ShookHistory.org
 |
 |
 |
|
Jacob Shook, the Pioneer By Bob JonesCopyright Nov 2000Revised March 29, 2001USE OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE OR BY COPYRIGHT LAWS except for those uses allowed under the "fair usage" standards I. The Beginning II. Lord Granville's Trans-Catawba III. Der Saut Fark IV. Cataber V. The Mists of Time.. VI. The Cherokee, Beginnings VII. The People VIII. The French and Indian War, and the Peace Pipe IX. The Cherokee enter the American Revolution, and find defeat once again... X. The First Settlers move into the Disputed Territories XI. Hyatt and the Cherokee, fact or frontier fantasy ? XII. The Issue of the Disputed Territories is Resolved XIII. 1786, Jacob and his bride begin the journey to the Pigeon XIV. Fort and Indian Battle on Point Lookout XV. Along the Rutherford Trace, crossing the Eastern Continental Divide XVI. The Rutherford Trace, Swannanoa XVII. The Community Strong Point, a necessary institution XVIII. Gum Springs and the making of Buncombe XIX. The Great Drives XX. The War Ford and the French Broad River XXI. Captain Moore's Fort XXII. The Gateway to the Pigeon, and the "Gardens" XXIII. The "Gardens" and the loss of Eden XXIV. The arrival at "Shooks" XXV. The First Summer XXVI. A cabin is built Jacob Shook, the Pioneer All of us that have grown up in our American culture have a vision of the hardy pioneer. This figure has become the mainstay of our historical vision of early America. Daniel Boone seems the "poster child" for this vision, and his coonskin cap, deer skin coat and long rifle are familiar to us all. The local fort, built of sharpened logs set in the ground, and the related difficulties with the original inhabitants of the land, the Indians, are images and concepts we feel we know and understand. All these things indeed were elements of the early frontier, but in no way do they go far enough to enlighten the interested as to the diversity and detail of the lives of these frontiersmen. I was taught in school about the settlement of the frontier of North Carolina, but the story I learned was of the Boone genre, the story of the Scot Irish who provided the bulk of the settlers. Another story, that of the German settlers was oft reduced to a footnote, if that. As I became interested in my roots through genealogy I began to discover this seemingly alien culture was actually my own. I learned about things like the Thirty Years War and the exodus of the Protestants from the Rhineland. I learned how William Penn encouraged these Germans to come join he and his English Quakers in Pennsylvania and found a "New World" there. I saw how they came in great numbers to Lancaster, Bucks and Northampton Counties in that state, settling the areas to the west of Philadelphia beginning in the 1720s. By the 1750s there were over 100,000 of these folks living there, and even today the evidence of this settlement and culture survives in a very visible manner in the ways and appearance of the Amish and other "Pennsylvania Dutch" communities. I discovered how the sons of these immigrants found themselves unable to afford land in these crowded communities, and how in droves they went "west", which in those days before the revolution actually meant to go south down the Great Wagon Road. I learned that this was the means by which the vast majority of settlers, both Scot Irish and German came to be on the North Carolina frontier. Jacob Shook, or Schuck, was part of this tide of settlers, in the company of his father and mother, sometime in the 1760s (or soon thereafter some say), he came south, walking, from Northampton County in Pennsylvania. His family came to the area west of the Catawba River and joined the families of his aunt's, the Vollbrects and the Eigners. Some tradition says this was in 1761, and that they came as a group to Carolina, however the only evidence of this early arrival is the land grant to William Fulbright (Wilhelm Vollbrect) dated 1763 on Lyle's Creek in today's Catawba County, NC. Jacob Fulbright, William's son stated in his Pension Application many years later that it was actually 1769 when William brought the family to North Carolina. Whether they all came together, or as some suggest the Schucks came later, the fact that they were there on Lyle's Creek before the Revolution is not in dispute, and the story of Jacob Shook the pioneer must start with an understanding of that place and time. Lord Granville's Trans-Catawba Imagine if you will a wild country, road-less and pristine. Across the seemingly endless hills covered with open prairies and down in the many little valleys crowded with trees and cane thickets let your mind wander. Here and there in this vastness you might imagine on a cold winters day a plume of smoke rising from some pioneer chimney. This chimney upon closer inspection would be of the "stick and mud" variety, attached to a log cabin hewn by the owner from trees that once stood nearby. The cabin might have two rooms, but if the settler had been there a few years it could have four or five. Out back you would see a number of crude outbuildings serving the owner's family as a corn crib, stable or smokehouse. Here on this "plantation" of 240 acres about 60 acres might be cleared of trees and planted in some crop such as oats. Closer to the house would be the garden of vegetables. Threading through the wilderness, connecting these rare outposts you might imagine a network of not much more than footpaths, pathways that from time to time might see the hooves of the occasional horse or oxen. Along these pathways one could find, if he imagined a trip along them down Lyle's Creek, a household much like the last about every two hours walking. On Lyle's Creek in 1760 that distance was called a "German Mile". And on Lyles Creek that was exactly what is was, for the "Dutch" (Americanized version of Deutsch) had settled there in numbers after their long trek down the Great Wagon Road. The original land grants on Lyles creek record the owners, Johan Baum in 1750 was the first recorded, Simon Yonoss (Jonas) and Hinrich Shrink, Phillip Hahn, Conrod Mull, Conrad Boobey and Johann Hagins appear soon after. Then in 1753 the German United Brethren or Moravians purchased a huge tract of land in Lord Granville's district, location undefined. They set out to determine the land they would select and brought a small team of surveyors across the Catawba to "look for the land". As guide they hired Johann Baum. Being duly impressed with the area between the South Fork of the Catawba and the Catawba proper they decided that this area, which included Lyle's Creek, would be an ideal spot for their projected colony. John Carteret, Lord Granville set aside this huge parcel, as well as several others, for the Moravians and ceased to sell land there late in 1753. For ten years the land lay under this reserve. The Moravians decided to place their colony at a less remote area which is today Forsyth County, NC in 1755, but the restriction still remained on the Catawba lands until 1763. In that year the land was released and it seems that many German settlers had been living on the land in question without deed for up to ten years. In 1763 many of them came to the Land Office in Rowan County at Salisbury, a two day walk away from home, and registered their claims. The surnames from Lyle's Creek include Henry Pope, George Schmidt (Smith), Jacob Wissenaut, Adam Aker (Eckard), Adam Bolch, Thomas Cowan, Peter Grunt, Michael Hart, Johan Haun, Andrew Killian, Isaac Lowrance, Peter Stutz, Christian Treffelstadt, Conrad, Joseph and William Whittenburg and William Fulbright. (so there is our Jacob's aunt Chistina's husband, Wihelm Vollbrect in 1763) Then in late 1763 John Carteret, Lord Granville, died and his heirs in England closed the sale of his lands. It was 1778, 15 years later, before the office would open again, and many, many Germans had come to live on the unclaimed lands by then. In December 1778 8,900 acres were registered in Salisbury on Lyle's Creek alone. Among these names we find Christopher Beekman (Jacob's Capitan in the Cross Creek Campaign) Adam Bolick, George, Peter and William Deal, George Eslinger, Peter Gront, Frederick Gross, Devault Hunsucker, Johann Isonhower, Frederick Shull, Andrew Fulbright and, our guys, Johann (Hans) and Jacob Shuke (Shook). In that year Jacob was 29 years old.
It is obvious from these many land rolls that the Germans predominated in Lyle's Creek. Land was the historical issue, but religion was the heart of the story for the Germans. These were a refugee folk, for generations they had been persecuted, driven to exile and isolated by the surrounding cultures due to their religious beliefs. As a product of this experience these groups had developed a self contained resolve to remain independent. This resolve had motivated the majority to leave Europe behind and make the perilous journey to America in the first place. Once in Pennsylvania, governed by the tolerant visions of the founder of that state, William Penn, these independent minded German's began to fashion in a public manner hundreds of sects and divisions of belief, divergent ideas that had existed in the old world, but had been suppressed. All these sects coexisted, and in almost half the Churches in German Pennsylvania they even worshiped together in a congregation called a "Union". This Union of sects for worship was especially helpful when the settlers arrived on the frontier where there was an acute shortage of German speaking pastors of any sect. The Moravians or United Brethren sect had a huge impact on the backwoods of North Carolina, not only in this land issue noted above, but in their presence in the hundreds at the new colony at Wachovia. From their "new World" seat of power in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania they had come to build a Utopian world in the wilderness. There on over 10,000 acres they built three settlements, the most famous of which was Salem, which now remains as Old Salem in the heart of Winston Salem, NC. From their colony they sent out Brethren Missionaries to preach to the German populations across the piedmont, including those west of the Catawba, fifty miles to the west. To the Lyles Creek community, and the other German communities in today's Catawba, Lincoln, Rowan and Mecklenburg Counties, NC had come congregational Lutherans, German Reformed Lutheran's, Mennonites (German Baptists), Quakers, Dunkers, Amish and Moravians. Other groups less in numbers included Sabbatarrian Dunkers who lived secluded from outside contact, New Mooners who believed the newly dead face judgment on every new moon requiring special services from earth to assist the loved ones, as commanded of Moses (Numbers 28-29), Anabaptists, German Presbyterians, The "New Born", the "Inspired" the Skippack Brethren and even some reformed Weberites. Of the latter the effect of life so far from the constraints of civilization can be seen. In 1759 in South Carolina on the frontier at Fort Saluda lived a "very pious Dutchman" named Jacob Waber, or Weber. The community, being without a minister that spoke their language, began to depend on Weber for their religious sustenance, and soon came to his home from great distances to sing songs and read the Gospels. Weber, smitten with his new found popularity began to assume the role of Pastor, and soon Priest. About him gathered other lay preachers and a new "religion" was born. In the story, as told by his detractors, Weber began to see himself as God "come down to earth". He began to demand that he be addressed as "God the Father" by his congregation, and his new associate, Johan Georg Schmidt-Peter became known as the "Son". Another man named Dauber, described by contemporaries, as "a Godless colored preacher" was elevated to the post of "Holy Ghost" while Weber's own wife acted the part of the "Virgin Mary". This situation grew totally out of hand, so much so that through jealousy and infighting several murders were perpetrated by the congregation upon their own members. Having heard enough of this foolishness the Governor of South Carolina sent the Militia out to the backcountry, arrested Weber and his associates and returned them for trial in Charleston. In March of 1761 Weber and his wife, and two associates were convicted and ordered to be hung for their crimes "freely admitted". In court it had been alleged that they "groups of both sexes went about unclothed and naked and practiced the most abominable wantonness." It was also alleged that Weber would "raise the dead" for his congregation, an event perpetrated through the use of a confederate who "counterfeited death for the occasion". In the end all "saw the light" and redeemed themselves, where upon the Governor commuted the sentence of three of the four. Weber went to the gallows with his backwoods followers still believing he would rise again on the third day. When he made no appearance, the Weberites faded into obscurity and dispersed, many to North Carolina's backwoods. Certainly the Germans were more pious and moral than the Weber situation might indicate. The incident was used to sully the name of the Lutherans by the promoters of the Church of England, which in the Carolinas had been declared the "official" state religion. We don't know how true the bills of indictment were, but the story by no means described the nature of the great majority of settlers. It was to be 1770 before the first real congregation of German speaking settlers began to form west of the Catawba. In those years they were served by itinerate "circuit riding" preachers who would come from time to time to their meeting house built on the South Fork of the Catawba. This first church, Der Saut Fark in German, was the predecessor of "Old" St Pauls Lutheran Church in Lincoln County which still exists today. On the rolls of that church's early membership, as reported in 1775 by it's first permanent minister Johann Arends (or Ahrend, Arent, Arnt and Arndt as it is variously spelled in English records) we can find the Lyle's Creek surnames of Bolich, Hahn, Hauk, Killian, Klien, Siegman, Wiegnburger, Miller and Schuk (Shook). This was a "Union" congregation however, so we don't know of which sectarian persuasion the Shooks may have been. Maybe some researcher might look into the church records which exist in Williams Township, Northampton County for an insight into this fascinating story. Immersed as we have been on our journey with all these German names, now it is obvious that a significant community existed in the 1760s and 70s in the region west of the Catawba, a community that held itself apart from the surrounding English speaking communities. In those families, especially those headed by foreign born immigrants like Hans Schuck, English was forbidden. Teaching a child English was frowned upon and often elevated to the level of a sin. Marriage outside the Germanic community was unthinkable, and when the unthinkable occurred the offending couple was summarily banished. Church was the only real authority, for although the distant courthouse at Salisbury was technically the seat of civil power, its reach was weak on the west side of the Catawba, especially in the tight knit German communities. The language barrier kept Germans from serving in the civil government and often prevented their participation in court, both as jurors or as plaintiffs. The Elders mediated disputes, saw to the banishments and organized community efforts such as barn raisings and cooperative harvests. Often their minister was the only person in the community that spoke both German and English and so was made unofficial ambassador to their "Anglish" neighbors. In the case of Wills and other official court documents, documents that were often not accepted in German, the Ministers often made translations for filing with the Clerk in Salisbury. The evidence of the linguistics of the Shucks is lacking in this early period, but it does appear that Jacob learned to speak English well, but there is also evidence that German remained his primary language. History would tell us that Hans probably never spoke English at all. Jacob most likely had a very limited English vocabulary in Pennsylvania, but as he lived in "Cataber" country he probably became more or less fluent in that language, at least in a "bare bones" sort of way from necessity. Surely after months of service on the frontier during the Revolution serving with the Militia he became more comfortable communicating with his English speaking fellows, but I am sure English always remained his second language throughout most of his life. .
