On the Porch with Jim Williams
Capturing the stories of the folks of Marion, McDowell County, and Western North Carolina. Told by those with first-hand experience.
On the Porch with Jim Williams
Martha Jordan Former Exec Director of the Historic Carson House
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Martha and I discuss some history of the North Cove area, a couple of ghost stories, and her time at the Historic Carson House.
Hello, I'm Jim Williams, and you're on the porch. Today I have a very special guest with me. It's the former executive director of the Carson House, the former regent of the local DAR, and uh quite probably the best cake maker in Western North Carolina. Uh Martha Jordan's here with us. Hi, Martha.
SPEAKER_02Good morning, Jim. I'm so happy to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks for coming and thanks for bringing all the technical difficulties.
SPEAKER_02I don't know what it is. My local personality, I guess.
SPEAKER_00We've been fighting this system for about the last 30 minutes, and Martha's patiently waited here so we could get started. Let's start with just a little bit of uh background about you. Tell me kind of where you came from and how you got here.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, um my family has been here for years. I feel like I'm part of the dirt, the original dirt in in this area here, because I have so many ancestors that uh started their new lives in America here. Uh but I uh grew up in the North Cove community. Uh I attended North Cove school from first grade and was in the last graduating class that graduated from North Cove High School. And uh so I feel real proud about being able to spend all 12 years at North Cove. Um I came from a family of educators. Um my dad was a high school principal, coach, teacher, my mother was a teacher, my grandmother, my aunt. Uh so and then we've kind of followed through uh uh with uh the love of education for sure. But uh a lot of my uh interest in history uh came from my grandfather, uh Charles McCall. Uh we lived on the farm uh in North Cove where his family had been since the late 1700s. Um the McCall family bought um land from Thomas Young, who had was the first grant holder in that particular area of North Cove. My son still lives on on the land there that uh started out in the 1700s with them. But my grandfather, um Charles, uh was born in 1881, and uh he lived through so many great aspects of uh history as it was evolving in this country. And uh every day that we were with him, he would always share stories about you know family and history and things that had happened. So it was um I I created him with you know putting the spark in me to uh continue to research uh history and uh and especially our family history.
SPEAKER_00I want to go back to your childhood.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Because you more than me, uh, as I've said often on this program, I'm also a child of the Appalachian. And I remember so many things that my grandparents said and told me, and those are the things that I'm trying to bring forward on this podcast. I've told others who were here, uh Steve Little for one, that one of the things I value about uh where we are in the country is the fact that we're storytellers. That's what the Appalachian people are. Now, I say Appalachian because I'm from California, but a lot of people I know say Appalachian. But we're storytellers, and I think that is going away. When and when I think of people who are storytellers, I think of you, I think of Ann Swan, who will be my guest next week. Uh, I think of people like Steve Little, to a degree, even Chuck Abernathy. What I would like, and I know you have a lot of stuff prepared, and I'm just gonna sit back and listen and enjoy this. Tell me some of the things that your grandparents and your parents, uh maybe your grand great grandparents, if you remember them, uh imparted on you and what it was like up in North Cove, 'cause you've got a deep, rich history up there.
SPEAKER_02Well, it was like hard work was just part of your your life. Um my my schedule as I was growing up, I remember, you know, having to get up early before breakfast, going out and taking care of the animals first. You know, you take care of feeding the chickens and watering them and uh milking the cow. And uh that carried on until uh I remember as as a teenager in high school when most everybody was, you know, starting to run around and and do other things. I still had to get up, go milk the cow, then get cleaned up, fix breakfast, and then I drove a school bus too at 16 to pick up the kids in the community, and I had children all the way from you know first graders through seniors in high school on my bus route. So that that was one of the things. And then also uh I made just about all my clothes. I was in the 4-H club from early on and um learned to sew and crochet and knit and a lot of those activities, and all my clothes were homemade. Um and uh so that's another skill that is has been lost by so many young people in particular. Uh so that was that was one of the memories. And of course, if we had any time to play, we took off to the woods. Right. Took off to the woods to play. Uh we had this uh steep bank that was uh red clay dirt that we used to climb to the top and just slide. It was our slide. And of course, in in warm weather, we would you know swim in the creek and go fishing and have all kinds of fights with throwing rocks and things like that.
SPEAKER_00Well, now let me get the lay of the land when I'm gonna start with when you were a child. When I think when I think of North Cove, it starts for me at about where American Thread is. But that's more that's severe. Uh-huh. Uh is that part of North Cove?
SPEAKER_02Well, it was in the school district later. North Cove is more up around where Baxter is. My family farm was right in there. The McCalls owned um about a thousand acres early on in that area. So, and then by the time I came along, my grandfather had about 300 acres of farmland and timber uh there uh near Baxter. And he would always talk about too um the over mountain uh road, the uh the yellow mountain road, which the over mountain men traveled, went right through the middle of the property. So it was um kind of a a busy place, you know, from early on.
SPEAKER_00Th that's kind of interesting. So is that marked now as over mountain victory trail? Do they show that?
SPEAKER_02I think a lot of the signs have have been either stolen or taken away. There was one at Honeycut Creek Road that signified the over mountain victory trail. Actual part of the r the trail bed is still exist through the farm. Huh.
SPEAKER_00So uh getting the lay of the land again, was American thread there when you were there? When you were a child? Yes. But certainly Baxter's Baxter was not.
