Western North Carolina Since the Civil War

Front matter

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

SINCE THE CIVIL WAR

Ina W. Van Noppen €g John J. Van Noppen

Part One: The People And Their Homeland

1. On Main Traveled Roads 2. Off The Beaten Path PART TWO: A CHANGING SOCIETY Religion The Bar and The Forum That All May Live Public Education Church Related and Private Institutions of Learning Teacher Education From The Heart, The Hand, and The Head

Literature The Lore of The Folk

Part Three: A Developing Economy

I4. Timber!

IS. From Indian Trails to Broad Highways 16. Business and Industry we

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AUTHORS' PREFACE

Since its organization in 1952 and even before that time, members of the Western North Carolina Historical Association have searched zealously for history in their communities and in their counties. They researched old letters, records, account books, family histories, historic happenings. They have written county histories and presented papers before the historical association. They have sought the aid of the state Department of Archives and History. They have promoted the preservation of historic sites. Their contributions have been invaluable for a history of the region. Among the leading contributors have been Miss Cordelia Camp, Dean W. E. Bird, Mrs. Mary Jane McCrary, Dean D. J. Whitener, and Professor John A. McLeod. Journalists John Wikle, john Parris, George McCoy and his wife, Lola Love McCoy, and such writers of county histories as Judge Johnson Hayes, Clarence Griffin, Mrs. Sadie Smathers Patton, Mrs. Margaret Freel, Mrs. Nancy Alexander, Horton Cooper, Arthur Fletcher, and Mrs. Lillian Thomasson, provided information sifted out from local annals.

The newspapers of Western North Carolina, especially the Asheville Citizen-Times, are to be commended for publishing anniversary editions and encouraging the people to be interested in their history and its preservation. Publisher George M. Stephens has been a promoter of the Carolina Highlands, publishing numerous books and pamphlets dealing with Western North Carolina history.

January 27, 1963, a committee to promote a history of the Western North Carolina Highlands was appointed. It consisted of W. Ernest Bird, Miss Cordelia Camp, John A. McLeod, D. Hiden Ramsey, George M. Stephens, Glenn Tucker, and Daniel J. Whitener, chairman. By late 1964 the present authors had been iv

Authors’ Preface | v drafted to write the book. Interested members contributed financially to support the research, most generous of whom was Wendell Williamson of Asheville.

Robert Conway of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History furnished a list of names of persons who were particularly interested in history, one in each county. We called upon the persons named, and they usually guided us around their counties to view the historic sites and distinctive features. Leroy Sossamon took us flying over the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In Brevard Mrs. Mary Jane McCrary took us into her home, as did Dr. and Mrs. Edward Phifer in Morganton. Several county-wide meetings of local historians were held. Informative ones were arranged by Worth Morgan of Forest City and Frank Rogers of Waynesville. Many members of the association took us to old residents who knew of historic events. They showed us letters, furnished newspaper clippings, some of which were undated and had no sources listed. John Wikle of Bryson City furnished an extensive file of his articles from the Asheville Citizen and the Atlanta Journal.

Dozens of graduate students researched local topics, contributing useful information. Lawrence Groves, Thomas Corbitt, and Rosalie Sexauer Dorsey deserve special mention.

We are grateful to members of the administration at Appalachian State University for released time for research, to the Office of Development for photographic assistance, and especially to John Dinkins, photographer.

Our sincere appreciation is due Dean Cratis Williams who wrote our introduction, Mrs. Allie Hodgin of the Appalachian State University Library who aided us tirclessly, and Jack Van Noppen who reviewed the manuscript and helped organize it. Our greatest indebtedness is to Miss Myra Champion who encouraged and contributed more than words can tell to the completion of this book.

Ina Van Noppen John J. Van Noppen Boone, North Carolina February 12, 1973

Introduction

The late Daniel J. Whitener, Chairman of the Department of Social Sciences and Dean of Appalachian State Teachers College, was commissioned in 1948 to prepare a history of Watauga County, North Carolina, for the Centennial Celebration of the formation of the county and the Sesquicentenial Celebration of the founding of Watauga Academy, the parent institution of Appalachian State University. Dean Whitener’s experience inspired him to assume leadership in the forming of the Southern Appalachian Historical Association, which set about to build the Daniel Boone Outdoor Theatre in Boone and produce Kermit Hunter’s Horn in the West, but he also saw the need for a carefully done history of Western North Carolina which he hoped ultimately to be able to write himself.

