Historical Articles by Jane Gibson Nardy
Jane Nardy is a professional Genealogist, National Speaker, Cashiers Historical Society Historian, coeditor of The Cashiers Area - Yesterday, Today and Forever, and is a direct descendant of the Zachary founding family of Cashiers Valley.
William Norton’s daughters and the Bushwhackers
LAUREL
MAGAZINE - CASHIERS HISTORY ARTICLE
In the spring of
1877 in Cashiers Valley, Alexander Zachary, age 70, took pen in hand and wrote
to his youngest son, Thompson Roberts Zachary, who had established a homestead
in far away Kansas. There was news from Cashiers Valley as well as questions
about the welfare of T. R. and several of his siblings also living in the west.
Cashiers Valley
April 12th, 1877
Dear son:
I received your card dated March 19th which found us all in common health and doing very well. We have plenty here to live upon as yet and I think will. I am glad to think you are doing so well in your country. Hope you may continue doing so. I have not got entirely well of the erysipelas yet. I have it in my blood and it is hard to get out. It hurts me in my feet worst, still there is no sign outwardly, they have a burning sensation which pesters me a little at times.
The rest are all well. Of course you want to know how the people in this country is doing. I have just been out to James [Alexander’s son, James Madison Zachary] at Grassey Camp [Norton], he has just got one of the best saw mills to running I ever saw. I suppose it will cut 2000 feet ever day, he will soon have the road done to it. The mill is east of D. Norton’s on Grassey Camp Creek. A. W. [Alexander’s son, Alexander Washington Zachary, called “Wash.”] is getting on all right, a man from Charleston, S. C. is building near him – just across the Blue Ridge towards the Jenney cabin fronting Whiteside.
I have not had a letter for sometime from C. C. [Alexander’s eldest son, Christopher Columbus Zachary.] therefore I cannot say how he is doing, but I suppose very well. It seems he has not time to write or don’t care. I want to hear from all my children often that has left me and gone west. Is C. C. making money fast herding cattle or not? I would like to know how he came out with his cattle last fall, how many did he sell and how many did he keep through the winter, and what kind of winter you have had.
We had here the prettiest March you ever saw with the exception of the last day or two. Your mother and I was then in Walhalla. At that time we was badly pestered to get home. We came up through the Cove for the best way, was 7 days on the road. Coming down the mountain we run up upon a sheet of ice about 30 yards wide and [it appears a sentence is missing here] … very sidelong, brought it over by hand, run off the lower side, of course, luckily got help at once, got back, came on then all right to the shed. Going up from the river got help and came on to the next and so on until we got home.
We are at this time having big frosts every night. This month has been colder than last. We are having cold nights and warm days. I think most of our fruit has gone up, still there are some peaches yet. We have two stores in the Valley. Your Uncle Jonathan and a man by the name of Cline has them.
You wish to know all about our ancestors – I am not prepared at this time to tell you much about them. Your Great-Grandfather was named William, had four sons, John, David William, James. The old man came from England, was a brick mason by trade; built a large brick building on a good farm and lived there until his death, never moving. He had two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Mary married a man by the name of Todd and Elizabeth Jack Garges. Both went west, you know some of them. Uncle Joshuary Roberts moved west about 65 years since – there are a great many of them somewhere. John was drowned in the Ohio River, never married. Wm. Lived in Virginia, also Stone Boyd and Douglas, marrying my mother’s sisters. Some of the rest of them lived and died in Surry, N. C. on Stewart’s Creek, the wealthiest part of the county. I don’t suppose Uncle Jonathan’s land could be bought today for 50,000, lying on Stewart’s Creek.
I only mentioned A. W. and J. M. The rest of them are doing very well. George Cole and Manda [Alexander’s daughter Amanda.] is living with us. Between us we have 23 head of cattle, plenty to make our milk and beef.
Your affectionate father,
Alex. Zachary
Note: Some of the spelling was corrected by the contributor.