SPEAKER_02Baxter wasn't built until the early seventies.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I get criticized when I say this, Freddie Killow killed me for saying this, but but the roads were paved, right, when you were uh a child?
SPEAKER_02When I was little, they had just recently been paved, and um they did not get electricity until the nineteen fifties.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02When my dad was a principal at North Cove, uh there was no phone, of course, anywhere. The uh there was a general store right across from the North Cove school that finally got a telephone, and if he had to try if there was any kind of emergency or anything, um he would you know go over to the store to make a phone call.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like an episode of the Waltons. They call the general store.
SPEAKER_02Well, and uh there was uh uh another general store in in Ashford uh near the train depot up there that um we would occasionally go to if we needed something in particular, but I I have a a vast m memory. The first time I ever went to a grocery store in Marion, I was twelve years old.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02Because we still grew everything pretty much that we needed. Um my grandfather would sometimes go to Otis's store in Ashford uh if he needed to get some nails or a new pair of overalls or um like canned uh a canned product that that we didn't grow on the farm.
SPEAKER_00How'd the people get along up in those neighborhoods? Your neighbors were distant, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Well, everybody was about kin to everybody.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh that's what I say now when I meet people, I s if I ask you enough questions, we might be related. And um uh but you know, very uh warm community, you know, uh church going folks, um helpful neighbors. Uh and whenever, you know, harvest time would come, the neighbors would come over and help. Um the busiest time was when my grandfather was growing a lot of wheat, and uh that would be a time when the threshers came. There would be uh a group of people who would come with the threshing machines and they would go from farm to farm and you were required to, you know, feed the threshers, and and so my mom would often uh comment later on about whenever we were doing a big meal, he said, look like we're preparing for a bunch of threshers coming in. Um but that was another thing that my grandfather did. He um uh he was of the age to serve in World War One, uh, but because he provided so much wheat to the uh uh US Army, they said they didn't draft him because they wanted him to produce the wheat. So um you people a lot of people don't know that the that valley uh grew a lot of wheat that fed the uh United States Army during World War One.
SPEAKER_00I don't even think about it as a wheat producer now. Right. So your grandfather then was alive then, certainly during World War One. So you came along after World War Two and was your mother and father around at that time? Right, yes. W things were starting to move, weren't they, in the country? I mean, after the war everybody talks about how prosperous we got. Did you see that up in North Cove? Well, we got a TV. Well that is that is what what did you watch on TV?
SPEAKER_02Um uh Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, that's definitely progress, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and getting a telephone, I think it was 1964 or 65 when we got a phone in the house, but it was a party line, and we shared it with two other families, so you'd have to wait till they got off the phone if you needed to make a phone call.
SPEAKER_00A little different now, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02A little little bit different for sure on on that aspect. Uh but I I feel honored that I was able to grow up knowing the skills that m my grandparents and great grandparents had before, you know, with you know, we had a huge garden and the farm and raising all the animals and taking care of the land and um it it was great. Sometimes pretty messy. One of the things that I I hated doing was when we had to kill a whole bunch of chickens at one time.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02The first time that my grandmother said, All right, you're old enough, I think I was about eight, she was trying to teach me how to wring their necks. I never did get the hang of that too well, but we had we had the chopping block with um that was out by the chicken house to cut their heads off. But anyway, when you're processing a lot of chickens, it's it's uh day's worth of work. What we did was we uh built fire and had the big black pot, which was used for about everything, filled it with water to get it boiling. We it took a while to get the get it hot enough. Then we started grabbing the chickens, and she said, Okay, uh cut its head off and so we can get started. So she handed me the axe, and I didn't want to look. I turned my head and ended up coming down on the chicken's head with the blunt end of the axe instead of the sharp end. And of course I turned loose and it went flopping everywhere. She said, Go catch it, you gotta finish your job. So I did. Uh went and caught the chicken and and had to look at it to do it the right way without cutting my hand off. Um, and then you um would have to dunk the chickens in the boiling water, you know, to loosen the feathers, and then pluck the feathers, and then we, you know, had to clean, clean them, clean the guts out and everything and get all that separated. Uh and then the work wasn't over. Once we got uh all of those killed and cleaned, we canned the meat to keep it. We didn't have a freezer. Canned the chicken.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02Yes, uh-huh. And it's so good too um to have uh it's uh convenient to open a jar of home canned chicken, you know, and make some dumplings or something like that to go with it. It doesn't take long to put a meal together if you've got because the chicken's already done in the jar.
SPEAKER_00Well I like chicken and dumplings, but I've never heard of canned chicken.
SPEAKER_02Well, we did it. Um and then another time, you know, uh uh fall was the time that you did processing of your your hogs. And uh hog killing time usually fell about Thanksgiving when it would get cold enough that the meat wouldn't spoil. So I vividly remember my first um job was uh rendering the fat w from the l rendering the lard from the fat. And my grandmother said I was not tall enough to reach the top of the wood stove, so she put me on a wooden stool and a uh huge wooden uh uh spoon and a big pot, and I had to just stand there and and stir and you know, make sure that the fire stayed going and uh that it didn't burn. It had to stay at a pretty constant temperature to to get the uh fat rendered.