We know of the events that occurred in the Revolution, and from his own recollections we know Jacob's part in those events. We have land records that find Jacob registering a land holding in 1778, and his name in St Paul's Church registry in 1779. The Revolution came to an end in 1783, and in that same year Jacob appears once more. In a case brought before the Confiscation Courts meeting in Lincoln County he and two others presented a charge against a man from Lyle's Creek. They accused him of supporting the King during the war. The court refused to return an indictment as the evidence was lacking, so the man went unpunished. Unknown is the source of this bit of information, other than it appears in the minutes of that unusual court, it was cited as an example of the actions taken against Tories by the new American Government, and how uncharacteristically reasonable and forgiving these courts were on the frontier of North Carolina. So here and there we see the shadow of the individual man, and we can come to a "fuzzy" vision of him with his thick German accent, long beard and "plain" ways. We see a land holder, a "juror", a man willing to seek redress in court and a church-goer. A veteran Patriot and Indian Fighter and most of all a Pioneer since his teens. Beyond that all the rest of his early life is obscured by the mists of time that envelope him. Even more undetectable with our meager means are the reasons for Jacob's move to the mountains of Western North Carolina. Was it the loss of this "court case" that drove him from family and community, could he have had a falling out with the church, was it a connection with the Indians or some previous comrade in arms, was it the marriage to Isabella Weitzell? Misty stuff indeed. On the latter point of his matrimony some questions need be asked. First of all is the marriage date of 1786 correct? No such marriage is recorded, but many German unions weren't in the day, and many, many records have been lost. Who was this Isabella? There is a Jacob Wetzel in the records, an early settler of Buncombe County, was he a brother? He was from Lincoln County which would seem to indicate a connection. Looking further we find a Weitzel family centered in Orange and Guilford County NC, descendants of Henrich Weitzel who moved to NC from Augusta Co VA before 1770. This family eventually Americanized the name to Whitesel. Interestingly there is some indication that Jacob and Isabella married in Guilford County. Additionally Jacob Shook's first cousin, Jacob Fulbright married Elizabeth Weisel, was she a sister to Isabella? Why was Jacob 36 years of age, wasn't that a bit old for a first marriage in those times? These and many other questions are reluctant to give up answers clothed in these mists of time. The only method we are provided for understanding the settlement of the mountains of North Carolina might well require an understanding of the Cherokee and their history, an understanding that might be paramount in understanding Jacob. A people without a written language, at least until the 19th century, the origins of the Cherokee are speculative at best. Anthropologists say that they originated in the Southwestern United States before 1000AD and began a slow movement northeasterly due to climatic changes about that time. Eventually they wandered up the Ohio River and on into Pennsylvania, maybe as far north as New York. Conflicts with their distant cousin's (linguistically) the Iroquois, who had proceeded them in this migration, caused a reversal of this drift northward, and by the 1400s they were moving south generation after generation, absorbing the existing, primitive Muskegon speaking inhabitants as they went, generation after generation. By 1500 the center of Cherokee culture lay on the headwaters of the Tennessee River in today's Tennessee and North Carolina. The first European influence felt by the Cherokee was not in the form of a person, it was the invisible spread of a series of disastrous germs. European contact with Indians on the coasts of Florida and the Carolinas after 1508 had unintentionally released a multitude of these microscopic invaders upon the unsuspecting population, a population with no immunities to these previously unknown scourges. Through the trade that was carried on with neighboring communities, a trade exchanging the gold and gems of the mountains with the pearls and shells of the coasts these plagues were transported to the Cherokee. Smallpox, Measles, Mumps, Syphilis, Influenza and even the Plague ravaged the population. Vast areas previously settled were depopulated and became overgrown during the next decade. Then in 1540 the Europeans themselves arrived among the Cherokee in search of gold and silver. This initial contact was with the expedition of Hernando DeSoto of Spain. DeSoto had landed on the coast of Florida near today's Panama City the previous year. He was in search of Gold, and the first Native Americans he encountered, hoping to send him quickly on his way, had told him of a distant mountain land in which the yellow metal could be found. DeSoto quickly decided to travel there, and he named the imagined mountains that were to be his destination for the tribe that had first told him of them, the Appalachee. In his last report to the Governor at Havana before he left the coast in February he called his destination the Appalachians, a name that has survived until this day. There is some dispute as to the route of DeSoto through the wilderness, but most historians agree that he led an army of 300 men, mostly mounted and many in medieval armor. With them were about 300 camp followers, slaves and women, another 300 Native Americans pressed into service as carriers, slaves, hostages and guides from the various cultures they traveled through, and 1000 hogs, 500 horses and 200 oxen. Nothing the natives had ever seen had prepared them for the arrival of this entourage. They progressed across what is today Georgia, arriving at a Shawnee village (Silver Bluff) south of the present location of Augusta, GA on the Savannah River (that's the Spanish word for Shawnee) late March 1740. From here DeSoto's entourage went north toward the mountains, arriving in the lands of the Cherokee (which the Spanish called the Richohecrian Indians) in late April. Here the lands were depopulated and "unhealthy" so turning east they followed the foothills to their destination of Xuala at the headwaters of the river we today call Broad River. Here among the Xuala, probably later known as the Catawbas, DeSoto found his gold along the Second Broad River but not in the quantities he had hoped. This very watershed was later (1800-1849) the greatest gold field in the fledgling United States until the California Rush of 1849, and is still lined with campgrounds for gold prospectors along the creek even today. Having been disappointed at Xuala, DeSoto now decided to move into the heart of the powerful Richohecrain kingdom, and so turned west and crossed the Blue Ridge on pathways that would be familiar to Jacob Shook 225 years later. (a period equal to our distance in time from Jacob). They crossed a valley and then on May 26th 1540 crossed the river later named French Broad at a point, I believe, that is today in my "Backyard" in Henderson Co, NC. Several contemporary journals claim this was the first "northward flowing river" they had crossed, and declared it later to be the headwaters of the Espirito Santo (or Mississippi) River. From here they moved up the creek later known as Hominy Creek and through the area of Clyde, NC, and on into the heart of the Cherokee Towns. Here they were received with adoration and given the respect of near Gods. DeSoto tarried here for a while but after a short period grew restless. DeSoto moved on southwest, to eventually collide with an Indian ambush at Mobile, and later a brutal defeat at the hands of the Chickasaw in today's northern Mississippi. From there he proceeded west with his survivors to discover the Mississippi River, and upon crossing into Arkansas was "killed by Indians". (many believe he was poisoned by his own troops to prevent further adventures west.) Many of his "knights" floated down the Mississippi on rafts they had built and were rescued by Spanish ships off the delta in 1545, and from their accounts our history comes down. This was not the end of contact with the Spanish for the Cherokee. For the next 100 years and maybe longer Spanish adventurers came to the Cherokee country seeking gold, DeLuna's men who may have stayed several years around 1560 in North Georgia and wore out their welcome. Capitan Jaun Pardo, a sergeant with DeSoto, returned in 1566 and spent years in the Valley River Valley of North Carolina and in North Georgia as well as his building a fort in the Catawba country and garrisoning it with 30 men. Rumors and traditions of Spanish coins, helmets and guns abound in the western counties of North Carolina. A helmet and broadaxe of the Spanish style are in the Smithsonian collection, supposedly taken from the Peachtree Mound in Cherokee Co, NC. This familiarity of the Cherokee and Europeans became commonplace spanning the 200 years before Jacob's time. There are many stories of the whites of many nationalities and all callings to be found living among the Cherokee. Some of the more colorful are the Jesuit Priests from France who came up the Tennessee in the early 1600s. Several of these men became respected leaders of the Cherokee during the period of French claim to the Mississippi Valley that didn't end until 1763. The first known English contact was in the 1670s by a Virginian explorer from the new English colony around Jamestown named Lederer. He traversed the boundaries of the country of the Tomahitans as the English called the Cherokee in those early years. Cherokee is a corruption of the French name (Chalaque) that has "stuck". He declined to visit the heart of the "Kingdom" because of rumors of "bearded men" living there, men who he assumed were his enemies, the Spanish. There were also refugees from the Irish War, escaped Negro slaves and even the descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese living among "The People" as they collectively called themselves.