Encouraged by both the Western North Carolina Historical Association and the Historical Society of North Carolina, Dean Whitener began gathering material and planning a history, but his heavy burden of administrative duties at the rapidly growing college and his wide range of interests and involvements in local and state civic activities did not leave time for him to engage in the field research needed for the kind of history he thought should be written. During the year prior to his scheduled retirement from his administrative position at Appalachian, Dean Whitener realized that the condition of his health was such that he would not be able to write the history he had dreamed of writing. He sought the advice of the members of the Western North Carolina Historical Association and his collegues at the college. He was urged to determine whether Ina Woestemeyer Van Noppen, a productive scholar and professor of history at Appalachian, might be willing to undertake to complete the history.

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Introduction / vii

Ina Van Noppen, who had collected oral history, visited the sites of engagements along the route of Stoneman's Last Raid, and searched for materials in archives and libraries in preparation for her writing of Stoneman's Last Raid, had become interested in the history of Western North Carolina and the mountain people who live there. She had already discovered that, aside from a few county histories of uneven quality written for the most part by people little acquainted with the techniques of historical scholarship and often motivated by genealogical interests, little had been done, and no one had attempted a comprehensive history of the entire mountain region of the state since 1914 when John Preston Arthur published his History of Western North Carolina. Dr. Van Noppen, reluctant to undertake to do the assignment because of her work in collaboration with her husband, John James Van Noppen, a professor of English at Appalachian, in the preparation of a biography of Daniel Boone, requested time for consideration of the request. Urged by the membership of the Western North Carolina Historical Association and encouraged by promises of such resources as might be available to it in helping to underwrite the publication of the book, Dr. Van Noppen agreed to write it provided she could work in collaboration with her husband.

As the plan for the history developed, the Van Noppens began to see that it ought not to be the usual history of the political and economic progress of a region within a state but, rather a whole history, which would include a treatment of the differentiating qualities of the mountain people as well as their institutions, traditions, customs, folklore, arts and crafts, way of life, and the literature written about them and by them.

Western North Carolina is the state’s share of Appalachia, but no history of Appalachia has been written. Much has been written about the folklore of the mountain people, the economic problems which plague the region, and the nature of the people themselves, as well as their social problems, customs, old fashioned religious views, and political conservatism. The Van Noppens thought that a history should treat all facets in the lives of the people about which it is written. Hence, they have produced an economic, political, social, and cultural history which might well be taken as a model for similar histories of western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee, which, when taken together, might provide a base for a comprehensive history of a unique and fascinating people, the Southern Appalachians.

viii / Introduction

Western North Carolina Since the Civil War is the product of eight years of research and writing. Not content to rely upon such sources as might be found in regional libraries and state archives, the Van Noppens sought out individuals in the mountain region who possessed primary sources, traveled over the mountains from town to town and courthouse to courthouse in search of sources, sought documents and reports stored in state archives and the Library of Congress. John Van Noppen reviewed the literature about the mountain folk, visited living writers, studied the collections of ballads and folk songs, and read theses and dissertations written about the cultural heritage of the area. Together, the Van Noppens attended fairs and festivals and visited museums, libraries, and colleges in the area. They traced out the early roads through the mountains, studied the histories of the railroads, visited the forests and the national and state parks, examined the history and development of tourism, and sought out the seers and craftsmen, the educators and the religious leaders, the politicians and the developers who share in guiding the native mountain folk living in what has come to be known as North Carolina's vacation land through their transition from a highland rural and largely self-subsistent society to what is rapidly becoming an urban society.

Ina Woestemeyer Van Noppen, a native of Bethel, Kansas, was educated at the University of Kansas and Columbia University. Soon after graduating from the University of Kansas, she began teaching history in high schools in Kansas City. After recciving the M.A. degree from Columbia, she taught for a time at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While working toward her doctoral degrce at Columbia, she taught history at Penn Hall Junior College, where her husband John J. Van Noppen, was dean and a teacher of English. Later she and her husband taught at Hiram College and at Youngstown College in Ohio before going to Appalachian State Teachers College in Boone, North Carolina, in 1947. She is the author of The Westward Movement (1939), The South: A Documentary History (1958), and Stoneman's Last Raid (1961), for which she received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association. She and her husband collaborated in the writing of Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman (1966). An outstanding teacher of history, Dr. Ina Van Noppen received one of the first distinguished teacher awards presented by Appalachian State University.