SPEAKER_00Don't you think it's remarkable that our generation has gone from rendering lard to uh holding in our hand a uh powerful computing device like the cell phone.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that something? Right, it is. But uh y what I love to do now is to try to, you know, t teach as many young people as I can skills like that. Um like I took my granddaughter's last summer and the youngest one wanted me to teach her how to do several things, and I was thrilled that she had the interest first before I projected my passion for it. Um but anyway, she said, Nanny, I w I want to learn how to sew and I want to learn how to crochet, and I'd already, you know, whenever I would have the grandchildren, I'd have them help me with uh making pickles and jelly and and uh canning stuff, they always already knew how to do all of that stuff. So uh I was excited that that they had the interest to do that and and I found it with working with the Carson House too, is whenever we have kids that out there for programs, they're really interested in getting their hands dirty and learning some of these skills.
SPEAKER_00Really? I would not think that. I think they'd be more interested in in being on their phone. Yeah, being on the phone and uh playing game electric electronic games.
SPEAKER_02Well, once you can get the electronics out of their hands and and give them some of these uh activities, most of 'em really enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00What was it like the family unit were was it you and your si h did you have siblings?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Um I was the oldest of four. I had two brothers and a sister, and uh then my cus several cousins lived by, so we were always, always together. I was the only girl, so I played football with them, basketball, did all the rough stuff in the woods and in the barn and everything too.
SPEAKER_00Did you live under one roof? How many of you were under one roof?
SPEAKER_02Well, my cousins lived in uh nearby houses, so we didn't live under there, but there was uh six of us, my mom and dad and my siblings and myself.
SPEAKER_00And were your grandparents president at that time?
SPEAKER_02My grandparents lived just behind us really on the same property. We were saw them every day, morning and evening.
SPEAKER_00Did your grandparents, either grandmother or grandfather, hand down any stories to you about the family?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, many, many stories.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember any of those?
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. Uh lots of stories.
SPEAKER_00Do you want to tell me some?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, um, one of the things about my grandmother, she uh grew up in the uh Munford's Cove area. Uh and when she and my grandfather met, she had just started teaching at one of the little schools. This was before the McDowell County School System started. She was um she had started teaching when she was 16 years old. Uh and she um uh taught in a one-room school at Three Mile, which is uh uh a little toward a little Switzerland. Um but anyway, she taught there a few years and she was boarding at uh an old home called the Brinkley House, which is still standing. And um when she was in her twenties, uh the Brinkley ladies decided they were gonna fix her up with a gentleman which was my grandfather. He was kind of de declared an old bachelor farmer because he was twenty years older than her.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02But they introdu uh the uh Brinkley sisters introduced him to her and uh they hit it off and got married not too long afterwards. Uh but uh but anyway it was it was kind of strange that she was um of course the Brinkleys were cousins of my grandfather and they said they were going to fix him him up and and they got married. Um but my grandfather told lots of stories. Uh he was one of the first foremen that worked on the Clinchfield Row railroad really when it was being built up through North Cove. And uh his father uh and him both were land surveyors, so uh they knew the lay of the land and everything, and they worked very closely with the railroad company to get the uh line built. And one of the problems that the railroad has, of course, is you know, going a s a grade, getting a grade on the steep mountains and the rocky, you know, it was just so they his father suggested that they make a gentle grade that made a circle uh kind of around the whole North Co valley to get that grade up to Alta Pass and then on to Spruce Pine. Right. So in reality that kind of made it a a great asset to the economy of the community. They then once the railroad was complete, they were able to sell more of their farm produce and and things like that. So um, but one of the stories that my grandfather told when he was working on the railroad, and this was you know his words, he said, I worked 40 Italians and two darkies, and he had a he said I had a one white water boy.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02Which uh turned out to be uh the White Water Boy was my present husband's fa grandfather that worked worked for him. Um uh but anyway, they uh uh there was several incidents where you know they didn't get along with each other and they would have fights and they'd you know go steal some of the dynamite and blow up things and um one bad cave-in happened. They were working on a tunnel around Honeycut Creek, Honeycutt Mountain, and there was an explosion, and it killed about twenty to thirty uh workers. Oh my goodness. And forty mules were killed. My grandfather was just so upset because the railroad company was uh more upset about losing the mules than it was the workers because the workers could be e so easily replaced.
SPEAKER_00Now, what period of time was this? What year do you know?
SPEAKER_02Um uh 1904, 1904.
SPEAKER_00Oh, 1904, yeah. So this is before World War I. Right. And they're trying to get the train to go up toward Alta Pass. All right. Probably some heavy equipment, right? Some steam engines and stuff. But a lot of handwork.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um well I haven't come across that they were my grandfather had an old photograph of a long mule train carrying a steam engine, and it had like twenty mules trying to pull this, and it was they had gotten stuck on the Yellow Mountain Road going through their farm trying to get that uh machine moved.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02And i it was um stuck in my mind about that that photograph of all those mules trying to pull that.
SPEAKER_00People that listen to this program know that I am constantly trying to get somebody to tell me a ghost story. You got any ghost stories?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh one that I know in particular that was told to me by Garville English that lived uh on up toward Lindwell Caverns. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02He told about um that um as he was coming along there was a um a young uh mixed race woman that all the the blacks were jealous of because she was so attractive and she was had the yellow skin, and there was a black community that lived on top of Humpback Mountain, and they came down, you know, the travel back and forth. They'd come work on the English farm uh from time to time, and there was a um, you know, kind of a a path through the gap there from Humpback Mountain down to where the English farm was. Well, they were a lot of the ladies were real jealous because all the men liked this this pretty young young lady. And uh so one night they were heading home and some of the women uh attacked her and killed her, well, nearly killed her. Well, some of the Englishes and some of the other m uh workers there found her and carried her to the upstairs of the barn um of the um the English farm and then she ended up passing away there. But they say that that her her spirit haunts the place. Really? Uh uh might hear, you know, sounds or things getting changed around.
