Like any American community, Fairview was deeply affected by the Civil War, but the roots of the community were first set down in the aftermath of the Revolution.

At the battle of Cowpens (SC), on January 17, 1781, Daniel Morgan forged a heroic army out of a motley collection of Americans and led them through one of the most important victories of the American Revolution. He promised these young men that if they would hold up their heads and fire three times, they could then go home and be blessed by the old folks and kissed by the pretty girls.

Eighty years later, the firing on Fort Sumter promised war once again, and the young men began again to dream of glory, uniforms and gallantry on the fields of battle. Oh! how easy it would be to defeat those pallid Yankee boys, and it would serve notice to President Lincoln once and for all that in 1787 each state had ceded to the union its powers of sovereignty only on a conditional basis, reserving the right to reclaim them once again when a tyrannical government reared its usurping head.

The American victory over the British and the defeat of the Cherokee peoples by General Griffith Rutherford opened up the lands beyond the Blue Ridge to settlement. In August 1783, two years after Cowpens, Revolutionary War veteran Adam Cooper recorded a deed for a 600-acre tract in the “Cain” Creek section of Burke County. Cooper, who had served under the celebrated Col. Isaac Shelby, had been captured by the British three years earlier at the Battle of Cedar Springs, SC. His captors cut off his left thumb, mutilated his right hand and chopped his right shoulder blade into little pieces, presumably in an effort to gain military intelligence. By the date of his deed, and according to a letter written by his wife after his death, Adam Cooper arrived and settled in the future Buncombe County a full year before its reputed (and acclaimed) first settler, Col. William Davidson. At the time of the 1790 census, he was still living alone. He had built a house with no door or windows, a house he entered through a hole in the roof and then down a ladder that could then be removed. He feared not only the Cherokee, on whose land he was intruding, but also the authorities in Delaware, where he had been falsely accused of murder. He was cleared of that charge in 1788, and some few years hence, when he was 35, he married Elizabeth Forgay, a fourteen-year old girl whose family lived briefly in the Cane Creek section. Lot Harper, a fifteen-year old boy, also moved into the household around the same time.

Lot Harper, like Adam Cooper, was born in Pennsylvania, and when his family moved south they first went to the Jersey Settlement of Rowan County (now Davidson County), North Carolina. Many other early families of Fairview came from the Jersey Settlement between 1795 and 1805, including, according to James Trantham, a sizable wagon train full of settlers in the fall of 1800. Among Cane Creek’s early residents from Rowan County:Miriam Whitaker, whose family relocated in 1800 and who married Lot Harper four years later.Jesse Rickman and Mary Trantham, who married in the Jersey Settlement and moved to Fairview in 1802.John Lanning, born in 1757 in Bordentown, New Jersey, who moved with his parents to Rowan County and then came to Cane Creek. He joined the North Carolina militia at age 19 as a substitute for his father and served under General Rutherford during his Western North Carolina campaign.

Other Rowan County natives who settled in Fairview included Eldad Reed and Boyd McCrary and his wife Nancy Anna Merrill.The Garrens, another early Fairview family, came from Randolph County. They were German ‘Dunkerds,’ from the German word “tunken,” meaning “to dip.” Their Baptismal custom was to be “dunked” three times, face forward. Though third-generation Americans, the Garrens, like many Dunkerds, did not marry outside of the German clan and spoke English with an accent.

While many of the early settlers shared a Quaker heritage, their sons and daughters mostly became Baptists and Methodists in Fairview, and the Baptist Church became a force to be reckoned with. The Rev. Humphrey Posey came in 1804, and two years later chartered the Cane Creek Baptist Church. His arrival caused problems for one Cane Creek family.

John and Nancy Ann Ashworth had been living near present day Tryon for twenty years before buying land at Hickory Nut Gap in 1792. The prospered, there: by 1800 they owned at least 2,250 acres in Cane Creek and had three slaves. Nancy Ann also possessed the gift of healing, as shown by her self-described formula for curing cancer: ‘Go to a Savannah bush and say what did you come here for, to cure a cancer and brake off a twigg, then say who it is on, brake another twigg then say where the cancer is, brake another twigg and go away, this must be done before sunrise three mornings in succession before speaking to any person.”

The Reverend Posey and his board of deacons quickly became suspicious of Nancy Ann’s skill at healing, believing strongly that the source of her power came from the wrong side of the supernatural field of battle. In addition to curing illnesses, the deacons were sure she cast spells and placed curses on people she did not like. They also accused her, with good reason, of being altogether too worldly, at least for a woman of her day: she drank, wore lace and frills on her petticoats, was a tough businesswoman, owned slaves, and craved money and possessions. Perhaps worst of all, she could not care less what people thought of her. So, according to the tale, the Rev. Posey threatened to charge her before a church court for being a witch.