LAUREL
MAGAZINE - CASHIERS HISTORY ARTICLE
In Cashiers, across
the street from the Cornucopia Restaurant parking lot, in the fork of the road
where Schoolhouse Road and Highway 107 South meet, there once stood a very old
house. About twenty-five years ago the house was dismantled, board by board, and
if you had not seen the house when it was still standing, you would never
suspect a house had ever been there. Keep in mind that the house was built long
before today’s Highway 107 was “straightened out” in the late 1930s. The
house was not originally in the fork of any roads but sat directly on the main
road coming into Cashiers Valley from the south – today’s Schoolhouse Road.
The house knew many
residents during its over one hundred years long life. Prior to the late 1950s
the families of J. B. Collins, Will Hunter, Walker Deal and Paul Fugate lived
there. Madge Dillard Merrell remembers attending a mountain-style Christmas
party there when the Deals were in residence and she told also of spending many
a night in the house when her mother’s younger brother, Paul Fugate, was
living there with his family.
The exact date of
the demise of the house has not yet been pinpointed, but it was probably around
1980. It had sat unoccupied for awhile. Several very reliable people remember
what finally happened to the house but their accounts don’t exactly agree. One
person clearly remembers the dismantling of the house with the old boards being
saved to be used again. Others saw the house burning. Perhaps both versions are
correct and when the parts of the house that could be salvaged were taken away,
then what was left was burned.
The last resident
of the old house was the widow, Mrs. Edna Allen. She was born Edna Lusk in
Salem, South Carolina, and at the tender age of one month, she moved with her
family to Waddle Mountain in Bohanney, an area in Jackson County, near
Whitewater Falls. There she grew up and got married to Gus Allen, the brother of
Jackson County’s Sheriff Frank Allen.
Four children were
born to Gus and Edna, two boys and two girls. In about 1957, when their youngest
child was only four years old, Gus Allen died and was laid to rest in the Salem,
South Carolina, Baptist Church Cemetery. Edna was left to raise the four
children, Virgil, Ruth, Janie and Rex. Mrs. Allen and the children moved to
Cashiers and rented the old house which was owned by Chris Rogers, who himself
lived a couple of doors down the road in the big McKinney house.
There was no indoor
plumbing so water had to be drawn daily from the nearby McKinney Spring and then
carried in heavy buckets back to the house. Mrs. Allen used a lot of water as
one of her means of supporting the family was to take in washing.
With no modern
washing machine in sight, this involved drawing water from the spring, filling a
large black wash pot outside in the yard, building a fire under the wash pot and
washing the clothes in the boiling, soapy water. The clothes were then
transferred to tubs filled with clean water for a good rinsing.
Madge Dillard
Merrell recollects that Mrs. Allen was eventually fixed up with a hand pump, a
great improvement, which brought the water from the spring right to the back
porch. Not only did Mrs. Allen hand wash clothes, she also did ironing for a
great many people. She was considered the best ironer around and was entrusted
with the most delicate of linens and cottons.
The wooden house
had two stories, with one fireplace and long porches on the front and the back.
Downstairs were the kitchen, living room and one bedroom. Heating the house was
accomplished with the wood-burning fireplace, helped along with the wood cook
stove in the kitchen. Stairs on the front porch accessed the upstairs, where the
boys had their bedrooms. One could not go upstairs from the interior of the
house. The driveway led to the back of the house, so it was from that direction
that most folks entered the house. This led right into the kitchen, the heart of
the house.
All the cooking was done on the wood stove and Mrs. Allen was known for being a good cook, as well as for her friendliness and generosity. There was always something cooking on her wood stove and in its oven. On any day, around 12 o’clock noon, one could find several Cashiers working men in Mrs. Allen’s kitchen, eating their mid-day dinner. Some were kinfolks and some were friends and all were welcome.