SPEAKER_00No kidding. Well, okay, I'm gonna jump over here. Jim Haney would hate me for saying this, but uh because he would he was adamant that there were no ghosts at the Carson House. Do you believe that or do you think there were?
SPEAKER_02Well, some people do because strange things have happened there and there's no explanation for it. Uh the first time I was there by myself in the evening, everything, you know, was pretty much closed up and I heard a uh a screen door slam and I thought I looked all around. I never could find you know where that was. Uh but there's been incidents of things being moved and no explanation. Uh I've heard things like uh I was given a tour one time and uh the my guests that were with me said, you know, do you ever hear a ghost or anything like that? And about that time we heard all kinds of commotion in the chimney and a squirrel had gotten in. So I can attribute some of that to the squirrels getting into a place and rolling walnuts around. Uh but but several people, you know, that are more attuned to things have said that they, you know, have a sense of you know spirits in the house.
SPEAKER_00Well, but but when Jim was alive and I have s so much respect for him, he wouldn't let us talk about ghosts. You know, he he would say, No, that's not part of what the Carson House is. Uh so and he we lost him just recently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we he uh oh he was such a treasure of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh we uh we really miss him tremendously.
SPEAKER_00He uh now you brought notes here. Do you w are there things you want to tell me while we're here?
SPEAKER_02Well, I just you know jotting down, you know, things about stories. I know this is um a lot of people are getting into the America 250 and looking back at their ancestors that came along.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you know, some of these names m that I'm related to might be somebody you know, somebody else might be related to these people and might be interested in finding stories about them.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Uh one um this goes back 1700s now. Um the uh patriot that I went into the uh DAR under was Captain John Conley, and um he um uh was with uh McDowell and uh some of the other uh characters from around here in some of their expeditions. Um and um I just recently found out that he was a gunsmith, and uh I'm I'm anxious to find out, you know, who has one of his weapons that he built, uh, so I can you know lay eyes on that. Uh another one was uh William Wafford. Uh William Wafford um had an ironworks in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This was prior to the revolution starting.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02And of course, during the revolution, you know, everybody wanted, you know, all the tools and you know, lead balls and everything that he was making. So uh one of the skirmishes involved Joseph McDowell being down there in South Carolina, and the Tories destroyed his ironworks. So Wafford and his family then left there and bought some property in Turkey Cove, which is presently, you know, like where the Greenlee property is, going up toward uh Little Switzerland, Cox's Creek area. And he built a fort there, and um uh I haven't found accurate uh information that he had an ironworks there, but likely he did.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh as well.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Uh but he stayed there uh during most of the Revolutionary War and then after the war then went back to uh Spartanburg, re-established his ironworks down there. His descendants then founded later on Wafford College and Oh really? Okay, he's my fifth great one of my fifth great grandparents was William Wafford. Oh and um then uh Henry Gillespie is another character. Uh he uh if people in the area are familiar where the Brinkley House is, uh his cabin uh stood back there until Vandals stole most of the logs from that cabin not too long ago. Oh, really? Tragic. Um but Henry Gillespie was um uh there was never any indication that he was really loyal to the crown, but he r wasn't real loyal to the Patriots either. Um when the Over Mountain men came through, they had captured some kind of document that belonged to Ferguson, um Patrick Ferguson of the British. Um, he had in his possession something that that Gillespie was not to be touched.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02And he and so when the over mountain men started to go on their tra on the uh uh search for Patrick Ferguson, uh they stationed a couple of their men there at Gillespie's place just to make sure that he wasn't really a Tory, that he wasn't wouldn't go warn Ferguson of the encroachment of the Patriots coming back.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, because Ferguson was hated. I mean, he was a show no quarter kind of guy.
SPEAKER_02Right, he was, and you know, he had you know, he had been ordered to get uh to do something about these backwoodsmans that were not following the standard order of battle. You know, they were like guerrilla fighters. They would uh fire a couple of rounds, run, hide, uh, and um so he was determined to squelch that uh that group of militiamen. And uh of course the militiamen were even more determined to uh to not fall prey to uh Patrick Ferguson.
SPEAKER_00I want to get back to your grandfather who's working on the railroad. Okay. Uh when he's on the railroad, he's the he's the water boy, right? Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_02My grandfather was the foreman and my husband's grandfather was his water boy.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness. Okay, I got it now. Well, that was convenient, I guess. Did they did they I know the railroad now goes up to Alta Pass. Was that all accomplished at one time or were there did it take?
SPEAKER_02Well it took about three three or four years uh from about nineteen hundred, I think the um the date on the honeycut bridge is nineteen and five.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02On that sounds about right on that uh tunnel, not bridge. But that tunnel. Yeah, it did make quite a difference in the economy for the folks there until nineteen sixteen, of course, when the flood hit and destroyed everything again, and it took years to rebuild the railroad back through there.
SPEAKER_00I am not aware of that flood. Uh may uh no, I don't think I am.
