; "Methodism in Western North Carolina "by Elmer T. Clark, "The Heart of Asbury's Journal" by Ezra Squier Tipple.

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