THE DR. VAN EPP HOUSE - WINNER OF THE CASHIERS HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S SECOND ANNUAL VILLAGE HERITAGE AWARD
[Laurel Magazine – June 1, 2005]
Each year, the
Cashiers Historical Society partners with the Cashiers Area Chamber of Commerce
and presents a Village Heritage Award. The call goes out for nominations of an
individual or family who has preserved Cashiers’ heritage by reusing an older
building as a place of business in the community. The structure need not be
“historic register” material but can display the creative reuse of one built
more recently. The building must contribute to the business vitality of the
Cashiers’ community. The winner is announced at the annual Cashiers Area
Chamber of Commerce Banquet in early November, and the Village Heritage Award
plaque is presented the following spring.
The 2004 winner was
Lyn Monday’s House of Design, located 1 MILE from the Crossroads on Highway
107 south. The plaque award ceremony will take place at the winning structure,
at 7pm on Thursday, June 9, 2005, during a Chamber of Commerce “After Hours”
celebration. All devotees of preserving our historically significant buildings
are invited to attend.
Starting in June of
1920, the Dr. Van Epp family of Florida summered in Cashiers Valley. They
arrived in a Willys Overland touring car and boarded the first few years in the
Minnie Cole house. In 1923, after the Halsteds of High Hampton died, the Van
Epps rented High Hampton and spent two wonderful seasons there until the McKees
purchased the estate.
Dr. Van Epp decided
he needed his own mountain house so in 1925, he ordered an Alladin prefabricated
home kit from the Alladin Homes Catalogue. The company was based in Bay City,
Michigan, only one of a number of American companies building prefabricated home
kits. Its more famous rivals were Sears, Roebuck and Company and Montgomery
Ward. When the kit finally reached Cashiers, it was erected by Joe Wright, a
local highly skilled carpenter. The house had four bedrooms, living and dining
rooms, kitchen, the first inside bath in the area and front, side and back
porches.
Since Dr. Van Epp
practiced medicine even while on vacation, the house had outer and inner offices
in which to treat patients. There were electric lights from a Delco plant that
had to be run two hours daily – most mountain homes would not enjoy
electricity until two more decades. The house also had a furnace plus
fireplaces. There was a large vegetable garden, a cultivated strawberry patch,
an asparagus bed, and many flower beds and flowering shrubs and fruit trees.
Lynn Monday, the current owner of this house is a direct descendant of Dr. Van Epp on her mother’s side. On Monday’s father’s side, she is a descendant of the pioneer Norton and Zachary families of Whiteside Cove and Cashiers Valley. She runs a very successful design business from her ancestor’s old home.
Cashiers Chamber of Commerce Banquet, 4 November 2003
I’m going to speak a few words about the original Alexander Gardens, which was constructed in the 1930s, around the time of the end of the American Prohibition Era. Mr. Warren Alexander, who had his finger in many pies around Cashiers, erected a group of 11 buildings on Highway 64, about ½ mile east of the Crossroads. Actually facing Highway 64 were 5 structures – the 2 on the right hand side were the Woodpecker Shop, where the Childers brothers had a wood working business – that’s where you’ll find Nova Kitchen and Bath these days, and next to that, Adrian Fowler had his first hardware store and now it’s the second location of Bounds Cave.
Across the street were three buildings: a gas station, a restaurant, and a barbershop. The Pure Oil filling station was run by John H. Rogers with Buck Marshall handling the garage services. The Ruby Star shop just recently opened there. The smallest structure was a barber shop where Curt Wood would cut your hair and where you’ll find Two Hands nowadays.
Directly behind the restaurant was another small building, called The Nutmeg Cottage, where Newell and Jeanne Pell Wright, and their daughter lived when Jeanne was a waitress at the café. It now houses “Garden Treasures,” Next door was the home of Warren Alexander and that’s where Reid Burgland’s office is now. Across the road right next to the new Victoria’s Closet building, was The Bark Cottage, where today you’ll find Sarah McKee Antiques, but in the 1930s, Buck Marshall and his family called it home.
Go down the hill to the right and directly below Reid Burgland’s office is the House in the Hole, where Judy Henson has her office and where in the 30s Ralph and Bessie Bumgarner lived. The last two buildings, to the left of the House in the Hole were T. S. Lance’s residence – now C. J. Brownhouse, and Mr. Lance’s carriage house, which is now Good Foods, Inc.