SPEAKER_02Well, it was just about like Helene was for us here. Um it destroyed uh so many, so many families ended up leaving because all their farmland was washed away, their homes, their businesses, everything. The railroad was destroyed, so supplies couldn't get in. Um and this was, you know, before anybody had automobiles or the you know the roads were washed away.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02So it was a devastating flood. They had mudslides and um a lot of people lost their lives. Um there's um a photograph that uh in the Carson House, and you may have seen it in some of the McDowell County history of the Conley home. That was some of that was my second great-grandfather's home. It was located uh between Woodlawn and North Cove. And at that time the family was living there, and when the flood hit, um, they opened the uh doors to let the water through. It started rushing through, so they climbed to the second floor, and then it started coming in the second floor. They opened, you know, windows and doors, and then they finally climbed into the rafters of the house, and this was in mid-July when this the flood happened. Um, and the Conley family at that time was my uh great uncle, uh, his uh five of his sons, and two school teachers that were boarding there, and they all huddled in the rafters of that house while the waters were rushing through the house. Uh one wing of the house completely crumbled away. Why, you know, and it was like they knew they were gonna die.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, did did they all survive?
SPEAKER_02They all survived the next day. Um my uh great uncle's uh daughter and her husband had had a home across the the creek from there, and they were calling out to see if anybody was still alive in there, and they were, and so they rigged up some cables and barrels and uh made their way over and uh rescued them one at a time in a barrel uh back to safety.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02But there was another incident, too, up at the uh English place. There was a McGee family. Uh the um uh man and his wife and their children and his mother were living in the cabin. Well, the man and his wife went out to move the water pot to keep it from getting washed away, and while they were out moving the water pot, um a um wash pot, a big mudslide, took the cabin away, washed it away. They couldn't see anything, pitch dark. So the next morning uh they went to the Englishes and said, you know, everybody's washed away. The mother and um uh four children, and uh so they went searching and uh they found one of the little girls, and she lived about two days before she died. She was all broken up. One of the other children was killed. Um a little bit later they found the other one, and then it was several days. They were didn't find the body of their infant baby. Well, as they the waters continued to go down, uh they were walking around looking for things and they thought it was a cat up in a tree. And come to find out, the baby had been enveloped in the feather mattress and was stuck in the tree and was still alive. The only thing sticking out was the top of his head, and he was severely sunburned on that spot on his head, which he carried that scar forever, but he was uh found alive. Really, and uh his the the man gentleman's mother was also found alive way up in a tree where she'd gotten caught up in a tree. But their three other three children perished from from that uh slide.
SPEAKER_00Now, was that a w you're calling it a flood, was it like a hurricane kind of thing?
SPEAKER_02It was the same kind of pattern like we had when Haleen came. Uh they had had a a very wet spring and the remnants of two consecutive uh hurricanes and tropical storms that hit in that area, same basic weather pattern as what we had when Helene hit.
SPEAKER_00So it isn't uh Helene wasn't the first time we got hit.
SPEAKER_02No, and then later on in 1940 there was another one just about as devastating.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02Uh absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So before the war.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00I didn't know that either. Of course, there's a lot I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Well, uh, and then of course, um, well, around McDowell County, most of the damage that happened was, you know, in the higher elevations of the county, Buck Creek, North Cove, and that area because of the mudslides. You know, the same way with Helene, you know, yeah was the worst areas of this county that got hit. When you have that much water coming down in a small area, it just causes the force to be so bad.
SPEAKER_00That's what happened to us this year or this storm. Not this year. Last was it last year? When did has it been more than 2024. 2024. Wow. Time goes by.
SPEAKER_02About a year and a half.
SPEAKER_00But we're still recuperating.
SPEAKER_02Right. And and and you know, it's like with those folks, you know, they had no insurance that the storm happened in July. It was too late in the year to restart crops growing again. Their livestock had been washed away. The Englishes, for example, lost over 200 chickens because their chicken house washed away and killed all. And then um you think about too the cleanup. When you have, you know, so many dead animals and um the destruction there and and very limited resources to clean it up, uh, something that many people don't know about is right after that there was a typhoid epidemic because people's hand-dug wells became contaminated.
SPEAKER_00Oh.
SPEAKER_02And um, so that took out a lot of people who s who stayed on. And then the flu pandemic hit, which, you know, worldwide killed millions of people. That was all happening all during World War One. So you know, though those years there from 1916 to 1919 in this area were really devastating to this county.
SPEAKER_00I had no idea that that was going on. I mean, I I know a fair amount about World War One and the tragedies of World War I that took place overseas, but I didn't know we were suffering like that here in McDowell County.
SPEAKER_02Well, one of the things that my grandmother told me about, she lived close to where a railroad track was, and and she said trains would be loaded with nothing but coffins.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02And you can just see the train cars just coffins. And uh she knew of families that the whole families perished because there was no one well enough to take care of the others who had the flu. She lost a little baby sister due to the flu, uh, but luckily the rest of her family made it okay. Um but she said numerous families lost their whole families and and you can tell that by if you go uh uh looking at different cemeteries, there'll be, you know, the same dates 1918. Oh you know, several family members died within days of each other.
SPEAKER_00Well, I hadn't thought about that. Well, what happened then to all those to all the houses of all the families that died all at once?
SPEAKER_02Uh did the houses just fall apart or did the property get sold or well um just you know different things, you know, if usually they would get sold or another family member would take over.