That was the way it was with the Cherokee. Race wasn't an issue, anyone could become a member of the "clan" with the right approvals. The "Kingdom" wasn't really a Kingdom at all. There was no authority in this society except the respect given elders and the fear awarded young warriors. Government was by clan council. A clan usually consisted of extended matriarchal families where a man entered the clan of his wife at marriage. The council itself was usually all male, and elderly, but often came to include some representative of European origin. In addition great attention was paid to the "old mothers" of the clan. In this system a complication was presented in the form of the clan's unattached males. These warriors were an unruly lot, as boys often are, and knowing they would soon be leaving the clan for those of their future wives, they were often hard to control. Blood ran high in these boys, and "war" was a constant state of affair. Revenge was the name of the game, and "blood feud" was the norm. Disputes raged between the various clans of the Cherokee, but rarely did these contests result in death. The situation was different for those not considered to be within the Cherokee family. Death or captivity and slavery was the only consideration when "righting a wrong" perpetrated by some other tribe. This included the "tribes" of the Europeans, mainly the Spaniards, French and the English. One of the Cherokee's greatest downfalls was that they considered it a right to avenge any wrong perpetrated upon their clan by an "English" for example, on any other person available of English descent. This was how it was, and it was acceptable with the Creek or the Shawnee, the Cherokee's traditional enemies, but it enraged the settlers when the Indians attacked the innocents, torturing and murdering them horribly in revenge for some distant crime of some unknown "English". Such attacks led the Cherokee to general wars in 1720 and 1735 against the Virginians and the Carolinians. The Cherokee couldn't understand these new enemies who would come into their lands in overwhelming force and continue killing and burning after all semblance of an "eye for and eye" was exceeded. It was always a tragedy as well that no quarter was given to the old or to women and children in these attacks by the whites, for they felt that their fallen loved ones had received none. These Cherokee were innocents as well for they, as a society, could not control the actions of the perpetrators of these perceived "crimes", the young warriors. Warriors who usually fleet footedly escaped harm. With each war the councils gave up more land to achieve peace by treaty, and vainly promising to control the excesses of the warriors in the future.
The French and Indian War, and the Peace Pipe Then in the last half of the 1700s the Cherokee became entwined in the complicated intrigue of the powers of Europe, and in effect became a pawn in their world conflicts. This came to pass because of the Cherokee societies "addiction" to the technologies of the Europeans. Over the years they had become dependant on iron tools; plows, axes, knifes and such. The women had grown fond of the bright cloth and glass beads of the whites, and the men had grown to yearn for guns for hunting. Indian agents had been sent to the wilderness to administer this trade and to elicit alliances among the clans. In the struggle the British colonists had been most successful by the year Jacob was born in Pennsylvania, utilizing a trading path that went from Virginia near Petersburg and going south along the future path of the Old Wagon Road through North Carolina. The trail led to a junction with the Cherokee Path from South Carolina at Fort St George, an outpost at Keowee in the heart of the Lower Towns of the Cherokee. By 1756, the start of the French and Indian War, the Carolinians had pushed on into the Overhill Towns, establishing a fort at Loudon in Tennessee. This imposition by force of these forts inflamed Cherokee opinion, and when the French agents came to Council in the valley of the Little Tennessee River they readily allied themselves with the French cause. In 1760 Fort Loudon was placed under siege and forced to surrender. A British relief force from Charleston, SC under Montgomery was ambushed in today's North Carolina and sent fleeing. Fort St George was evacuated and the Cherokee War ensued. While great battles occurred between the French and British on the frontier in Pennsylvania and Virginia, the south was feeling the tomahawk and scalping knife along its frontiers. The few settlers of the Catawba valley fled east across theYadkin. Some such as Daniel Boone's parents removed all the way to the Virginia coast. Many German settlers and their families took refuge with the Moravians in Wachovia from 1759 to 1762. Then British Lieutenant Grant arrived from Scotland with a powerful force of British regulars, and marched from Charleston on the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761. Because of Grant's incursion and other actions by North and South Carolina militias, by 1762 the Cherokee had been subdued and their French advisors had fled. The next year in the Treaty of Paris France officially gave the Cherokee lands to the British (without asking the Cherokee). Deserted by their allies, the Cherokee submitted to British authority, giving up a huge area of today's SC to the settlers and withdrawing to the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. It was this withdrawal by the Cherokee in 1763 from these lands that drew a flood of new settlers from the north to these "new acquisitions". A new alliance grew now between the Colonial Governments of the Carolinas and the Cherokee. Trade was good and profitable, and the British made sure annual "gifts" of guns and powder went to the Council's. In 1767 Governor Tryon of North Carolina traveled to the far frontier to meet with Cherokee "chiefs" at the Tryon Blockhouse in Western North Carolina. There, on top of a nearby peak, he "smoked the pipe of peace" and set the boundary between the settlers and the Cherokee "forever" at the crest of the Blue Ridge. In the nine years that followed peace prevailed and the terrors of the Indian Wars began to be forgotten across the frontier. In those years Jacob came to the Catawba. For the Cherokee the issues seemed settled forever, and finally the young warriors agreed. Then came the Revolution.
The Cherokee enter the American Revolution, and find defeat once again... Stuart and Cameron were the agents of the King of England, his representatives to the Cherokee. Stuart remained in the white communities, first Charleston, then Savannah and finally Florida. Cameron lived among the clans and fought beside them during the war. These two men were instructed by their sovereign to incite their allies, the Cherokee, to attack the frontier settlers who had shown disloyalty to his rule. They counseled caution, lest the backlash of releasing unrestricted warfare of the Indian type on the settlers might drive many supporters from their camp. The King was unmoved, and in 1776 he commanded that the Cherokee be ready to cooperate in the campaign to conquer the "rebel" elements in the Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. Cameron traveled the pathways of the Cherokee Townships and made impassioned speeches to the young warriors. He told them that victory of the King was the only way to preserve the boundary, and that they were fighting for their homes, and for the survival of the Cherokee themselves. They rose to the call in every village, and although the elders counseled caution, they painted their faces and made their preperations for the assault. The British actually planned the assault. Indians and British advisors were brought from far away; Chickasaw, Creek and Shawnee marched into and through the Cherokee lands. At key points the warriors gathered, hovering in the mountain passes overlooking the unsuspecting settlers, awaiting the assigned their "D Day". On the border of Virginia, across the face of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, all along the South Carolina Indian Boundaries and into Northern Georgia they gathered. The wilderness hid thousands of painted faces, eager for war. In the first week of July, 1776, they struck. Hundreds of men women and children died in the first few days. Farms went to flames and refugees flooded into the old stockades and forts, all in sad repair from disuse and neglect. The British advisors attempted to curtail the wholesale slaughter of civilians, but failed. Individual stories abound in the historical record about this surprise attack, the "Pearl Harbor" of the Revolution. Across the up waters of the Savannah River in Georgia and South Carolina settler homesteads felt the power of the Cherokee tomahawk and scalping knife. At the old stockade at Due West in SC 200 settlers took refuge, and in the following assault exhausted their gunpowder. They were saved at the last minute from sure death by the arrival of Williamson and 80 men from the post at Ninty Six who had run the twenty mile distance in the dark to arrive at dawn. A local militia leader named Howard made a preemptive strike at the Cherokee above Tryon Blockhouse based on the young warrior Skyuka's warnings and dispersed the Cherokee threat there. Legend says the boy was smitten with the daughter of a settler there and betrayed his fellow Cherokee to prevent her harming. As news of the attack spread Rutherford called up the Militia from Rowan County, NC and immediately marched to the relief of Davidson's Fort at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but not before 37 settlers had been murdered on the Catawba. A Cherokee woman in love with a white settler betrayed a band of 700 Cherokee and their British advisors in today's Tennessee near Knoxville, and in a surprise attack the Indians were sent reeling. Abington VA was assaulted with much bloodshed by the chief Raven and his band. Dragging Canoe led a bloody raid through the Carter Valley Settlements in TN, at Long Island on the Holston his murderous band was finally beaten and he was carried from the field badly wounded. At Fort Watauga the surprise attack found young Bonnie Kate milking a cow outside the stockade. As she raced to the fort she was hotly pursued by the screaming band of Cherokee. At the fort's log wall legend says that "Nolichucky Jack" Sevier, later six times governor and four times congressman from Tennessee, shot a pursuing Indian as he raised his tomahawk to slay Bonnie, then reached down and drug the frightened girl over the wall to safety. He would later wed Bonnie Kate after the Cherokee murdered his own wife several years later. In an unfortunate turn of events for the Cherokee, the British invasion of South Carolina at Sullivan's Island near Charleston, an action timed to coincide with the Indian attack, was repulsed. The large number of troops assembled there, now victors in this critical battle, hurried to the frontier to punish the Cherokee. Militia came from near and far and soon the Cherokee and their allies withdrew back to the shelter of the mountains to assess the situation. Whole communities, including the reluctant Germans, responded to the call to arms. Many of the soldiers would later fight for the British at Kings Mountain or Cowpens, but in this fight they were all against the "red men". Nobody could deny his determination to "pay back the heathens in kind" that summer. Williamson and Pickens immediately attacked from the south. Crossing the Seneca Fords at Clemson, SC they ran into ambush and were forced back by the British agent Cameron leading 600 Cherokee. As reinforcements poured in they once again crossed the river and advanced into the heart of the Lower Towns while Cameron withdrew. Within weeks the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia sent expeditions consisting of 7,000 men into the heart of Cherokee country, where the towns were laid to waste, crops burned and any Indians found, men, women and children, were executed on the spot. Several sharp encounters occurred with the young warriors, but they were massively outnumbered and out-gunned. With the "people" starved and exposed to the elements and all hope of resistance quashed the Elders in Cherokee Council sued for peace with the Americans in the summer of 1777. (see Jacob Shook and the War of Independence) At Due West in South Carolina that summer the new free government of South Carolina made a treaty with the Lower Towns in which they forfeited their towns in upper South Carolina in return for a dubious grant of land in the North Georgia mountains where they had fled. At Long Island on the Holston River in East Tennessee several weeks later North Carolina and Virginia made separate treaties with the Overhill Cherokee in which the Councils granted these two Revolutionary Governments all of Kentucky, most of Tennessee and all the land "East of the Pigeon River" in North Carolina. "To the victors go the spoils" was the catch word that summer. The North Carolina agent however sent a letter to the government in Hillsboro after the signing that alerted them that no legitimate representative of the Middle Towns had agreed to the terms of the treaty, and warned that the Pigeon River concession might not be valid due to this omission. Ominously, at Long Island, the Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe refused to sign the treaty and "walked out" of the negotiations with his followers. Dragging Canoe eloquently told the assembled officers before he "walked" that he found the overbearing nature of the White's demands beyond endurance. He stated that the King had granted the Cherokee lands for eternity, that it was plain to see that these lands belonged to the Cherokee even before the King assumed possession, and that these new treaties were no more than theft, a theft agreed to by old men and weak women who did not have the authority to cede the land in the first place. For 15 more years Dragging Canoe would lead the Chickamaugans, a group of Cherokee comprised mostly of disaffected "young warriors" who continued the fight against the White's incursions long after the Revolution ended. The Chickamaugans called the rest of the Cherokee people "Virginians" from that day forward, the ultimate insult. A serious rift grew in Cherokee society. The young warriors of almost every village and clan left home to follow Dragging Canoe. The respect for the Councils that had so long governed the Cherokee way of life broke apart and this ‘Generation Gap" sent the social order reeling. Worse still was the fact that the whites expected that the Council's could prevent the young warriors from attacking the settlements, and when these attacks continued after 1777 under the direction of Dragging Canoe they often retaliated against the villages of the Councils instead of the elusive bands of Dragging Canoe. For this reason the Cherokee suffered numerous attacks and incursions in 1779, 1781 and 1782. To make matters worse the Councils of the Middle Towns refused to recognize the Long Island Treaty which gave away their lands east of the Pigeon River. In 1779 the Council of Safety of North Carolina sent an emissary to Negaussee to tell the Cherokee that the state would in due time make payment to secure this land, and until such time they would allow no settlement of the disputed area. This payment was anticipated the next year, but as the Revolution came into North Carolina that year with a fury, no payment was made. In 1783 the Revolution was ended with a second Treaty of Paris, exactly 20 years after the first, which had seen their previous ill-fated alliance with the French undone. The Cherokee's allies, the British, now withdrew. Gone was the source of ammunition and trade goods. Now the Councils had no choice but to treat with the new American nation. Dragging Canoe refused to give up and took his many followers to an enclave near today's Chattanooga, TN and continued the fight. North Carolina was financially bankrupt after the long war, and found itself not only unable to pay the Cherokee for the land beyond the Blue Ridge as they had promised, but was under great pressure from creditors, including its unpaid veterans, to come up with cash. To this end, in 1783, the state of North Carolina announced the disputed land east of the Pigeon to be open for grant and settlement.