I’ve saved for last, the liveliest spot in Alexander Gardens – West’s Café, operated by Marshall J. West and his wife. They served 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, early morning until as late as midnight. Everything was made from scratch, bought fresh from local farmers and then prepared and cooked on a large gas stove. Featured were special platters like fried steak with gravy, mashed potatoes and salad. People came from miles around to eat at West’s.
Memories of prohibition were fresh in people’s minds, and it seemed wonderful to sit down at West’s, and drink a beer in a frosted mug. I’ve noticed some of you tonight are still celebrating the end of prohibition.
You could do more than eat and drink at West’s – you could square dance every Saturday night and maybe even get into a friendly fistfight in the parking lot. Madge Merrell remembers 3 teenagers placing sticks of dynamite in a nearby dirt bank and detonating it – just another Saturday night at West’s Café. Now, folks, it you choose a quiet day to drop by Bound’s Cave, where West’s Café used to be, and you listen real careful like, you can still hear and feel the vibration of tap-toed shoes performing a great buck dance.
LAUREL MAGAZINE, APRIL ISSUE 2006
Hampton A. Pell, in
1907, built a schoolhouse on his own property in Cashiers Valley. Prior to that
time, there had not been a real public school structure in which to teach the
youngsters. From 1907 until the 1920s the children of Cashiers Valley received
their primary education from grades one through seven in this small building.
Heating was provided by a pot-bellied stove; students sat on long wooden
benches, later replaced by second hand school desks; leftovers from breakfast
plus a baked sweet potato were brought from home for lunch; and there was an
outdoor toilet. Inside there was a stage, a blackboard and a plain table for the
teacher to keep his things in. Among those possessions was an old fashioned
dinner bell which the teacher rang to call in the students. The small bell was
eventually replaced by a real school bell which is still part of the building
and quite visible above the front porch.
In 1913, Madge
Dillard started the first grade in the Cashiers schoolhouse, with her cousin
Fred Zachary being her teacher. He was teaching all grades. She remembers him as
being a good and helpful teacher but one Sunday at church, he reached over and
pinched what felt like a hunk out of her arm. It was nothing personal – just
Fred’s way of playing a joke. Madge later became a teacher and taught in this
same school she had attended as a child. The History of Jackson County, edited
by Max R. Williams lists the following school teachers in Cashiers, up until
1910: Miss Demerries Long; Miss Hattie Norton; Miss Minnie Norton; Miss Bird
Zachary; T. Roy Zachary and Miss Essie Zachary.
When the building
ceased its use as a school, the Pells added on a shed on one side where they
stabled cows and horses, storing the hay and feed inside. It was a great place
for children to play on a rainy day. Later, the structure was rented to families
as a residence and then was used as a law office for many years. The Cashiers
Historical Society even used part of it for temporary storage of the artifacts
taken from the Zachary-Tolbert House during its stabilization.
Still standing, the building has never been moved and the exterior remains basically unchanged since the time it was built. There are, however, two important differences. When originally built, the schoolhouse faced today’s Cashiers School Road and all who entered had to climb steep steps to reach the front door. After Highway 107 South was “straightened out” and paved in the 1930s, the front porch was moved to the back of the building, thus reversing the front and back of the old structure.
The second major change occurred just a few years ago when A. William McKee purchased the property and conducted an extensive interior renovation of the historic building. A popular coffee house and gourmet bakery occupied the space for a few years and now “The Condiment Shop,” owned by Kimberly Baldwin has taken up residence. Just this past January, Worldwide Specialty Foods contacted Kimberly, whom they had found on the Internet, and put in a rush order for rhubarb preserves to be served at an upcoming Super Bowl event. In the spot where almost 100 years ago Cashiers’ children ate their biscuits filled with their mother’s homemade jam, big pots of rhubarb bubbled away, twenty five jars were filled and shipped to Seattle, Washington in time for the Super Bowl. What an interesting history the old Cashiers Valley schoolhouse has had.