SPEAKER_00Well, let me ask you this. I'm gonna you said everybody knows everybody at North Cove, so I I have relatives up there. My family tree extends to the goods. Did you know any goods?
SPEAKER_02Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00Well, that was m my family up there.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh I had an uncle, Doc, good Oh, I knew him. Really? Is that right? Yeah. His wife, we called her Queenie. I never knew her name. She was my Aunt Queenie. And they lived up in kind of toward North Coast. Right. So was that mainly an agricultural must have been up there. Uh but the train came through.
SPEAKER_02Well, at one time there uh at the uh crossing where um between um American Thread and where the little road goes back out on 221, yes, there's a railroad crossing there before H and B Lumber Company moved in. Um back in the um thirties there was a cannery there. A cannery. A cannery. And folks could take their farm produce in there and go in there and ha can it in ten cans. Really? Yeah, sure enough.
SPEAKER_00How long did that last?
SPEAKER_02Um probably they probably closed b by the time World War Two started.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm not for sure about that, but uh but I I remember my mother talking about, you know, taking a lot of things down to have it canned at the cannery.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's an interesting uh enterprise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I don't think those things exist anymore, do they?
SPEAKER_02No, not that I'm aware of that people can can do that.
SPEAKER_00The cannery, my my goodness.
SPEAKER_02Uh well, one of the things that my great grandparents did, uh their house was, of course, situated right on the Yellow Mountain Road, which was still traveled until they finally built a road, uh, the old Linville Road along the North Fork of the Catawba. But they established a store on their farm. They would make yearly trips to Charleston to trade their farm goods and then bring back things and and resell it to the uh people in the community. Of course, this was all before the railroad system was in use and all that. I asked my grandfather, I said, you know, what kind of things did you go get when you went to Charleston? And mostly they would get wagon loads of salt because everybody had to have salt for curing their meats.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That was that was the biggest thing. And another thing was that they would carry uh their wheat down uh because there was a a refinery near Charleston where they would take their wheat and have it refined into white flour because it made just you know softer biscuits and everything than the the natural grain would. So they would uh take their wheat and have it ground to that refined flour and bring it back. Uh they would also buy things like thimbles. Thimbles Exactly. Um I have uh a little box that is in the original box of thimbles that they had bought and they would sell the thimbles to people. And of course they were probably they were probably imported from uh England or something at the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would imagine so. Well that's interesting. I didn't think about something as simple as a thimble.
SPEAKER_02And of course you'd you know probably know that they would, you know, uh get coffee, coffee beans uh in Charleston that had been brought up from the Caribbean. And uh sometimes the if they went they would get some citrus fruit to bring back at the time.
SPEAKER_00But what about tobacco? Is there any tobacco grown around here?
SPEAKER_02Uh not that much anymore, but it used to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Let's go back to your great let's see, great great great grandfather, maybe. Uh I'm always interested because at the Carson House they talk about the slavery, you know, the slaves that the Carsons had. But I've always contended that just the average farmer didn't have many slaves.
SPEAKER_02They didn't.
SPEAKER_00Because they were expensive.
SPEAKER_02Right. Uh very expensive. Um and um uh so there were just a lim it was a handful of of people in McDowell County that were slave owners.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh and Dr. Haney has done a f uh great job. There's documents out at the Carson House, and then he put some into a book uh that give listing of of slaveholders in McDowell County. So there's there was very few.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, I wish he was still around. I could use him up here on this podcast.
SPEAKER_02That would be great.
SPEAKER_00Because he had a lot of knowledge. How long did you work at the Carson House?
SPEAKER_02Uh I worked from uh 2018 to 2024.
SPEAKER_00Was I on the board of directors when you were?
SPEAKER_02No, no, you weren't. Okay. You were had already put in your time before I started. Okay. You may have been on the board when I was volunteering. When I retired from teaching in 2012, I started volunteering as the junior historian leader.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So how long did you stay there?
SPEAKER_02Well, I volunteered from 2012 till 2018, and they asked me if I would do the director's job in 2018.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's growing up there. I mean they've got they really are. Uh what is it what are they calling that? It's not a visitor center.
SPEAKER_02Heritage Center.
SPEAKER_00Heritage Center. Is that that's not open yet though?
SPEAKER_02Well, partially. It's uh we uh they just got um the certificate of occupancy so people can go in. Um there's several volunteers working in the new library there, uh cataloging all the uh old historical books that are there and working on files and uh picture collections and things like that. So it's a great space to work and volunteer if if folks are interested in volunteering, they'll certainly could put you to work uh doing that kind of thing. Hopefully the plan is by August that the permanent exhibits will be finished to put in there. The space is open. We're um uh they're putting together a quilt exhibit of heritage quilts, so that's gonna be on on display and available for people to look at, which is phenomenal.
SPEAKER_00Uh going back up to North Coast, you've got pretty good cell service up there now, don't you? Don't your cell phones work pretty well? In spas. In spots, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's still some dead zones for sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, there are a lot of uh companies that are that partition us uh on the planning board. I'm on the planning board and they're trying to get some more cell towers up there to cover the area, but that's a rough country.
SPEAKER_02It is. The Lindville Mountain is pretty much is mostly rock. Yeah. Rough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Steep. I see a lot of homes up on the hillsides out of the valley there. Mm-hmm. And that's kind of a new thing, isn't it? Right. They didn't come in until probably um the eighties. Those farms have they kind of cut themselves land wise, have they cut themselves up to make make it possible for that growth to happen?