The First Settlers move into the Disputed Territories At first the settlers were intimidated by Indian threats and seemed to be wary of crossing the Blue Ridge. Then in the spring of 1784 Samuel Davidson, cousin to John Davidson who had been killed with his family in the surprise attacks of 1776, and of the family that operated Davidson's Fort at the head of the Catawba came across the mountains following the Rutherford Trace and settled at the mouth of Bee Tree Creek on the Swannanoa River. Here he cleared the land and built a rough hewn cabin for his young wife and baby child. The story is told of how this first settler had let his stock wander to the meadows on a mountain behind his cabin, and had placed a bell around the neck of his cow. A band of young warriors who had been lurking about watching the settlers had taken the bell from the cow and began to ring it from the top of a high hill, making it seem to Samuel that his cow had fallen to some distress. Upon climbing the hill to investigate he was ambushed by the Indians, shot and killed, then scalped. His wife, hearing the report of the rifle knew what must have happened, so she immediately grabbed the crying baby from its crib and ran barefoot back down the lonely path, all the way back to Davidson's Fort. Samuel's twin brother, John Davidson and a large body of men crossed the Blue Ridge the next morning and came to Bee Tree Creek where they found and buried the body of Samuel. They then proceeded to track the Cherokee warriors, following them down the Swannanoa and catching them by surprise near its juncture with the French Broad. There they had a heated contest and many of the Indians were killed. Several Indians escaped however, and soon brought back numerous other Chickamaugans. The Davidson party, now fully aroused, sent for reinforcements as well and a battle took place in and around the huge cane break at the junction of the French Broad and Swannanoa, just outside the present city of Asheville, NC, that lasted 17 days. Reports were made that 70 Cherokee were killed in this battle. In the spring of the next year, 1785, John Davidson and ten other Scot-Irish families made the move across the Blue Ridge to Samuel's old cabin on Christians Creek, and there they planted what is supposed to be the first permanent white settlement in the lands of the Middle Towns, a settlement they called the Swannanoa Settlement. But was it. Something occurred that November 100 miles away on the lawn of General Picken's home at Hopewell near today's Clemson, SC that might dispute that claim. On the afternoon of the 28th of that month a Cherokee elder rose to speak in the Council of Treaty and complained about the settlements on Swannano and on PIGEON RIVER. Who was Musuchanail of Nequassee speaking of on Pigeon River? Jacob Shook would arrive there the next spring we know, but the Histories of Haywood Co mention no settlers on the Pigeon earlier than Jacob, except the shadowy specter of one. That is Edward Hyatt. Nothing much is known about this character, although he is forever memorialized by the plague set in stone on the lawn of the Haywood County Courthouse as a Revolutionary War Veteran. Legend has it that he came as early as 1780, and that he first settled near today's Clyde. He was well known to the Cherokee as a "good and fair" man, and for that reason somehow missed the massacre and turmoil of the region in those times. It is claimed that Hyatt said of the Cherokee that "they took up most of his time and ate much of his food" in those early days. (Source: Medford's Haywood's Heritage and Finest Hour, 1971, p. 2)
Hyatt and the Cherokee, fact or frontier fantasy ? Edward Gaither Hyatt was born 1740 in Anne Arundel Co, MD. He was the son of Shadrack Hyatt and Dinah Gaither, parents with Quaker roots in America back to the early years of the 1600s. Some say he married Hannah Leatherwood the daughter of Edward Leatherwood and Elizabeth Walker but family tradition says the woman's name was actually Hannah Parker. It is possible that Hannah may well have been part Cherokee. Edward and Hannah were married by tradition in 1776, the year of Rutherford's arrival in the area of future Haywood. Was she found among the Cherokee and carried back east with the expedition as so many were? Was Hyatt in Rutherford's army? Did he find her appealing and take her as wife? Was she his connection to the Cherokee? Hyatt died in 1817 while visiting land he owned in today's Jackson County and is buried there "among his slaves" in the Hyatt Cemetery in the Qualla Community. (In 1817 this was deep in Cherokee country!) This story of Hyatt is taken from old documents and family tradition: "Just after the ‘Big Pigeon Treaty' had been made with the Cherokees" (The Treaty of the Long Island of the Holston, 1777, some writers have confused this with the Hopewell Treaty of 1785) "Edward Hyatt settled in this county, which was then Burke. He then went back to Morganton, and after a short while returned with three or four of his sons," (had he been previously married?) "two Negroes and a pack horse loaded with provisions. It is said that he made a crop that year ..." "The early settlers of this mountain section generally made friends with the Indians on arriving here. And some of the whites, like Edward Hyatt and Wm. H. Thomas greatly befriended the Cherokees. Edward Hyatt was seeing much of his Cherokee Neighbors. As well established tradition has it, the Indians often visited in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hyatt, he would invite them to ‘put feet under table' and it appears that Mrs. Hyatt would also give them food in case her husband was away from home." It is an intriguing bit of speculation that Hyatt may have been an early resident and "trader" within the Cherokee community of the Pigeon. The abandonment of the area by British agents (possibly Parker's father?) just ahead of Rutherford's incursion into the Cherokee lands would certainly have opened up a market for such a brave individual, and a possibility that he had a "part" Indian wife could have provided the key. The year of 1780 also presented ample reason for a patriot to abandon the field and find refuge in the mountains. In the spring Elijah Clarke of Georgia had moved through the area with 300 men and 300 women and children on their way to refuge in the Watauga Settlements. Then all summer Ferguson with his red-coated Tory legions had molested settlers across the foothills around Old Fort, driving many a Patriot into the mountains. Was Hyatt such a refugee? Did he find friendship among the Cherokee who were seeking peace? Did they allow him a home site in the lands they claimed, and did he move his family there under the protection of these now forgotten benefactors? Did he discover that he held certain immunity from harm because he was able to deliver goods in trade which the ravaged Cherokee so desperately needed? A story comes handed down of the expedition of "Nolichucky Jack" and his Rangers up the Pigeon River from Watauga in 1782 against the Cherokee. In his diary a soldier states that they happened upon the cabin and trading post of what they assumed was a British Agent and deep in the wilderness. As the Rangers approached a figure escaped from the back door of the cabin running for the woods and he was shot dead from a great distance by a long rifle. (the distance of the deadly shot is what provoked remembrance) Upon investigation the dead boy turned out to be a black slave belonging to the resident of the cabin. At first the man who owned the boy was accused of being a Tory, and as such deserving of a quick hanging, but upon presentation of papers he convinced the Rangers he was instead a Patriot and veteran. A note was given for payment for the property destroyed, a note to be paid by the Government of North Carolina. Was this resident Hyatt? Even if not, the story indicates that such men were indeed at large among the Cherokee Lands earlier than 1784. Such men made their living from trade, the economy of rich pelts in return for iron goods, gun powder and salt. The Cherokee were desperate for these things and were unable to travel to the frontier forts to procure them safely during the war years. The Cherokee elders, deserted by the young warriors and desirous of peace, would have easily seen that a relationship with such a man might avoid retribution from the Rangers that appeared with regularity from the settlements in the foothills, spreading often indiscriminant destruction among the "people". Such a relationship could have also protected such a man and his family from attacks by the Cherokee, for even the young warriors needed such things. No doubt, however, such a man would have been walking a razor's edge balancing such issues as the divisiveness of the Cherokee and the bitterness of the Revolutionary War's antagonists. But in spite of this the man would open the door of his little fortress cabin and take in the pelts, and dispense his meager supply of goods. Then he would take his pack horse and more than likely a string of hired "boys" provided by the Cherokee, and transport his pelts to the nearest post or market, in those days that would have been Davidson's Fort. There he would barter the fine hides, valued at the outrageous price of about $2 per pelt (a value reported by 1810, maybe higher in earlier years. This can be compared to the price of excellent "bottom" lands going for $.50 and acre that same year). His return up the "trace" would find him and his "boys" loaded down with axe heads, traps, seed corn, powder and salt. Twice a year he might make the two week round trip out of the hills. Our "fantasy" can be expanded to include the circumstance that might have brought Jacob Shook to the Pigeon Valley. In the summer of 1781 Jacob was standing guard at Davidson's Fort. Having been to the Pigeon with Rutherford in 1776, he would have had a keen interest I am sure in this comrade who now trailed in from beyond the ridge to trade that summer. I am sure he was participant in the tales of bold streams and wild lands that must have gone around the fires on those summer evenings at the fort. Later on that summer he may well have been with patrols that ranged up to Moore's fort and maybe even on to Hyatt's. There can be no doubt that Jacob either knew, or knew of Hyatt, if Hyatt indeed resided on Pigeon in 1781. After Jacob returned home from service in August 1781 I'm sure he recalled the man, and the land, and often thought of what it would be like to leave the problems of community life behind. In 1783 when NC declared the land up to the Pigeon to be legally available, his mind must have raced at the prospect. Did he seek out Hyatt in those years? Did he make some agreement for land and protection with the Trader? We can only speculate. Hyatt originally settled "below the ford several miles" which would be future Clyde. Then later he moved to the area of Turpin Chapel nearer Waynesville. Did Jacob take over his previous home site? Is that why Jacob ended up on Cherokee lands in 1786? We will most likely never know.
The Issue of the Disputed Territories is Resolved To help visualize the period in which Jacob Shook moved to the Pigeon one must consider the confusion brought about by the Treaty of Hopewell. Understanding the happenings at Hopewell in 1785 require an understanding of the politics of the day, and the growing pains of the new republic. Here at Hopewell General Pickens, the old Indian fighter and Partisan leader of the Revolution sponsored a Council of all the south's Native Americans. Leaders of the Cherokee, the Creeks, the Choctaw and Chickasaw all came together to meet with representatives of the states and with representatives of the new Federal Government. The British treaties of course were all void now, and confusion reigned about the status of the proliferation of individual treaties signed between the Indians and the various states. After the Revolution ended North Carolina claimed all the land which was included in the colony under British rule. This included what is today Tennessee. Georgia likewise claimed what is today Alabama and Mississippi. Virginia claimed all of Kentucky (and of course today's West Virginia). The Federal Government however claimed that this land west of the Indian Boundaries was actually owned by all the states, and created it's own Government for those areas. The District of Ohio and the Southwest Territories were created by the congress in New York without regard to the claims of the several states. The Federal officers spoke first to the gathered Council's of the Cherokee and told them they would protect their rights and hold the boundary to the Blue Ridge. From this point on North Carolina was in to position to bargain. The North Carolina representative walked out on the Council in a moment ironically like that of Dragging Canoe 8 years earlier at Long Island. He had come with the payment promised for the Cherokee, and now he took this with him and promised that North Carolina would not observe this "farce" perpetrated by the Federal Government. The Council's asked the Federal representatives what should be their course of action if confronted by North Carolinian resolve, and were told they could "drive any settlers from their lands". They didn't, however, offer them any assistance in this endeavor. Fortunately the Cherokee never took this advice, for they had been taught hard lessons about picking the wrong side in a dispute between the whites, and they had learned to respect the power and fury of the North Carolinian Militia. North Carolina responded by offering even more land in the disputed area at unbelievably low prices not only to settlers but to land speculators as well. So appealing was this "publicity" that in the spring the flood gates were opened. From all directions hardy pioneers came into the valley of the French Broad and the Pigeon. Where maybe twenty families had been settled in the disputed lands in 1785, by the end of 1786 there were over a hundred. In 1789 John Steele, the North Carolina Indian Agent met with the Cherokee at the War Ford of the French Broad. He had brought with him 3,330 dollars worth of trade goods, the amount settled on for the purchase of most of Tennessee and the French Broad and Pigeon River basins. The Cherokee, under the influence of the Federal agents, Steele reports, refused to treat and Steele returned east with the goods. Finally, it would be in July 1791, at White's Fort (today's Knoxville, TN) a treaty was signed by the North Carolinians and the Middle Towns, a treaty that ended dispute over these lands, the Treaty of the Holston.