Introduction | ix

John J. Van Noppen grew up in Madison, North Carolina. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Columbia University. After years of teaching in secondary schools and preparatory schools, including experience in Italy, where he became personally acquainted with Benito Mussolini, Dr. Van Noppen began a long career as a college tcacher and administrator. He was an English teacher and Dean of Penn Hall Junior College and Preparatory School at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Head of the Department of Education at Hiram College, and a teacher of English at Youngstown College in Ohio. He joined the English faculty at Appalachian State Teachers College, Boone, North Carolina, in 1947. He has engaged in extensive research on Archibald Henderson and George Bernard Shaw and collaborated with his wife in the writing of Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman (1966).

The Van Noppens are world travelers, having conducted summer tours abroad for students and teachers for many years. While researching in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in preparation for their biography of Danicl Boone, they learned much of the ferments which sent English, Scottish, and Scotch- Irish pioneers into Western North Carolina prior to the American Revolution. Among the descendants of these settlers are the Western North Carolina mountain people of today.

Western North Carolina Since the Civil War, though a scholarly work, is published without the extensive footnotes which the authors painstakingly prepared. Aimed primarily at the reading public, particularly of Western North Carolina, the book is none the less of value to the historian and the student of local cultures.

Moving slowly and often painfully out of their dark period of economic and social disintegration following the Civil War, the mountain people living in the isolated and insulated "lost provinces" of Western North Carolina had by 1900 begun their steady march of progress into contemporary times. Uneven at times and faltering as the state and the nation suffered through such social and economic upheavals as war, economic booms and recessions, and drouths, the people of Western North Carolina have made solid progress in improving education, local economy, communication, land use, and natural resources. Most importantly, they have clung to the traditions and nurtured the heritage that is uniquely their own. With pride in themselves and appreciation of the grandeur which lies about them, they have managed to preserve their own culture and conserve their own beautiful x | Introduction homeland so rich in resources that the degree of poverty there is not comparable with that found elsewhere in Appalachia. As the Van Noppens have so aptly observed, Carolina mountain folk are not "yesterday's people" nor is night likely to come to them, for they have become the shapers of their own destiny.

Cratis Williams Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina

Prologue

Exsesdng from Rutherfordton on the south to Mount Airy and Fancy Gap on the north is an elevated region, the foothills, from 1,000 to 2,000 feet above sea level. Beyond are lofty, mistshrouded and haze-creating mountains, the picturesque barrier of the Blue Ridge on the east, the magnificent Great Smokies and the scenic Unakas on the west. Between the Blue Ridge, which is the eastern Continental Divide, and the Unakas there is a high plateau with altitudes ranging from 3,500 to 4,000 feet. Grandfather Mountain 5,964 feet, is the highest and most spectacular peak in the Blue Ridge, but not as high as the Black Mountains farther south, where Mount Mitchell rears its lofty crest 6,684 feet above sea level.

This elevated tableland encircled by the two great mountain ranges is traversed by cross chains that run directly across the country, from which spurs of greater and lesser height lead off in all directions. Among the transverse groups are the Black, Roan, Yellow, New Found, Pisgah, Balsam, Cowee, Nantahala, Cheoah, and Tusquitee ranges. Between these ranges lie valleys formed by rivers which flow through gorges near their headwaters, then widen out and continue through fertile valleys across the plateau, and narrow again, dividing the rampart into the Unicoi, the Great Smokies, the Iron, the Bald, and the Stone Mountains. Clingman’s Dome in the Smokies is 6,642 feet above sea level, almost as high as Mount Mitchell. The Black Mountain range extends for twenty miles, and its sides are covered in places by almost impenetrable forests. Of the transverse chains, next to the Blacks in size and altitude are the Balsams. In general magnitude and length they are the most extensive of the cross ranges. Fifty miles long, this range has numerous peaks which average 6,000 feet.