SPEAKER_02Some have, but um, you know, there's still some uh families that have been on those original family farms for generations, like, you know, um the McCall farm is where my sons now live. Of course their last name's not McCall, but anyway, that was the McCall farm and their d their descendants. The Brown f families the Englishes. All those farms are still, you know, owned by the f you know, generational Right.
SPEAKER_00The English folk English family, they were dairy farmers mainly, right? Yes. Okay. And they've they've kind of given that up.
SPEAKER_02They've uh just recently sold the dairy, but they're into the um marketing beef. Oh they are? Yes.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I didn't know that. Right. So they're raising cattle to to turn into beef. Right. I see you've got your notebook there. Do you want to tell me anything?
SPEAKER_02Well, I pretty much have it all in my head. I just you know, when I was when you uh called and asked me to come, I thought, well, what what kind of stories would he like to tell? So I Well, I'm up for anything.
SPEAKER_00Is there anything you want to tell me?
SPEAKER_02Um well let's see. Um I'd love to, you know, try to encourage people, especially if you're from around here, ask questions and find out where your people came from.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_02And it is amazing to me that back in the uh 1700s that people were so mobile, they would just pack up and move. Many of the settlers who ended up here started out in Delaware and Pennsylvania when they came over on the ship. Ships came in in Delaware and then migrated on up to Philadelphia, and then, you know, Pennsylvania got filled up, and the um people started traveling some of these old uh the indigenous peoples trails, which the old wagon road was a main thoroughfare really. It went, you know, through Pennsylvania, down through uh part of Maryland, uh, and then down through the Shenandoah Valley, came out in Salisbury, then to Charlotte, and then on down to Rock Hill, South Carolina. That was a main thoroughfare. And then it expanded from the rivers that went out. And of course, in this area, the Catawba River was an area where these people started settling and moving a little bit further west.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Uh, so um it was it's just amazing to me that you know that they would take, you know, what few possessions they would have and no knowledge of the area and then just take a chance on coming into this area and and build a a future for themselves and their families.
SPEAKER_00So are you saying we may be married to our own cousins?
SPEAKER_02Well absolutely. I'm sure that could happen. Uh absolutely. If you uh ask enough questions, you it certainly would be. Um but another one of my fifth great grandfathers was uh Daniel Brown. Um he had uh lived for a short time in the area around uh Ashboro, then headed west and got land in McDowell County. And it was one of his grandsons who bought the Carson House from the Carsons from LA, one of his grandsons. So um, but anyway, he established a mill in North Co., was a you know a mer merchant and um ground grain and and all that. And then in uh around 18, 1820s, he was in his fifties and uh found out about land being sold for a nickel an acre in Georgia, and he gathered up there was 40 families and all their possessions and headed led a a uh journey to White County, what's now White County, Georgia, and they started a whole new community in that area. He built uh a mill there, and the mill is still in operation to this day. Uh, and that was back in the 1820s. And I just couldn't imagine somebody, you know, near, you know, retirement age just up and starting all over.
SPEAKER_00That is that's amazing that there was that I don't know if it's entrepreneurial spirit, but it's a it's a spirit of some sort that somebody would just pick up and go and start a community.
SPEAKER_02Well, in the same way, you know, going back to roots with the the Carson House, Sam Price Carson, who had served three terms in Congress with David Crockett, uh, when he finished his last term in Congress, he uh took a whole group of people from this area with him and went to Texas. And, you know, he became part of the leadership in Texas. He was uh he only lost being president of the Republic of Texas by seven votes, and he became the s the Secretary of State. The first Secretary of State of the Republic of Texas. It it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of history here and history that branches out from here. Absolutely. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating when you start to research it. And I I guess I'll continue this line of thinking next week with An Swan. Right.
SPEAKER_02I don't know where we'll go, but Well, uh uh she's a wealth of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00Well, as are you.
SPEAKER_02Uh well I just you know, just uh I keep an interest and I want to learn something every day and it's mostly about old stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well I I get that. But uh but yeah, uh this was like a jumping off point, you know, as the country developed, you know, just for example, like taking off to to Texas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's I I I mean that took months, I'm sure, to get there. So what did you do in the DAR?
SPEAKER_02Well, um a lot of different things. The the DAR is an organization that you have to get in, you have to prove that you are of direct lineage of someone who served it for the Patriot cause, not necessarily a militia or a um someone who was in uh George Washington's army. You could have given uh services or your uh property or money. Uh one of my direct descendants was a Quaker who who gave mutton, but he was given a pension because he had provided goods to feed the army. So that's another way that you know you could get in lots of different ways. But anyway, it's a great service organization. Uh we do a lot of things uh for veterans for schools. Um we're uh a group uh is uh going to go uh be at the veterans honor flight this weekend when they come in from um into Asheville. We uh give uh items to veterans at the the VA Center, uh blankets, snacks, coffee, reading material, things like that that they can they can use at the VA Center. Um with schools uh we have volunteers who who go out and do programs with with students. Uh they do things for teachers, for teacher appreciation, lots of different activities with with school students, providing things that are are needed, like um if they have a need for uh children who need clothes or warm coats or hats, they do projects to to help with that. We also help with um some of the other uh organizations, the missions with uh providing um food and uh supplies for the shelters uh uh here here in the county.