1786, Jacob and his bride begin the journey to the Pigeon Whatever the circumstance that brought the 37 year old Indian Fighter to the Pigeon, the histories, studies such as The Early History of Haywood County, by W Clark Medford, 1961; The French Broad, by Wilma Dykeman, 1955; The Annals of Haywood County, NC, by W. C. Allen, 1935; A History of Buncombe County North Carolina, by F. A. Sondley, 1930; History of Western North Carolina by Ora Blackmon, 1880 and many more, all agree the year was 1786 that Jacob Shook first settled in Clyde, although most of these authors attribute that date to tradition and none state that it is documented fact. Some researchers contend this date is in error, that actually jacob came as late as 1799, however no compelling evidence has been offered to prove this, and certainly not enough to overturn these previous author's work. It is also known that his brother Andrew Shook and his cousin Jacob Fulbright came to the Pigeon as well, but they may have come many years later according to church records in Catawba country. I've yet to see that Jacob sold his land back on the Catawba, so it seems to this descendant that there's something that "went on" back in Catawba, maybe a divorce or some serious breach of the very conservative German social order. Such things were often swept "under the rug" by later carriers of verbal tradition and family history. It seems obvious that Jacob wasn't fully inspired by his Lutheran or Reformed church membership at Der Saut Fark as he later became such a devout Methodist and claimed to have had a "religious conversion" which "cleansed his soul". Of course the "real" truth could be as simple as the allure of land offered so cheaply by the Government of North Carolina ($30 for 100 acres), or it could be as complicated as some relationship to a Cherokee acquaintance that may have offered Jacob land in return for protection from the North Carolinians for his (or her) family or clan. After all, the land that Jacob settled was on the west bank of the Pigeon River, theoretically in Indian lands by the claim of the Federal Government, and by the claim of North Carolina! In 1787 settlers continued to pour in, and in that year some notable land grants were made in the disputed lands. These are the oldest grants still extant, but there obviously were some made earlier, as these documents speak of corners and borders adjoining other named settlers. The absence of such records is not surprising, not only was the area disputed between the Federal Government, the Cherokee and North Carolina, but it was also disputed between Burke and Rutherford County as well. It was not until 1785 that McDowell surveyed the line between the two counties, and then he only went as far as the Pigeon. The survey found that those lands south of the Swannanoa lay in Rutherford and those north of that stream lay in Burke. This split the settlements in half, beginning a movement to have an order established by the creation of a new county, an establishment that might combine the artificial separation of the communities into a cohesive and convenient division. The absence of early records may be explained as well by the activities of General Kirk of the Union Army in 1865, 84 years later. As the Civil War drew to a close he and his "Yankee" raiders occupied Morganton, the county seat of Burke County. Following the directives of General Sherman, who had declared "these Rebels hold so much stock in their heritage, it behooves us to remove the evidence from them", Kirk had his men break into the courthouse and drag the old land, marriage and court records into the street, where he made a bonfire of those yellowed and ancient documents. The reader might glean some insight into to the reasons for Jacob's move to the Pigeon by creating a vision in the mind's eye of what it was like to travel to Jacob's new home from Davidson's Fort along the Rutherford Trace in 1786. The first concern of course was the status of the Indian peace, and the defense available for protection of the families. I love this account taken from a local writer named FitzSimmons about a Cherokee attack on the Edneyville community of then Rutherford County, NC in 1788.
Fort and Indian Battle on Point Lookout Chapter 16 "From the Banks of the Oklawaha" By Frank FitzSimmons Golden Publishing Co 1976
COMING SOON WHEN WRITTEN PERMISSION IS RECIEVED TO PUBLISH HERE
In the spring of 1786 Jacob Shook and his wife made the move to what is today Haywood County. That was two years before the fight recounted above. There is no way that Jacob was ignorant of the threat the Indians posed, but obviously this seasoned Indian fighter felt he and his family could stand up to the risk. We might, in a flight of fancy, walk with Jacob on this journey to his new home, based on the accounts that remain of those times, while at the same time capturing a vision of these places today.. Although Jacob lived back down the river Catawba 40 miles or so from it, we'll start our trek at Davidson's Fort, a sight familiar to Jacob as he was stationed there for six months in the summer of 1781. The stockade was still being manned by Militia, and the area for a mile or more around had been cleared of trees to allow sentries to spot any and all living things that might approach. All around the fort, on the banks of the Catawba, which was here not much more than a large creek, settlers had built a ramshackle collection of cabins. During the war there had even been somewhat of a "tent city" here, where the outlanders had come in fear of the Indians. This temporary settlement had somewhat disappeared by 1786, but still there was a large number of transient folks camped around in the spring of 1786 awaiting the time to take their place on the route westward. The small cabins were turned to stores and taverns, and they saw not only the business of the settlers from all around, and of the settlers and hunters going west, but also a steady stream of Indians come down from the disputed lands to trade for the needed iron goods, beads and cloth. Even though the settlement had just the stockade with its enclosed Blockhouse and less than a dozen small cabins and huts, and never had a population of much more than a hundred souls at its very largest, this was the biggest "town" anywhere near, and the last sign of "civilization" the westward bound would see. Ahead lay the imposing mass of the Blue Ridge, and in just about a mile from the fort the Rutherford Trace began its hazardous way to the top of those mountains. Historians aren't sure of the route which Rutherford marked in 1776, and we can't be sure which of the many routes up that mountain Jacob took. There are about seven known routes, and the most popular has regularly changed across the years as the requirements of changing modes of transportation have advanced.. All routes came to the ridgeline at the same spot however, a place today appropriately named Ridgecrest located in the Swannanoa Gap. In the days of horse and foot travel this adventure to the ridge took about a half a day if things went well, even though in distance it was only about six miles. Today the three most southerly routes are mere forest trails in the Pisgah National Forest, the next route to the north is followed by Interstate 40. This road today will zip you to the crest from Old Fort in about 5 minutes at 60 miles an hour. Further north, in the next cove is old US 70. This concrete relic of the early 50s is closed now. A landslide that took a section of highway in the 1990s would have cost to much to repair based on the trickle of traffic that still used the "old road" the highway department determined. Next is the more modern route of the railroad. This was a marvel of engineering when built in the 1880s. Such a thing Jacob could never have imagined when he climbed the ridge a century before its construction. It leaps the creek on huge stone and concrete bridges, careens across the face of shear drops and tunnels through the hills in seven different spots, ending its winding journey upward at the 3,000 foot Tunnel Hill Tunnel at Ridgecrest. And then there's the Mill Creek route, a dirt road still open to the public. The Mill Creek Road winds around and around as it climbs. Up past the Andrews Geyser, built by the railroad to drain a "wet" cut through the mountain high above in the 1880s, it provides an artesian delight in a park rebuilt by the town of Old Fort in the 1970s. Then as it climbs it crosses and re-crosses the railroad before ducking into seemingly endless woods. Here it twists like a serpent over and over itself ever climbing, until suddenly it crosses the ridge at the site of a new Bed and Breakfast. Now it is in the lower reaches of the gap, but the climb's not over. After joining the now closed and deteriorated pavement of "old 74" the road makes a final leap over the crest, and straight into a bridge over Interstate 40. (At this point the railroad is about 100 feet below, underground). Of course that's not exactly what Jacob and Isabella saw. Their hike that spring was probably at the head of a string of ten or twelve horses and ponies, all heavily laden with packs containing all the worldly possessions and the all important tools the pioneers owned, and all the seed corn, oats and vegetable seed they would need to grow to survive in the wilds. Following were several cows and a hog or two. If they went alone, there would have to be a couple of "boys" hired at Old Fort or more likely relatives from back "home" who wanted the adventure west, but intended to return. Maybe his cousin Jacob Fulbright was one of the latter. He might also have been with a group. Other German settlers that may or may not have been heading to Pigeon River, but were headed west none the less. It's likely that part of his entourage were well known neighbors from Lyles Creek who intended to set up a community together at what would one day be Clyde. No known account of this particular journey exists, that we know of. The steep ascent Jacob took to the ridge was not the winding road of later days, it was a rugged pathway, deeply rutted by the hooves of so many beasts. Most likely it split and split again at every big obstacle where previous settlers, soldiers and Indians had found preferred routes around and over, across the years. Many places the horses had to be manhandled up with their heavy loads, many whining and refusing to budge until Jacob's forceful haul overcame resistance. In places Isabella in her long homespun skirt would have to grab to tree limbs and pull herself along over the eroded roots of the great trees that densely covered the slopes. It was a hard, noisy, sweaty bit of work. A long hard morning if everything went right, and if several horses toppled, a leg was broken or the cows got away, it was probably a rough descent the next morning to the fort to get ready for another try. If all went right the settlers might well stop early at the gap. This huge flat area right at the crest (Ridgecrest) was once a famous camping sight for first the Indians, keeping watch on the settlers down below, then of the Militia from the Catawba, keeping the Indians at bay further west, then for settlers moving west. Later it became a Baptist Campground during the "Great Revival" of the early 1800s. Today it is a large Baptist Conference Center, the Ridgecrest Assembly.