But Nancy Ann was not easily intimidated; the deacons quickly backed down when she threatened to place a curse on Rev. Posey and the entire board of deacons. They did, however, convict her of the lesser charge of “wearing a ruffled petticoat.” That crime she could hardly deny, nor did she bother to try; she paid a small fine and went back to her old ways.

In the years following the Revolution, it was not unusual that a couple like the Ashworths, with no extraordinary background or resources, could quickly become owners of so much land. This was an era when pioneer hardihood was essential to survival, and the desire for national expansion was widespread. The availability of cheap land allowed families to move through regular cycles of settling and resettling: if the new community prospered, they would sell the appreciated land, move again and buy more land on the frontier edge.

For these early settlers, peasantry, serfdom, and indentured servitude were clearly and bitterly remembered through family lore; their parents or grandparents had fled Europe to escape them. That heritage made the freedom of cheap American land an exhilarating experience. Land conferred status, and by building up equity and taking on debt, one could own thousands of acres, tracts that only the nobility in Europe could afford.

Productive land was an unbeatable asset in an agrarian society in which most of the necessities of life, and many of the luxuries, were self-provided. A poor man could buy 50 acres and grow enough to sustain his family. The more children he had, the more hoes could be in the cornfields; the more hoes, the more land he could work. Thus big families were the norm; every son or daughter could help put more acres into production, and every acre could sustain more hungry mouths. We can only imagine how these pioneers must have felt to be laboring solely under their own direction and for their own benefit, and we must marvel at their work ethic. For unlike the old-world aristocracy, landowners in America worked their own land. Nothing was wasted. They cut trees and hewed them into logs for a cabin, barn, and outbuildings, and used smaller branches for fences or milled them to build furniture. They dug up stones to use for building foundations and set the livestock and poultry to grazing on the newly cleared land. Streams were diverted through a coldhouse to provide fresh water and cold storage; the grazing animals provided eggs to eat or sell for cash, milk to drink and churn into butter, meat to be smoked and cured, as well as fat for soap, wool for clothes and feathers for pillows. On the cleared and rock-free plowed acres, settlers grew fruit and vegetables to be eaten fresh or canned for the lean months, used corn for fodder and for meal to bake bread, and recycled cobs as mast for hogs and shucks for insulating the house, stuffing the mattresses, and making dolls for the children (or casting spells). Productive land was a gold mine for those willing to work it.

Thomas Jefferson idealized the American yeoman farmer, extolling the enormous human energy that American freedom unleashed in families whose heritage was one of feudal oppression and serfdom. But Jefferson himself propounded another vision of life in America, one based on cash crops and slave labor. If land costs little, if transportation is convenient, and if a crop can be sold for cash (indigo, cotton, tobacco), then reliable, affordable labor can turn land into a large-scale, efficiently managed business enterprise that creates wealth. For Jefferson and many others, affordable labor meant slaves; but the “three-fifths compromise” of slavery was a time bomb ticking away, which, when it exploded, would affect many of the families of Fairview.

[Three-fifths was the proportion of a human being assigned to slaves by the U.S. Constitution. Before ratification, Southern states balked at the likelihood of Northern dominance as a result of inequitable representation, which was to be based on population. To ensure Southern votes, slaves would be counted as 3/5 of a person for census purposes, though of course they were denied any rights as people. The differences between slavery and non-slavery states would lead ultimately to secession and Civil War.].

Every American child grows up learning about Davy Crockett and the Alamo. But unlike Fairview residents, not many outsiders know about Davy Crockett and the Bridle Trail (now Old Fort Road).

In the Creek Indian Wars of 1813-14, Davy Crockett fought under the command of General Andrew Jackson. Fellow militiaman James Patton, dying on a Georgia battlefield, charged Crockett with returning his personal affects to his wife Elizabeth, which he did. A year or so later, after Crockett’s wife Polly died in 1815, Davy “kidnapped” the widow Patton (the term for eloping in those days) and settled with her on Patton land in the Swannanoa Valley.

Crockett knew Fairview well. The first settler, Adam Cooper, had served in the Revolutionary War under Isaac Shelby, who was a close friend of Crockett back in Tennessee. In 1826 Crockett visited Cooper’s daughter, Elizabeth Hill, who wrote that she “fiddled while Davy danced.” And, when a tollbooth was set up at the Swannanoa Gap, Davy decided to circumvent the toll by cutting out a new road from Old Fort, along what is now the Crooked Creek Road, and on to the Fairview road that led to Asheville.