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Geographically Western North Carolina, consisting of foothills, valleys, peaks, the crest of the Blue Ridge, the Great Smoky Mountains, and the transverse ridges, is about 250 miles long and up to 150 miles wide. It consists of approximately one-fifth of North Carolina's area but only one-seventh of its population. It has one county with sixteen persons per square mile, three with fewer than thirty per square mile, three with from thirty to thirty-nine per square mile, five with from forty to forty-nine persons, and two with from fifty to fifty-nine, while for the entire state the population density is ninety-seven per square mile.

Since 1739 the subdivisions of the state have been known as counties, each serving as an administrative unit for the colony and later for the state. As new areas were opened they too were designated as counties; some of them were quite large, and later as the population increased other counties were formed by subdividing the existing ones. Rowan County, formed in 1753, was the parent of Western North Carolina although the present-day Rowan County is not in Western North Carolina. In 1771 Surry County was created from Rowan and remained the westernmost one until Burke was also formed from Rowan in 1777 and Wilkes from Surry in 1778. In the southwest Mecklenburg was created from Anson and in 1769 Tryon was formed from the western part of Mecklenburg. In 1779 Tryon was abolished and its land divided between Lincoln and Rutherford counties; the latter is in Western North Carolina.

Meanwhile four additional counties, later part of Tennessee, were formed: Washington in 1777, Sullivan in 1779, Greene and Davidson in 1783. They anticipated cession to the United States and in 1784 tried to create the State of Franklin, which did not survive asa state. Three other counties, Sumner, Hawkins, and Tennessee, were subdivided from the four before cession did take place in 1789. The seven became part of the State of Tennessee which was admitted to the union in 1796.

In 1800 Western North Carolina consisted of Surry, Rutherford, Burke, Wilkes, Buncombe (which had been created from lands ceded by the Cherokees), and Ashe counties. Ashe had been separated from Wilkes. As the Cherokees gave up additional lands Haywood County was established in 1808, Yancey in 1833, and Henderson in 1838. From Rutherford and Burke came McDowell in 1842, and from Buncombe and Yancey was formed Madison in 1851. In 1828 Macon was set apart from Haywood, and in 1851 Jackson County was created from Haywood and Macon, the latter having surrendered the land evacuated by the Cherokees for the county of Cherokee in 1839. Further subdividing created Polk from Henderson in 1855, Transylvania from Henderson and Jackson, and Clay from Cherokee, in 1861, Swain from Jackson and Macon in 1871, and Graham from Cherokee in 1872.

In the northwestern part of the state Caldwell was formed from Burke and Wilkes in 1841, Watauga from Wilkes, Ashe, Caldwell, and Yancey in 1849, Mitchell in 1861 from Yancey, Watauga, Caldwell, Burke, and McDowell. Alleghany was created from the eastern part of Ashe. The last county, Avery, was formed in 1911 from Mitchell, Watauga, and Caldwell.

Upon examination of a map showing the counties of Western North Carolina one must conclude that they have very peculiar shapes. This is due no doubt to the mountainous terrain and to the necessity that people be able to travel from the farthest point to the county seat.

In the eighteenth century immigrants poured through “William Penn’s new port of Philadelphia” from the British Isles and Germany. With them they brought their skills, speech, ballads, dances, and folk customs. Many of the second and third generations came southwestward seeking land. Salisbury in the newlycreated Rowan County (1753) became the springboard into the West. In the 1750’s Salisbury was like the hub of a wagon wheel. Settlers flowed in along the northern, eastern, and southeastern spokes. They paused briefly to rest their horses, repair their wagons (if they had any), and to buy needed supplies of salt, powder, lead, and tools. Many fanned out along the western spokes toward the beckoning beauty of the Blue Ridge. They plunged deeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the prospect of cheap and still richer lands on which to build their homes. Soon they had settled all except the most mountainous parts of what are now Surry, Wilkes, Burke, and Rutherford counties. Intrepidly they disregarded the threat of Indian attacks and moved into the uncharted wilderness. Some lost their lives but many survived, the ancestors of present-day mountaineers. Men bearing the names of Alexander, Boone, Bryan, Robertson, Sevier, Shelby, Campbell, Clingman,

Jackson, Davidson, Patton, Rutherford, Councill, Calloway, Howard, Horton, Gudger and Moore were among the advance guard. They cleared land, built primitive cabins, hunted, trapped, and fought the Indians. Their incentive was the passion for land where there were few taxes and no restrictions upon political and religious freedom. The extent of their migration may be seen from the fact that in 1746 there were not one hundred fighting men in the North Carolina foothills; while in 1753 there were three thousand. In 1765 one thousand wagons passed through Salisbury going westward.