The Rutherford Trace, Swannanoa The next morning, just before dawn the Shooks and their traveling companions set out westward down the Swannanoa River, the rising sun to their back. At first the river was but a small stream, but as they moved along the high ground to the north of the rivulet it continued to grow in volume as many small creeks entered. The traveling was much easier here than on the previous day as the area of the valley was virtually devoid of trees, a prairie washing up to the foot of, and sometimes climbing the flanks of, the surrounding mountains. This unusual (to we Easterners) landscape was the norm in the mountains of Western North Carolina until after the settlement of the Europeans. There is some debate on the ultimate cause, be it natural or man made, but all agree that the ecosystem of the river valleys was the result of repeated burning, decade after decade for centuries. Some historians say this was the result of the actions of the Native Americans. There is historical evidence of this being the cause of the numerous "balds" in the southern Appalachians. Settlers record the Indian method of setting fires about the base of a conical peak when the wind was just right. This flare up would burn the cap of the mountain to cinder. As early as the next spring, just like the massive fires in Yellowstone in our age, life would begin again, and then come on with a vengeance. Wildlife would begin to thrive, and in the next several years in the ecology of a fire scald's return, wildlife would actually overpopulate due to the abundance of forage. This, combined with the obvious advantage's offered a hunter when the game has no cover, led to a sustainable and relatively easy supply of wild game. The game that predominated in this environment might seem unlikely to the hunter of modern times in the area, but it mainly consisted of elk and huge herds of Bison. This pattern of burning was even imitated by many of the new European settlers who did the same for a generation, resulting in the "balds" that still exist. In recent times the practice has been curtailed, and the "balds" are often bald, or without trees, in name only today. Reasoned speculation makes this a perfect system that may have been practiced on a much larger scale in the centuries before the plagues reduced the Native American populations so substantially, just before the Europeans arrived. It makes sense that the hunters burned the valleys to open them up to the far vistas and plentiful game which primitive hunters relished and required to feed the expanding population that could only partially be supported by cultivation of barely domesticated and limited crops such as "Indian Corn" or Maize. Circumstantial to this theory were the huge areas that the Cherokee failed to settle, but which they claimed as "hunting grounds". This not only included the French Broad River basin in the mountains, but much of southern Kentucky along the Cumberland River and even the valleys of Northern Georgia before the Revolution. In even earlier times when the Cherokee first met European contact these far flung deserted lands even included the Catawba country where the Shooks had settled in the 1760s. They found their new lands upon their arrival only recently returned from prairie, a situation that had disappeared within decades after the arrival of the settlers and is seen no where in the whole area today. This lends itself again to the vision of an organized cultural survival technique of continual burnings of surrounding designated "hunting grounds" that not only artificially enhanced the game population but made the game easier to acquire as well. The fact that these areas provided an immense "buffer zone" to the Native American settlements was a tremendous military advantage as well to be sure. Finally it might be noted that Jacob knew nothing of such theories most likely. Only from our vantage point in time can we see this probable cause and affect. To Jacob the ecosystem was taken as it was, it was the nature of things. We know the practice of burning was on the decline, or gone altogether by Jacob's time, at least in the valleys themselves. We know that when DeSoto's men crossed the French Broad basin on May 25th and 26th 1540 some described it as a "howling plain" without the cover of tree or bush. Lederer in the 1670s said much the same about the Catawba country. Jacob knew this land as a land a lush and verdant prairie covered with "pea vine grass" and densely overgrown with a Bamboo they called Cane that grew up to 40 feet high along the most fertile bottom lands. Interspersed with this at various points were groves of mature Oak and Chestnut like islands upon the open plains, and on most mountainsides existed the cover of hardwoods, pine and fir trees much of which we are accustomed to today in the area. On this, the pilgrims second day out of Davidson's Fort they crossed numerous small streams rushing from the flanks of the Black Mountains to the north. At several points they walked along the perimeter of the great forest that climbed those lofty mountains. Here and there at creek crossings they dipped into such natural arboretums. The largest stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa was a gushing and rocky creek that made for a slippery crossing. Finally, late in the afternoon, after a difficult 10 miles their dusty procession walked into the clearings and small farms built the year before by the settlers of the Swannanoa Settlement. These Presbyterians would have welcomed any who proposed to continue moving west, hoping they might form a buffer between themselves and the belligerent Cherokee. Here they would have seen the blockhouse that had been built the previous year by the settlers on Bee Tree Creek who had settled just south of the homestead of the late Samuel Davidson. In a field set aside for such a purpose, a quick "run" away from the blockhouse, the travelers set down their loads and unpacked the horses and set them to graze. As wolves howled in the distance, echoing and reverberating in the deep mountain coves above the settlement, the shadow of the blockhouse made sleep come just a bit easier, on this second night beyond the frontier.
The Community Strong Point, a necessary institution The Blockhouse was actually the residence of one of the settler families, John Davidson's maybe, but that's lost in time. The only accounts that remain to describe these structures are from descriptions of those who looked upon the several built at the time that survived until the late 1800s. Sondley, author of the well known History of Buncombe County in 1935 wrote such a description. He tells of his own youthful inspection of such a building, the Zebulon Biard House, that stood on the French Broad River north of present Asheville, and remained almost to the 1900s. Such a cabin was larger than the normal family home. It was constructed of huge virgin timber, usually chestnut, double laid for the bottom story. Here windows were few and heavily shuttered, cut through both thicknesses of log and shuttered in each. The thick Oak doors, front and back, were singles, but provision was made to shutter them as well. The second story was constructed as to overhang the first, well supported by the double walls below. Here the windows were more plentiful, though heavily shuttered and all contained loopholes for firing guns. The walls also contained these gun ports at strategic locations. The log roof was done with extra thick layers of locust shakes, stripped and replaced each season with new shakes from green wood when the "troubles" were about, and a "trap" door to give the defenders access to the roof was provided. This extra attention was meant to assist in dealing with the horrible danger of fire arrows. For if the blockhouse was caught on fire during an attack it meant a sure and horrible death for all the men, women and children who took refuge there. Deep below the floor the dirt was dug out and the cellar walled with vertical logs to prevent tunneling. Here in the darkness were stored emergency rations in case of long siege, and often a small source of water hidden here, some minor spring, had been the reason for the selection of the location in the first place. Such edifices as these, spread widely across the area, were great comfort to the settlers in those perilous times, for if the settlers made it to such a refuge during an attack, they would most likely be saved. The first efforts after the initial plantings of any new community was to construct such a place of refuge. It must be assumed that great interest was taken as the Shook party passed by Bee Tree Creek, for it is most likely that before the summer of 1786 came to an end such a project was underway in Clyde, although the association with Edward Hyatt may have made such an endeavor unnecessary.
Gum Springs and the making of Buncombe Morning was spent in difficult discussions with the Presbyterians no doubt. News would be passed along through the gutteral translation of Jacob or some other "Dutch" companion. Having less distance to travel that day they mended harness and pack and rested the stock until noon. From Bee Tree Creek the party traveled on westward along the Swannanoa Valley all afternoon until finally the pathway left the ridge and went steeply downhill to reach the Swannanoa's banks and cross that stream at the old Gum Springs Ford. As the group began moving west along the south bank of the river, they had now crossed from Burke into Rutherford County. It was an inconvenient and troublesome location for such a political boundary, and it would be abolished six years later by the actions and efforts of a group of men he may well have met that evening at camp. Colonel William Davidson, cousin to the several Davidson's of Bee Tree and to the General William Davidson who died fighting for Independence at Cowan's Ford over the Catawba, Joseph Hughey, the "Dutchman", first Sheriff of Buncombe County, Phillip Hoodenpyle and John Kukendal, other early German settlers that became officers of the new Court, and the Miller (Mueller) bothers Andrew and James, who held great land holdings all about the area after 1787. All these men spent a great deal of time at the Gum Springs, just south of the old County Line. Jacob had to know the story of the Granville Line, his land and that of all the Lyles Creek settlers back in Catawba had been so long involved with that construct on paper, a relic of the old world. Now he had stepped across the dividing line as he drug his wet deerskin booted feet up out of the mud of the ford. The line itself had been extended further and further west in the Colonial days, but it was after the Revolution that it was surveyed up to the Blue Ridge. In the new republic it was no longer a division of nobles and the Lord's of England, but the boundary between Rutherford and Burke Counties. As soon as the land beyond the Blue Ridge was opened for settlement in 1783 disputes arose as to the location of that line. In late 1783 North Carolina contracted with the son of a famous Revolutionary leader, Joseph McDowell Jr., to survey the line westward from its previous termination at the foot of the Blue Ridge, due west to the Pigeon River. In 1784 he undertook the task with a large party of frontiersmen and not a few Cherokee scouts. That summer, the same in which Samuel Davidson was killed, he and his party chopped and slashed his way across the Blue Ridge and out onto the French Broad basin. Using a hundred foot chain with a pole at each end, and a compass to keep on track, checked when possible through line of sight with a crude scope, he toiled due west. His route allowed no detour and offered no convenience. This line was as straight as an arrow caring not at all for the steepness of terrain or the thickness of bush. As he went he "blazed" the trees and piled up Cairns of rock along his route to mark the line. This effort eventually brought the surveyor to the Swannanoa, crossing just above the Gum Spring. He pressed forward with his line that summer, eventually reaching the Pigeon at a point which left Clyde ten miles upstream, and to the south. At Gum Springs the group set up camp after the short day of traveling, a venture that had covered about 6 miles. This unremarkable meadow surrounding Gum Springs was one of those places that seem a magnet for history, although it lies unmarked, except for a small marker one mile east in Biltmore, but the sight is not unvisited. Today it is the home of the Biltmore Estate Visitor Center, built in 1999. Long before this area was the entranceway to the Vanderbilt Estate built in the1890s a hundred years after Jacob, the flat bottomland overlooked by the center was once home to a large and ancient village of Shawnee, or Swannano Indians. Attacked and overrun by the Cherokee around 1735 the village was raised, the warriors defeated and killed and the women and children not slaughtered were carried off into slavery by the Cherokee. As a measure of respect, the hill on which the last "Spartan" stand of the Swannano occurred was burned over by the Cherokee and the bodies of their dead enemies were evidently placed there in some Native American fashion. Such was this "monument" that over 40 years later the first settlers knew this hill as the sight of "the Indian Graves" in the first Buncombe Court records. This was the location of the center of the city of Asheville, a mile north of the Gum Spring, after it began to grow in the 1790s. Today the Indian Graves are buried under the pavement of Pack Square in downtown Asheville, NC. The fields of Gum Spring were also the sight of the Indian battle of 1784, after the murder of Samuel Davidson. With the arrival of the first settlers the very next year the area was claimed, recorded by reference in later grants. Then, by the time that Jacob camped there the next year it had already become a defacto outpost of the civil government because of the presence of the new "owner" of the parcel of land, Colonel William Davidson. Davidson was the local representative of the Court in Rutherford County, a court that sat for the first time in 1786 in the new "town" of Rutherford Town (today Rutherfordton) back east of the Blue Ridge, twenty miles south of Davidson's Fort. In 1789, three years after Jacob unrolled his bedroll in the meadows, the Town of Morristown (later Asheville) was founded in the parlor of Davidson's cabin there, and in 1792 the County of Buncombe held its first Court in the barn of William Davidson at the Gum Spring. His cabin wouldn't hold all the delegates and jurors so the Court was adjourned and then begun again in the barn. The first order of court was a directive for all in attendance to remove their coonskin caps! In later years the Springs continued to be a center of activity. In the early 1800s the old Indian Trail that crossed the Swannanoa River here, intersecting the Rutherford Trace, became the main north to south route for stock drives from the "new lands" of Tennessee and Kentucky to the ports cities of the Atlantic coasts. In these drives which occurred every fall up until the coming of the railroads in the 1880s, thousands upon thousands of stock animals were driven to market from the frontier. Horses, cattle and the main component of these drives, hogs, were driven by drovers cracking whips (crackers) and shouting all day, day after day, while stopping at a series of "stands" that developed at the camping spots required each evening by the herds. More interesting were the drives of huge herds of turkeys on their noisy way southward to market.