In early Fairview, walking and horse travel meant that links and commerce with outside communities were far different than we know them. Throughout the South, rural areas developed without any thought to town planning. Rather, roads were built and maintained by crews of neighbors as needed, usually under the supervision of County Courts and an appointed local notable. Cane Creek was no New England village surrounding a white steepled church; there was no orderly plan imposed by the elders of a religious sect such as Salem or Bethania, North Carolina. Mitigating the isolation of each individual farm were the extensive friendships and blood relations and the few churches that tied together most of the early families. Little community nodules grew up along these roads, but no central town or village.

The communities in the Swannanoa Valley and along the Old Fort Road had extensive traffic across Flat Top Mountain. Soon after founding the Cane Creek Baptist Church in 1806, Rev. Humphrey Posey and James Whitaker, Sr. moved to the Swannanoa Valley, but continued to lead the Fairview church for many years afterwards. (The Swannanoa Valley was dominated by the Presbyterians, while Fairview was strictly Methodist and Baptist.) Another connection, surprising today, was the link between Fairview and Bills Creek in Rutherford County. Except for courthouse affairs, Asheville, the county seat, was of little importance to the residents of Fairview. Driving a wagon north to Asheville over Mine Hole Gap was an arduous journey compared with the trip to Fletcher through the Cane Creek valley. Rutherfordton, to the south, was much larger than Asheville and offered more goods and services at lower prices. The nearest shipping port was Augusta, Georgia, to the southeast, and families took turns driving a wagon the 185 miles there to purchase necessary supplies and even goods from overseas. Local newspapers typically quoted Augusta prices until 1880, when the railroad reached Asheville.

In 1827, eastern Tennessee was linked to South Carolina, through present-day Madison, Buncombe and Henderson Counties of North Carolina, by the Buncombe Turnpike, a private toll road supported primarily by cattle and hog drives. Appalachian farmers as far away as Kentucky could raise their livestock cheaply on acorn and chestnut mast. (In these “open stock” days farmers fenced cropland to keep the animals out rather than pastures to keep them in.) Labor scarcity drove the business decisions of plantation owners, and buyers for plantations in Augusta and elsewhere in South Carolina found it cheaper to purchase their meat from open stock farmers than to raise it at home. For the mountain region residents, cash for the meat and for corn sold to travelers along the road, and the cash (or the occasional lame pig) from the drovers in exchange for overnight boarding was an enormous stimulus to the economy.

After the death of Nancy Ann Ashworth, in 1834, twenty-three year old Bedford Sherrill purchased her place at Hickory Nut Gap. He married Elizabeth Harris, whose family managed the Harris House (built circa 1800) near what is today Lake Lure. His father-in-law, Dr. John Harris, had procured money in 1823 from the N.C. General Assembly to improve the road from Asheville to Rutherfordton, the worst section of which was across Hickory Nut Gorge. Seven years later he reported to the General Assembly, to justify the funds expended, that the road was now “much traveled,” and that “the rich romantic valley of Hickory Creek and Rocky Broad River here to fore locked up by the impassable towers of rocks and mountains is now beginning to develop its resources and present to the way worn traveler a good road through an exceedingly rough country, rendered doubly interesting by the bold and majestic mountain scenery.” Soon thereafter the Great Western Stageline began service from Salisbury to Asheville.

Bedford Sherrill’s vision was to own the stagecoach known as The Flying Cloud, secure the mail route, and deliver patrons to his inn at Hickory Nut Gap. The stage driver always tooted a horn at the bottom of the mountain to tell the cooks at Sherrill’s Inn how many places to set for supper. In 1841 Sherrill, Harris, and four other men from the Buncombe and Rutherford counties were appointed as commissioners for the purpose of “keeping” the turnpike road. The Hickory Nut Turnpike Company had the power to sell stock and keep the road in good repair, as well as charge a toll: in 1859, the stagecoach fare from Charlotte to Asheville was $9.

It has been estimated that from 1815 to 1850, North Carolina lost one-third of her population. One historian notes that “In 1829 a newspaper correspondent reported that from eight to fifteen wagons daily passed through Asheville westward bound…” The state in those years was bleeding to death, in large part because poor transportation inland and in the rugged mountains meant high prices for anything that wasn’t produced locally. The crisis created the political will to ratify a new State Constitution in 1835, which, as ever in North Carolina, was an attempt to wrest power from the eastern elites.