William Norton’s daughters and the Bushwhackers
LAUREL
MAGAZINE, MARCH ISSUE 2006
From April of 1861
through the spring of 1865, the Civil War exacted a heavy toll on the citizens
of Cashiers Valley. The first part of the war saw sons, husbands and fathers
joining the Confederacy and marching away to an unknown fate while other
families held fast to their strong Union sentiments. The last couple of years of
the war brought real physical suffering to the area. While there were no major
battles fought here there were the casualties of divided family loyalties,
bushwhacker raids and near starvation.
Greene County
Tennessee’s Union officer, Col. George Washington Kirk, led a band of
“legal” bushwhackers that many times rode into the valley spreading fear and
rode out of the valley with confiscated livestock and provisions. Known locally
as “Kirk’s Army” or “Kirk’s Raiders,” this group of men, under
orders, had to find their own food and all homes in their path were ransacked
for flour, sugar and meat. The local people quickly learned clever means of
concealing their food. Some civilians took their hams out into a rocky field and
covered them with moss so they looked like boulders. Another hiding place was
the nearby creek, where bags of flour were submerged and covered with rocks. It
seems the flour would harden around the edges but the middle would stay dry.
The raiders always
carried a branding iron with them and if they were lucky enough to discover an
able bodied horse, they would take the branding iron into a house, stick it into
the fireplace until it was red hot and then go back outside and brand the stolen
horse with “U. S. Army.”
The William Norton – Susannah Zachary Norton home, which contained at least eight children, was visited at least twice by the bushwhackers. William Norton, one of the sons of Whiteside Cove founder, Barak Norton, had built his house near the center of Cashiers Valley, along the road that came up from South Carolina. Soyrieta Vap Epp, in her book Status Quo, gave a description of the house in earlier days:
“It is two-story, of notched, grooved and pegged construction, puncheon floors and hand riveted cedar shingles. Originally it had enormous stone fireplaces chinked with clay, as were the pine logs. The windows were small and shuttered, parchment covered the openings; they could not afford glass. A long covered dog trot led to the separate kitchen. The massive native stone fireplace stretched across the entire west wall and had a raised hearth and iron cranes that swung out, fitted with hooks on which pots and kettles could be hung. Iron pots, pans and footed Dutch ovens hung nearby.”
According to Van
Epp, the William Norton house was remodeled in 1946. The outbuildings, dog trot
and detached kitchen were torn down, but the house remains standing and is in
use today. There is a mail slot still visible from the days that William Norton
was the postmaster of Cashiers.
Prior to the first
bushwhacker visit, William and Susannah Norton had carefully hidden their supply
of cured meat inside the house behind the wall paneling. They instructed their
children to never tell anyone, especially the bushwhackers, that the family had
any meat. Well, one day Kirk’s Raiders rode up to the Norton’s, dismounted,
came into the house and demanded that the family give them any meat they had.
They were told there was no meat to turn over. Suddenly, one of the younger
Norton daughters looked at her parents and said, “Don’t you remember, you
hid it behind the wall boards?”
On the second visit the Nortons had from Col. George W. Kirk and his men, there was a new demand. Kirk looked William Norton straight in the eye and said, “My men would like to have a square dance this evening and we need some young ladies to be our partners. If you will allow your daughters to come with us, we will treat them like ladies and we will return them safely and unharmed to you. If you won’t let them come with us, we’ll burn your house down.” Off went Mary Arlissa, age 20, Elizabeth Alice, age 16 and Julia M., age about 13. The oldest sister, Sarah Emmalissa, age 22, was married, but being that her husband was likely away, she may have been there and also attended the dance. The youngest sister, Martha Lou Ellen Norton, was only about age 11, so she would have remained at home.
True to their word, a few anxious hours later, the bushwhackers returned the Norton daughters to their home in the same condition they were in when they left. Of all the many stories told about the feared bushwhackers, this is the only one with a happy ending.
******** by Jane Gibson Nardy