This traffic began just a few years after Jacob passed by, but he probably crossed paths with such drives many times in his travels home to the Catawba, travels for which there is evidence in the records of the St Johns Church. Later years saw the first wheeled vehicles in the 1790s, then after 1800 the building of a log bridge near the Gum Springs across the Swannanoa at the ford. In the 1820s the Buncombe Turnpike was constructed, an improved thoroughfare from Spartanburg SC to Asheville, and made to cross the river at that bridge. This was a "plank road", and was the first "all weather" highway in the area. John Patton was an accomplished businessman, he built a new and better bridge across the Swannanoa, and an Inn and Tavern, as well as a popular "stand" up river from Gum Springs at today's Biltmore Village in the early 1830s and the north-south road was consequently re-routed through his properties, by-passing the old Gum Spring bridge. Use of the Warrior Ford over the French Broad also declined, and then ended after the construction of Smith's Bridge over that river at Asheville so the east-west road through the Springs fell empty as well. By the time of Jacob's death in 1839 Colonel Davidson had passed away and the Springs languished for almost 50 years until the late 1880s when George Vanderbilt came to look for an estate to purchase and a place to build his grand vision, the Biltmore House. In our times thousand upon thousands of tourists pass by this spot on their way to Vanderbilt's wondrous mansion, constructed in 1895 about half way between the Springs and the War Ford. Little do they know what a different world it was in the spring of 1786 when Jacob and his band passed along that very road on route to the Pigeon River and their destiny at a little place called Clyde.
The War Ford and the French Broad River The fourth day out from Davidson's Fort the group probably again got to an early start. It is about three miles from Gum Springs to the War Ford where they were to cross the French Broad River, and then 9 more to their planned camp that evening at Luther's at the mouth of the gateway west, the gap over into the Pigeon watershed and out of the French Broad basin. The French Broad is the largest of all the watersheds in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Its waters rise on the north and west side of the Blue Ridge and draining the eastern sides of the higher Balsam, Pisgah, Black, Craggy, Newfound and Bald Mountain ranges on its way north to form the Tennessee River on the western side of the mountains at Knoxville, TN. After leaving North Carolina it will accept the waters of the Nolichucky River, the valley of Davy Crockett's birth, and of the Pigeon River, which will soon become Jacob's new home waters. Continuing on as the Tennessee River below what was then White's Fort (Knoxville) it gathers the waters of the Clinch and then the Little Tennessee. Here at the junction of the Tennessee and the Little Tennessee, 20 miles downstream from White's Fort was located Fort Loudon. A short distance away on the Little Tennessee (Tannasee) River lay the heartland of the Overhill Cherokee. The towns of Tuskegee, Tomotly, Toqua, Tannasee, Echota (Chota), Settico and Chillowhee were strung along the river like pearls. On the up waters of the Little Tennessee lay the heart of the Middle Townships, mainly Kituwha, now under Fontana Lake and Nequasee, today's Franklin, NC. The French Broad River is a stream with a mixed personality. Most places it presents itself as a calm and deep waterway, heavily decorated with overhanging Oaks, meandering between deep mud banks rising ten to twelve feet above the water. These banks are covered with "snags" of broken trees brought down by previous floods, and provide homes for numerous colonies of beaver and river otter. In these places it ranges from thirty to about 100 feet wide. At several spots it changes like Jeckle and Hyde. Here at these points the river encounters ledges of rocky material in its path that cause it to become a broken and wide stream full of roaring rapids. At these places the river becomes shallow enough to ford, but the river becomes 100 yards are more wide at the same time. These spots notably are at Buck Shoals (the Author's home), Long Shoals, Sandy Bottoms and the War Ford. Below Asheville, which is about two miles below the War Ford, the river takes on this character for the entire bumpy thirty-five mile drop to Tennessee. The Cherokee even had two different names for the river, Aqiqua, the Long Man, for the meandering quiet section of river above today's Asheville, and Tahkeyostee, where they race, for the river downstream of that point. The English had given the river its current name, although exactly who named it is lost. English speaking hunters who dared to venture into this Indian Land before 1763 often said of the journey that they had "drunk of the French waters". In the times before that year the French had claimed the mountains west of the Blue Ridge. As you approach the Blue Ridge from the east by car through today's Rutherford County you will cross the Broad River, then the Second Broad River, the Third Broad River and finally the Rocky Broad River. With this profusion of Broad's it is only natural that after crossing the Blue Ridge into French territory the next Broad River you should encounter would be the French Broad. This was the logic of its naming by the English.
Jacob had waded the "French Waters" at least twice before at the War Ford, ten years earlier with Rutherford in 1776. He may well have been there again in 1780 during his tour of duty with Captains Smith and Conrad. As helped his family and the pack horses through the waist deep waters on the slippery rock ledge that spans the river here, he was making history once again. Tradition in Haywood County says Jacob was the first white man to bring his family west of the French Broad River in today's North Carolina. Historians in Buncombe would argue this however, citing Captain Daniel Moore as having settled on Hominy the year before in 1785. Moore was the leader of a company of Rangers dispatched to Cherokee country by General Rutherford shortly after his return from the 1776 raids. That winter Moore and his men roamed the mountains further subduing the badly damaged Cherokee homelands. Moore returned in 1777 and built a fort on Hominy Creek at the campsite used extensively the year before, about a mile west of the river on the Rutherford Trace. Of this post no description remains but we can surmise it was a log strongpoint much like others constructed all up and down the frontier. This fort wasn't permanently garrisoned, and was usually found destroyed upon any absence of its occupants for a period of time. It was rebuilt for each occupation and provided refuge if a patrol if it "bit off more than it could chew" in its raids into the Cherokee lands further west during the war. As the war with the Cherokee faded to a guerrilla fight after the British left in 1783, the fort provided a post for operations of the militia pursuing renegade bands. Renegade bands became the norm in this period after 1783. Although there were notable attacks and sharp combat at certain locations such as Edneyville up until 1794, these mortal incidents became more and more unusual. The belligerent "Young Warriors" were still about, but the result of their forays into white settlers' lands more often resulted in horse theft and vandalism. Stories of painted bands of Cherokee swooping down on an isolated cabin while the man of the house was gone, of frightening the women and children, opening their feather beds and spreading feathers about the house while dragging furniture outside and lighting a fire of it abound. This is a far cry from the day of the scalping knife and indicates a grim fact the Cherokee had learned in the crucible of the Revolution. The killing of a white brought terrible repercussions upon the Cherokee, out of all proportion to the "eye for and eye" ethic of the "Young Warriors". This fact led them to move to a harassing stance rather than a murderous one as their protest against submission. Daniel Moore probably sensed this change, as did Jacob, making the responsibility and risk involved in bringing their families into the mountains more reasonable, in spite of the example of Samuel Davidson in 1784. The big battle at the mouth of the Swannanoa in that year probably settled the issue with the guilty band, and Moore may well have participated in that action. Moore supposedly brought his wife and children to the neighborhood of his "fort" in the fall of 1785, building for them a cabin near the location of today's Oak Forest Baptist Church at Sand Hill in Buncombe Co. on Hominy Creek. Here several monuments mark his passing on Sand Hill Road. His land grant at this location recorded in 1787 is the first such grant west of the French Broad that we still have a record of, after the Union Army visitation of Morganton, NC in 1865 cut our list short. Jacob and his group came dripping from the river in the early morning light and crossed the "old camping spot" near the river there. Here is the sight of the failed treaty negotiations between John Steele and the Cherokee headmen in 1788, an event that would occur two years after Jacob's passing the ford with his group. Happy to be across they began the climb up the Rutherford Trace crossing the ridge to Hominy Creek, which joined the French Broad about a half mile below the War Ford. Crossing Hominy Creek they proceeded once again to climb the ridge on the north side to Moore's "fort" on the Sand Hill. From here they could for the first time see west, having risen out of the narrow confines of the French Broad's immediate valley. They could look westward across the prairies that existed at the time, up Hominy Creek toward the distant gap between Double Top on the left, the northern extension of the Pisgah Ledge and Grassy Top, a southern spur of the Newfound Mountains on the right. Through this gap Hominy Creek ran, and beyond sight lay the Pigeon River Valley, Jacob's destination and destiny. Having spent a half a day with the journey to this spot, they now pressed on toward the distant gap, following the "trace" across the ridges to the north of Hominy Creek. They crossed first Moore's Creek then Pole Creek, following the latter back down the west side of the creek to the north bank of Hominy opposite where the South Fork of Hominy flows in, then they climbed back onto a ridge now known as Candler Heights. From here they had a spectacular view ahead toward the gap. The Newfound Mountains stood just to the north in a row of low peaks, rising treeless all the way to their crests from the prairie below. To the south Mount Pisgah loomed like a sentinel above the flat bottomland, which lay a hundred feet below. It is about 2 miles across this plain to the foot of the Pisgah Ledge. Up the flanks of those southern hills the grasslands continued for a ways before meeting the dark forest that covered the mile high peak to the south and its associated ridges and neighboring peaks. Following this line of broken hills that runs centrally up the valley, the group made their way west. In the distance Jacob may well have seen a small herd of Bison, as they were still around, although in reduced numbers, in those years. (The last recorded shooting of a Bison in Buncombe County was eight years later in 1794.) Slowly they moved forward leading their train through the waist high grass that often obscured the Trace as it wound around the hillsides. The old Indian Trail was more plainly evident, but it preferred to cross each high prominence that it encountered directly over its top, as is customary with Indian Trails. Rutherford and those who came afterwards were more prudent in choice of incline, and often skirted these hills. This made the journey longer, and the footing more unsteady and prone to erosion, but it avoided the sharp inclines and descents of the higher way. As dusk set the western sky on fire the group finally reached their goal for the night, a well worn camp stop on the peak of the last hill before the gap. Here a 360 degree view was available, and the treeless slopes offered a measure of protection against a surprise attack. This feature had made this hill top a popular stopping point for travelers and war parties from ancient times. Today it is occupied by the modern Ridgeview Baptist Church. As the final rays of light beamed through the pass ahead the pilgrims listened to the rustling grass and the crackle of their fire as they thought about their crossing through the gateway and into the Pigeon Valley on the morrow.