Local residents’ perception of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party as the heroes of the common man shifted as policy decisions showed ever more alignment with the interests of the Southern planter class than the needs of yeoman farmers. In just 12 years, political ferment in Fairview and Buncombe County shifted from strong support of Jackson’s Democrats (in 1828, 87% voted for Jackson, 14% above the state average) to the rise of the Whig party, led locally by Buncombe’s David Swain (in 1840, 80% of Buncombe voted Whig). In Fairview for many years, the loud passing of gas was always followed by the pronouncement, “Andrew Jackson has spoken.”

Many Fairview residents voted with their feet. Boyd McCrary was born around 1754 on Swearing Creek in the Jersey Settlement, where his father owned 2,205 acres of land there and had four slaves. He was listed in the county records as a planter and a storekeeper, as well as an administer of estates, guardian of orphans and road overseer (all common indicators of status). Boyd grew up with his Whitaker and Reed cousins and married Nancy Anna Merrill around 1773. By 1799, and 11 children later, the family moved to Fairview to join prior immigrants from the Reed, Whitaker and Merrill families. And as of 1810, the McCrary Farm was a prosperous enterprise with a large apple and peach orchard, a distillery and a mill on what became known as McCrary’s Mill Creek (now Gravely Branch). He owned two slaves, Henry and Hagar.

In October of 1815, Boyd “being sick in body, but in perfect mind and memory,” signed his will. By then his two oldest children were dead, while daughter Phebe had married Thomas Burton, son of Asheville founder John Burton, and Eleanor seems never to have left Rowan County. And over the years, most of the rest left the County and moved farther west. Five of the eleven settled in Missouri and by 1830, according to that year’s Census, only Boyd’s grandson Silas remained in Fairview.

James Whitaker was born in Fairview in 1805 on his father’s farm on what is now Old Fort Road. By the 1830s he had developed a chronic lung problem, and sought a drier climate. His sister Margaret Whitaker McCrary had written him about the rich soil and healthy air in Davies County, just south of Gallatin, Missouri. On May 7, 1834, James, his wife Melinda, and their six children left Fairview to join McBrayers, Merrills, McCrarys, Woods and others to become a little Fairview on the prairie. Davies County, MO, in the 1830s was also home to Joseph Smith and his Mormon followers.

Once settled in Missouri, James’ wife died, and two years later he married 17-year-old Nancy Woodland to raise his six children and manage the household. He also left his Baptist faith for hers. Nancy was a devout Mormon who at 15 had hidden Joseph Smith in a flour barrel when a mob was after him, probably saving his life. Smith promised her that God would bless her for this act of courage, and told her she would live to be 100 years old. (She nearly made it, dying just eight months shy of the century mark.) But the Whitakers’ life as a Mormon family was not easy: they were driven out of Missouri to Nauvoo, IL, by the massacres and mobs of 1838 and 1839; then to Council Bluff, Iowa, and finally, around 1850, to the ultimate Mormon settlement in the great Salt Lake Valley of Utah.

In 1861, thoughts of progress and new ventures began to be overwhelmed by war. The Constitution of the United States, such an elegant, balanced document, possessed an obscene cancer that, seven decades after ratification, would metastasize into national catastrophe. By any measure, the three-fifths compromise came close to destroying the American political dream. For Fairview, the politics of war were confusing. North Carolina was a moderate Southern state, reluctant to secede from the Union. But the call for troops by Abraham Lincoln to put down the rebellion forced the hands of North Carolina unionists. The natural political cleavage in North Carolina separated the powerful planter class from the yeoman family farmer, who differed over ownership of slaves and the laws that protected the “peculiar institution” of slavery. In Fairview, only the Cane Creek Valley offered the opportunity for large-scale agriculture, and thus some demand for slave labor; most of the rest of the community was better suited for smaller subsistence family farming. In the 1840 census, there were 42 slaves (26 female, 16 male) in Fairview along with one male free person of color. Of these 42 slaves, five families owned 28.

To the extent that slave ownership determined one’s devotion to the Southern cause, the Fairview numbers were rather meager. But to the extent that the support of the war hinged on the political theory of states rights, and the protection of one’s family and property against an invading army from the North, yeoman farmers were as loyal as any other North Carolina citizen. In truth, most people in Fairview probably gave the State of North Carolina and the County of Buncombe a great deal more allegiance than the government in Washington. Defending one’s home and farm against normal chaos, human and otherwise (especially disease), put most everyone in a siege mentality even in good times, so the thought of a “foreign army” in the community would be troubling.