SPEAKER_00I had no idea you were that active in the community. That is the that's of course daughters of the American Revolution. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But there's um uh just so many activities to do. You know, if a a lady thinks to that she might be connected to a patriot, we'd you know, love to have them come. As a matter of fact, this uh uh Saturday we're having a lady uh well we meet uh monthly and uh I try to put together programs of of interest to to folks and uh we have a lady coming that does period clothing for uh eighteenth century clothing. Oh my goodness. Um she's gonna be uh doing a program about that.
SPEAKER_00That should be pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_02It is, she's very interesting. And uh of course we support like the Over Mountain Victory Trail, the uh reenactment of uh the uh Battle of King's Mountain has a big part in this county, and uh every year the uh reenactors come through and do programming for all the fourth graders in the county and also eighth graders in high school. Well, where does that take place? Well, we have uh program out in the Carson House and we have Living History Days uh that um that children can attend.
SPEAKER_00You know, I seem to remember that um some of the over Mountain Victory people spent the night there in the Arbor. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And do they don't they fire their weapons or something? They do a program.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. They do a program and it includes, you know, firing the the fire locks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh folks always enjoy that. And they tell the story of the over mountain men, which involves a lot of the ancestors who came from right here in this area because you know that was part of it.
SPEAKER_00What time of year does that take place?
SPEAKER_02In September, the end of September.
SPEAKER_00September. Mm-hmm. Okay.
SPEAKER_02They they follow the same route, like um they have their first gathering, their muster at Sycamore Shoals, Tennessee, on the 25th of September, and the they uh follow along the same trail route, they try to, and then on the 7th of October is always the final uh episode at Kings Mountain. That was King's Mountain, right. The Kings Mountain battle happened, was October 7th, 1780. So they try to stay accurate as far as the timeline goes. Right, they try to do that, but you know, we try to accommodate other, you know, schools and groups too when we can. Um if it you know the day falls that they're supposed to be in McDowell County on a Saturday, we try to accommodate so they can do the school children on a weekday.
SPEAKER_00What do you think you gain the most out of being up in North Cove?
SPEAKER_02Just the love of the land.
SPEAKER_00Really? It's still pretty natural up there, isn't it? Even though they once again have suffered a lot of damage. But they're building back. I I was up there just maybe a week ago, and I can see that it's well growing up.
SPEAKER_02Well, like um some of the land that I still own is is all forest, and um it's gonna take a hundred years for those forests uh to come back to anything like they might have been.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I as I've said, and I I think I say this to everybody when we talk about this, and a lot of people on this program have talked about Helene because it was such an impact on our community, it affected everybody from the mayor to well to everybody. At least we can take some comfort in knowing that that was a natural event. You know, we didn't bomb ourselves, like I say. It just happens, and so that's part of the human species. We have to live with that and get over it.
SPEAKER_02Well, and then it it brings out a lot of the the community love for each other. Um I saw uh a lot of people volunteering to help carry carry meals, carry supplies, carry water, donate things that would never have considered doing that before.
SPEAKER_00I yes, you're right. I saw that myself and and participated uh in that myself because uh I had to do some work at like six o'clock in the morning. I didn't even know they made a six o'clock in the morning. Uh uh so uh I had to be somewhat moved to get up that early to do anything. I saw so many people. I was down at the kind of the command center down there, and uh all the food and the water and the workmen and the volunteer people that were there, it it is overwhelming and it it is it should give everybody uh a feeling of accomplishment and really kind of I hate to get on the bandwagon here, but really a a feeling of accomplishment and and brotherhood and sisterhood. So that maybe maybe that's why we do that kind of stuff, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's ingrained in our spirit to to help.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Anything else you want to tell me?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh I think that's plenty for today, and we'll we'll schedule another time and go down another rabbit hole. All right.
SPEAKER_00Well, listen, I appreciate you coming and I appreciate you uh sitting here. We had so much trouble this morning trying to get our system online and but but we did somehow it seems to be working. Uh Martha Jordan, I just want to tell you how much I and I think I had uh one of your I think I paid $75 for a pound cake at the last dollar. Oh really? Yeah. And and it was worth every penny. So wow. There's there's a whole other thing we could talk about is your baking skills. But thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for the invitation, Jim. It's my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00It was good to have you up here. I don't have much to say this morning to except next week we have um uh Ann Swann is coming, and we're gonna talk about some more history because that's where I'm I like it right now. I like to hear the storytellers tell their stories, and Martha certainly did a great job this morning. I've enjoyed that. I want to thank Janet again for working on the console and getting us up and running. Remember, you can get to me directly. Uh my email is on the porch with Jim Williams. That's one word. On the porch with Jim Williams at gmail.com. So uh email me. Uh email me if you've got any ideas. Uh email me if uh uh you have any questions or comments about our broadcast. Or even if you want to come up and talk to me. Uh I'm always open. We're booked up a lot uh next week, and Swan, and then I think we have uh I think uh some folks from out at the lake are coming. Uh I have something special coming up. It's gonna be Walt and Jim discuss food. So Walt Bagwell and I are gonna tell you where to eat in this country, uh, and I think you're gonna enjoy that because we are self-proclaimed food connoisseurs. So uh stay tuned for that one. That one's coming up in a few weeks. Uh, once again, I want to thank all of you for listening. Uh, our numbers are growing. Pass it on. We enjoy doing it, and I hope you enjoy listening to us, and I'll see you next week on the porch.