During the Revolutionary War the Cherokee Indians made the fatal mistake of siding with the British. They were badly defeated and decimated by frontiersmen led by men like Griffith Rutherford and John Sevier. Their towns were burned, their women and children killed, and they were driven ever westward. During the Revolution many who fought the Cherokees saw the mountains for the first time, admired the beauty of Western North Carolina and were determined to return and settle as soon as the war ended. A law passed by the state legislature in 1777 provided the method of acquiring land. Each claimant took to the entry recorder a statement of location and approximate boundaries of the land he wished. The county surveyor then surveyed the tract and prepared two plots with descriptions of boundaries and acreage, which he transferred along with the warrant of survey to the secretary of state. The claimant paid the entry taker two pounds and ten shillings per one hundred acres. A husband was allowed to take six hundred forty acres for himself and one hundred acres for his wife and each of his children. For purchases in excess of his allotment the purchaser paid five pounds per one hundred acres, or one shilling per acre. Tracts of as many as 1,000,000 acres were laid out and were acquired by speculators who disposed of the land in tracts of $00 or 1000 acres. Among the large landowners in the region before 1800 were Charles Gordon in Wilkes County, Robert and William Tate in Burke, David Allison, John Gray Blount, and William Cathcart in Buncombe. When the war was over the state offered land to servicemen in payment for their having served.

The bold and dauntless pioneers pushed across the great mountain barrier into a natural wonderland with magnificent scenery, a cool climate, clear air, pure water, fertile valleys, and game in plenty. In this region men and women extended a frontier civilization that became Western North Carolina, consisting ultimately of the twenty-four counties that are in the mountains or ascend the eastern slope of the mountains.

Many of the settlers moved into the back country on foot and on horseback, bringing their household goods on pack horses. Among these goods were, in addition to rifle, axe, and hoe, clothing, blankets, bed clothes, bed ticks to be filled with grass, a large pot, pothooks, an oven with a lid, a skillet, a frying pan, a handmill to grind corn, a wooden trencher in which to make bread, pewter plates, spoons, the iron parts of plows, a broadaxe, a froe, a saw, an auger, seed, and a few fruit trees.

The historian John Fiske implied that the settlers of the mountains were descended from poor whites and indentured servants who migrated westward rather than compete with slave labor, that their ancestors had been herded into ships from the slums and jails of England. His opinion was true of only a small minority. He and others who held this opinion ignored the predominant Scotch-Irish and German origin of many settlers. John C. Campbell believed that the early mountain population was recruited chiefly from the poor but vigorous small farmers of the piedmont, few of whom owned slaves.

A study of family names in the Southern Highlands by the Russell Sage Foundation revealed that of 497 names, one-third were English, one-third were Scotch-Irish, and fifteen per-cent were of German origin. Most of the families were descended from those living on the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina in 1790. They were the same stock that later peopled the Midwest and the Southern states along the Mississippi, except Louisiana. According to S. H. Hobbs, the English in Western North Carolina contributed most to the civilization of the region. Wherever the Englishman has gone . . . he has carried with him the industrial, political, and intellectual customs of his native land. The English ideal of home life, the English industrial system, the English principles of politics and government, the English language and literature sooner or later became the dominant force wheresoever the Englishman set up his home."

R. D. W. Connor characterized the racial strains of the population as follows: the English were law-abiding, commercially minded, and self reliant; the Scotch-Irish were democratic, liberty loving, and religiously minded; the Germans were shrewd, economical, conservative, lovers of learning and religion. Although Connor was writing about the people of the state as a whole, these national strains made up the population of Western North Carolina and his description is apt.