The Gateway to the Pigeon, and the "Gardens" Hominy Creek meanders its way through its broad bottomland up to the very foot of the two mountains that form the gap. In Jacob's time the creek, the old Indian Trail and Rutherford's Trace all met at this gateway to travel west together for a mile or two. Today US 19-23, also known as the Smoky Park Highway, Old US 19-23, the Murphy Line of the Southern Railroad and Interstate 40 join the creek here. Today there is a steady stream of travelers passing through going east and west at all hours of night and day. Indeed, since Jacob's time there has been a steady growth in this traffic, year to year, always more. In its narrow depths the clay first felt the tread of ancient moccasins, then the clanking footsteps of DeSoto's armored band 230 years before Jacob's arrival there, 230 years ago. From the time of DeSoto's passage the Cherokee hunting and war parties, across generations, flowed to and fro to their hunting lands their and contests with Shawnee, Delaware and Catawba. The first tentative white hunters and trappers crossed back and forth for a hundred years before Jacob, and then the cavalry and pack trains of the soldiers carried Jacob along on his first visit in 1776. In the last five years before Jacob's trek with his family, most of the traffic had consisted of renegade bands of Cherokee Young Warriors or revenging troops of enraged settlers making for some object of retribution in the Cherokee heartland, or riding home to surrounding communities at the foot of the mountains. Lately, after a flood of refugee Tories and mercantile traders, the path felt the tread of emissaries from the new republic of the United States, and of representatives of the new State of North Carolina competitively seeking to make a treaty with the Middle Cherokee. Now, with the arrival of Jacob and Isabella, this gateway felt for the first time, the eager feet of pioneer settlers moving west. In the early morning of their fifth day of travel they passed through the shaded depths along the creek. Here they crossed what would become the county line 22 years later, and although not aware of it, they now were in what would be Haywood County. At this point several years later an Inn and tavern would grow up. Here as well, a wagon road would be built by George Smathers the owner of that establishment in the early 19th century, and a toll booth would operate for may years at this point, which became known as Turnpike. George Smathers, brother of Levi Smathers who would someday buy the Shook House in Clyde, built a store, a mill and a tannery on his property. The Inn remained until the 1970s, and an associated Victorian residence near the original Inn receives visitors today as the Owl's Nest Bed and Breakfast. Through the tight gap, cloaked in virgin wilderness in that time, the pilgrims argued their pack train along for another mile or so. Then they entered into the wide, flat-bottomed valley that is Haywood's part of Hominy. Unlike the open expanse of the lower Hominy Valley, this section is steep walled, only a couple of hundred yards wide and in Jacob's time deeply overgrown in a jungle of Cane and scrub brush. Here the Trace followed the flank of the steep northern wall of the valley, where the hardwood forest of the mountainside met the scrub and cane. For four miles the group meandered along this route until finally reaching a fork in the creek in front of a sharp ridge that closed the western reach of the valley. Here they crossed the greatly reduced Hominy as it turned north into Upper Hominy and Newfound Creek Gap. The other branch turned due south into a valley known since pioneer times as the Dutch Cove.
The "Gardens" and the loss of Eden Leaving the creek behind the party now climbed the ridge ahead, following the faint markings of the Trace, rising up after a mile to the divide between the watersheds of the Pigeon and the French Broad Rivers. From this sharp ridgeline Jacob and Isabella now could see the Pigeon River Basin, their "promised land" stretched out before them. A land of lush bottom lands framed as it was by the irregular and numerous "sharp" peaks of the Newfound Range on the north, the massive brooding bulk of the Smokys to the west and the heights of Cold Mountain and the Balsams to the south, the vista presented must have been as close to a vision of the Garden of Eden as the pilgrims might have imagined. In fact, due the expanses of wild rhododendron that cloaked the eastern faces of the ridge here, then the open areas of grasslands covering the bottom lands around a group of ancient and deserted Indian Mounds, the area was once known as "the Flowery Gardens" by early pioneers. Today the vision seen by Jacob and Isabella from this rise in 1786 is not the same, to say the least. The story of the view today is a story of exploitation of the natural resources of the mountains, an exploitation that can truly be said to have started with Jacob's first footstep into the Pigeon Valley and continues today. To Jacob such exploitation was seen as progress, and the limits of such a wealth of resources were impossible to see. To generations that came after Jacob this was still a matter of the march of civilization, and only in recent times have we found the need and realization to consider curtailing our excesses. Even today there is great controversy surrounding the issue of development versus protection and preservation in the upper Pigeon Valley and the surrounding areas. Jacob's generation were all subsistence farmers, taking no more than they needed for their own survival from the wilderness around them. The following generations turned to farming crops for sale, trade and barter, and thus began to clear larger and larger tracts. This was coupled with the overuse of the land which caused cleared land to be "thrown out" after about 10 years of farming, resulting in more clearing. Cash crops such as bright leaf tobacco, barley, wheat and hemp (flax) drained the soil of nutrients. The removal of the Cherokee in 1838 opened up more land to settlement and an influx of farmers from other areas followed. Soon erosion on the cleared lands began to clog the river and carry away topsoil at an alarming rate. Then in the 1880s came the railroad and the period of commercial logging, which saw railroads driven up every cove and valley. Down came the virgin timber that had crowned the heights for millenniums. 3 Billion board feet of old growth was cut from 1890-1934. Great numbers of virgin Spruce, Fir and Oak, Chestnut and Tulip logs floated down to mills at various points along the river throughout those decades. As the size of the trees shrunk due to clear cutting in the virgin groves, the loggers turned to the second growth as the wilderness became "played out". By the 1906 a "pulp mill" had been constructed below the "Gardens". At the Ford of the Pigeon Champion Paper of Canton, Ohio, built this huge mill to manufacture paper, a plant that at one time was the largest in the Southeast. It employs thousands of workers in an area where there is little employment except farming. All this took its toll, and by 1950 the Big Pigeon River was "dead". The Tannins extracted from the wood pulp at the mill turned the river a deep red color and prevented the life of fish in the once crystal waters. The once plentiful game was gone, Bison and Elk were completely eliminated, Bear and Deer had moved to the most inaccessible coves in the mountains. Erosion had carried away uncounted tons of topsoil and deposited this silt against the county's only power dam making it unusable. The land was impoverished and increasingly unable to meet the demands of the exploding population of farmers. These desperate times attracted other industries to the area, seeking the low wages that could be paid to locals in such circumstances, with these industries came even more pollution. Finally, by the middle 60s a movement began to take root attempting to halt this destruction. Today the ever-present smoke and fumes of the numerous stacks of the mill, and the persistent smelly fog that often envelops the entire valley corrupt the view from this ridge. But progress has been made. Conservation has taken hold in Haywood. Better farming practices after 1933 have rejuvenated much farmland, the abuses of the earlier logging operations have stopped for the most part, and huge areas have been taken under the protection of the Federal Government. 30% of Haywood County now is in Federal hands in the Pisgah National Forest and the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. In the 1990s the Pigeon River was the center of controversy. Local and North Carolinian Governments, fearing loss of jobs, for years stood against persistent efforts to clean up the Pigeon after 1950. Finally the citizens of Tennessee who lived downstream took North Carolina to court and forced the EPA regulations to be applied to that once beautiful river. Champion was unwilling to make such changes and so it followed through with its threats and "pulled out". A courageous group of employees and local citizens bought the mill and continue to operate the plant, laying the expense of "cleaning up" that the wealthy company refused to bear at the doors of these ordinary citizens. The River, though still damaged, has begun a return to life, and the fog that once was so prevalent on almost every day is become a less troublesome phenomenon. The logging of old growth has been curtailed, and the abuse of those logging operations still allowed in the National Forests have been diminished in the last few years. The forces of tourism that began in the 1880s and have grown ever since have helped support this recovery, and have helped ease the pain of industries that have left for less restrictive climes, and the forces for development have modified their once adamant stance against any sort of conservation or preservation and have worked with local Government to create a balance. All prudent people today must consider that balance between the forces of nature and man, so the argument becomes where to draw the line between the economic needs of the population and the real need to preserve our natural heritage. This is the debate that still rages in the valley that Jacob Shook settled in 1786.
Jacob and Isabella walked on westward that day, down the slopes of the "Gardens" and to the bank of the clear running Pigeon. Here they got feet wet again, crossing at the "place where the great army once crossed", known as Ford of Pigeon. Leaving the Rutherford Trace they continued westward down the south bank of that stream along the Old Indian Trail, covering about three miles to a wide flat bottom land used oft before by travelers and warriors as a campsite in the wilderness. Here also may have been the original home of Edward Hyatt, and Hyatt may still have been there to welcome him. This was a spot that Jacob had no doubt visited before, and a place where he had determined to build his home in the wilderness. It is conjectured (not proven) that Shook and Thomas Abel (Eber, Ebel or Abeln in German), another German settler from Catawba that arrived the same summer, made a "deal" of some sort with Hyatt for this land which he had lived on for 6 years and which was still technically in Cherokee country. Hyatt then moved about six miles away to a place near Jonathan's Creek where he lived until his death in 1835. Later Shook would add hundreds of other acres to his holdings, but of this original land there is nothing in the records. Here on the south side (and the west bank) of the Big Pigeon River Jacob Shook put down roots, in a place to become known as Shook's Branch and then Shook's for the next one hundred years. (Only in 1886, when the railroad built a depot at this place did the name change to Clyde, the first name of the station master!)
It is hard for us to even start to imagine what that first summer must have been like for Jacob and Isabella. They had come by foot to an area that wouldn't see its first wagon until eight years later! It was a land where white men were rare and the Cherokee ever present. In 1810, 34 years later there would be only 2,800 whites and 280 slaves in all of Haywood County (then including all of Western NC west of Haywood). This as compared to over 6,000 Cherokee. In Jacob's first year there were barely 100 whites west of the Blue Ridge living among an even larger number of Native Americans than in 1810. There were no churches, no stores, no types of convenience or organization of any kind. The government seat was back at Morganton, a long week's travel away, back through the wilderness, and the sheriff there wasn't the least interested in maintaining law and order west of the Blue Ridge. Settlers who opened up the area really did stand alone, dependant on their wits and wilderness skill, hard work and courage. As soon as Jacob and Isabella had found some meadow near the river, and located a spring to provide water, they began unpacking their worn out horse of its load of their meager possessions. They laid out their critically important iron tools; broad axe, poll axe, hoe heads and drawing knife. They carefully unwrapped the plow point, saw, coffee pot and big frying pan. A selection of augers, rasps, chisels, hammer heads and nails were unloaded. Then the prized set of knives and the big cast iron pot could be cut loose from the pack. Isabella now pulled out her bundle of yarn, a set of knitting needles and a package containing the small but critical parts for construction of a loom and spinning wheel (the remainder of these two critical implements would have to be fabricated in the wilderness when time allowed). Next was unloaded the small cask of powder and a bag of lead shot, including an ancient bullet mold. Then several bags of seed corn and other vegetables for seed, and a treasured sack of salt. Last off the horse was a bundle of clothes, quilts and bedclothes that represented the only luxuries of this life. At the core of this bundle lay the Holy Bible, in German Script. Their first chore was to construct some shelter, probably a lean to of some description. Roofed with branches and walled with sticks and brush on three sides, a fire would be built on the forth and kept even in the summer to ward off the roving beasts of the forests. If Hyatt was indeed present they may have had leave to settle in his barn for a spell, because before all else an "emergency" supply of meat must be "laid up". A crop could not be counted on for this first year so survival of the coming winter would require a large supply of salted game. Soon Isabella would be left alone as Jacob took his rifle and headed for the surrounding mountains to hunt.
Jacob probably found the game to be plentiful, and soon he brought back enough turkey, venison and fowl to feel a bit more secure. Later, as fall came, he would go deeper into the forests looking for elk and bear, and maybe bison to truly bind the family over the cold months, and provide hides for blankets and cover from the elements, but now he was ready to build his first cabin.
THE CONTINUING STORY (Under Construction) Cabin building Pioneer Life in the early years Land Grants and records Building of the Shook House
The Rise of Methodism in Frontier America The Great Revival and the Campgound Movement The Missionary Movement and the Cherokee The Cherokee dilemma, Assimilation or Removal; an alternative is tried. Jacob's children go west, the MO attraction and the Shakes The Founding of Haywood The War of 1812, the Creek War, Old Hickory and the Cherokee The Old Man's recollections, the 1833 Pension Application Since his times...
A pictorial adventure following the path of Jacob Shook from his birth in 1749 in Easton, PA to his death and burial in Haywood County, NC 90 years later. |
©2009 ShookHistory.org,
All materials presented on this web site are copyrighted materials either by the author of the page or the original contributor. Use of this material in a private, noncommercial manner is allowed with proper credit, other uses must be with the written consent of the contributor. Links to this site are encouraged.