There has been a tendency to speak of the early settlers as though they were all alike, all of one class. This tendency has created a misconception. They were not a homogeneous group. Three classes came to the mountains: the prosperous settler clas that came and bought good bottom land and perhaps thousands of acres of mountain land as well; those who bought land in smaller tracts from the first group or from the state; and those who came on foot or horseback carrying their few possessions, and who squatted on the land. Many of the prosperous people of the area today are descended from the settler class, although their prosperity did not result from agriculture. Their land was their most valuable resource, and scions of pioneer families are still realizing tremendous returns from land sales — land that has grown amazingly valuable. On the other hand poverty for many resulted from the extinction of the game, over crowding, and exhaustion of the soil. As time passed many valleys, ridges, and coves had a population greater than they could support. Large families lived crowded in one or two-room cabins. As late as 1910 eighty per-cent of the population lived outside towns of one thousand population. As the original farms were divided among descendants holdings became smaller and smaller.

T Civil War brought disunion and discord to Western North Carolina. Many people loved their section and their state, but they also revered the Union for which their ancestors had fought. Some favored the South, some the Union. Brother fought against brother and father against son. Neighborhoods split, families divided. Many heroic young men fought for the Confederacy; others fled through Tennessee and Kentucky to join the Union army. Numbers hid out in mountain caves and recesses to avoid conscription. Many of the latter two groups were opposed to slavery; others felt that the Civil War was a war of the planter class and they had no reason to fight for planter dominance of the state.

There was no actual campaign in the mountains of North Carolina until 1865, but the mountain passes were of strategic importance. The Northern strategy was to divide the South into segments, and control of the passes would have contributed.

A number of roads crossed the mountains from east to west: the Western North Carolina Road across the Balsam Mountains; the great highway from South Carolina and Georgia crossing Saluda Gap, passing through Henderson, Buncombe, and Haywood counties; roads from Wilkesboro diverging in three directions: northwest into Virginia, west through Watauga County into Tennessee, and southwest through Morganton, crossing the Blue Ridge at Swannanoa Gap. Turnpikes supplemented the state roads, making it possible for wheeled vehicles to cross through some of the gaps, but there were many littleknown mountain paths where only experienced guides could find their way. The great mountain barriers discouraged invasion by hostile forces even though the area was divided in sentiment. Railroads to cross the mountains had been planned, but none had been built.

During the war campaigns were fought all around the mountains but not through them. The salt works at Saltville, Virginia, were a target of several Union raids. Cumberland Gap was in Federal control in 1863; Chattanooga and Knoxville were captured by Union forces and the Shenandoah Valley and the gaps in the Virginia mountains saw considerable action. Braxton Bragg, Kirby Smith, and John Hunt Morgan led Confederate troops through the passes of the Cumberlands, and Union troops fought their way through Georgia's mountains from Chattanooga to Atlanta, yet North Carolina's mountains remained a formidable barrier. General U. S. Grant considered following up the victory at Chattanooga by sending 50,000 men through the mountain country, but after a ride of 175 miles, he abandoned the plan because of the bad roads.

The Confederacy realized the importance of North Carolina mountain passes. Colonel William Holland Thomas of southwestern North Carolina anticipated such a campaign as that planned by Grant. He believed that Lee might wish to use the mountains as a stronghold where he could have an invincible base of operations. Confederate soldiers built roads over the passes through the Great Smoky Mountains, and they controlled the mountain passes toward Tennessee. Early in the war Thomas's Legion of Indians and Highlanders, the Eightieth and Sixtyninth North Carolina regiments, had guarded the bridges between Bristol] and Chattanooga, but after the fall of East Tennessee, they fell back on the Smoky Mountains toward Waynesville and Webster.

After East Tennessee became Union territory, the Fourteenth

North Carolina Battalion (Woodfin's Battalion) was created. Originally three companies, it later had six. Its members were Western North Carolinians and its function was to defend the state's borders against invasion and pillage. After Woodfin's death James L. Henry was made Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the battalion. As Henry had only one eye the command was sometimes referred to as the ''One-Eyed Battalion." It made raids into Tennessee and used the guerilla methods necessary in mountain fighting.

In 1864 the defenses of Northwestern North Carolina were very meager. Madison County was patrolled by a cavalry company; while Major Harvey Bingham had two companies in Watauga and a Captain Price had a small company in Ashe. These companies defended the counties against predatory bands from East Tennessee. Yancey and Mitchell counties were virtually undefended.