To try to understand the war in Fairview, a few stories may or may not be enlightening. When the new Confederate government called for troops, many of the young men of Fairview eagerly volunteered. Because of the travel patterns of the day, some volunteered in Fletcher, some in Swannanoa and Asheville, and some even joined their Rutherford and McDowell County friends.

1. At the beginning of the war, the Trantham family deeded their home and much land to a certain Peter Redmon in exchange for his serving as a replacement soldier. As the war dragged on, the Trantham sons had to serve anyway, but the land transfer remained a legal transaction.

2. Francis Marion Sherrill, the son of Bedford and Elizabeth Sherrill of Hickory Nut Gap, was commissioned an officer on Dec. 2, 1862 at the age of twenty-one, and died defending Atlanta on July 4, 1864.

3. A story records the experience of a man named Abner who had bad vision and also didn’t care to fight. When drafted, he reported, but when the recruiter called his name, he marched straight into a tree and knocked himself unconscious. The recruiter allowed as how “they could do without him,” and he went home.

4. Merritt Trantham joined the Confederate army and was captured by Union forces and put in a POW camp. In order to get out, he joined the Union Army and served the remainder of the war out West. When he returned, he refused to admit he had served in the Union Army but signed up and drew a Union pension to go along with his Confederate pension.

5. Lewis Garren waited as long as he could before enlisting. It was believed that if you were drafted you would be put on the front lines. He joined in Asheville on August 8, 1862 and was sent to Loudon, TN, with almost no training. Three months later he wrote his wife, Margaret Garren.

November 1, 1862

Dear Wife;

I take my pen in hand to let you know I am not very well at the present, hoping that these few lines will thereby reach and find you all well. I have not very much to write about. I have not been well for some time. I have had the diahrea and weaken down. I have rode on the wagons five or six days. All the rest is well but Lot [Whitaker] is not well. He stopped at a house 8 miles back. He started with the sick squad. I received two letters from you since we got to the Cumberland Gap. I was glad to hear from you all. We have been marching ever since we started to Kentucky. We have marched about five or six hundred miles since we left the Baptist Gap. We are now stopped at Lenores factory. I don't [know] how long we will stop. I have seen a great deal in Kentucky. I have heard the cannons roar in every direction though. The water was scarce. I got my blanket stolen. I sent by Miles Rickman to you to send me another. I hope this war will soon close, so we can get back home to see you all one more time. I want you and little Mary [Lewis's daughter] to do the best you can.

It snowed on us at the gap last Sunday. The snow was about half a leg deep. It is cold to lay out on the ground these nights. I want you to write as often as you can and do the best you can with the land. I want [you] to [be] satisfied if you can. I hope to get back soon. Tell all them to write as often as they can. Whenever we get stationed I will write often to you. So I must come to a close; so no more at present, but remain your dear husband until death.

Lewis died five weeks later in a hospital in Cleveland, TN.

6. David Clements [or Clemmons] lived in the Flat Creek area of Fairview. When he was 22 he was 6’4 ½” tall. He married his cousin Hannah Pinkerton early in 1861, and hoped the war would be over soon. He did not want to fight, but the pressure mounted. He volunteered with his friends in Marion, McDowell County, on Sept. 11, 1861. His son was born the following January. David was fighting in Virginia, and tried hard to get leave to see his son, but was unable and had his picture made and sent instead. Private David Clements, Ransom’s Brigade, was killed on December 13th, 1862. Hannah never remarried. She lived with her parents and grieved until her death.

7. Henry Garren was the sixth child of David Garren and Margaret Whitaker. The Garren farm was in the Cane Creek valley near the present day Taylor Ranch. The Garrens were leaders in the community, and the children were raised with high expectations. In 1861, Henry and his brother were managing a mercantile business in Hendersonville. He volunteered on May 5, 1861, at age 24, eager to defend the Southern cause. In August of 1862, he came back to Fairview trying to recover from pleuro-pneumonia. Four and half months later he returned to Virginia and was appointed Second Lieutenant. In the spring of 1863 he was sent back home to round up and arrest Civil War deserters. Two contemporary chronicles tell the tale:

Serepta Revis to Daniel Revis, June 7, 1863

“I have bad news to write you at this time, for the war has commenced here at last. Here was fifteen of Captain Case’s men came home, Three Staton, three Levi’s, Bob Beddingfield and several others . . . . There is a lot more deserters than there is military here . . . . Lt. Garren came back after them and got half of them back . . . . Lt. Garren took several men with him and went after Ruben and Ambrose Staton and one of them shot Garren and killed him. He didn’t live more than an hour and a half . . . .Then the men that was with [Garren] carried on, shot at Rube and Ambrose and wounded them . . . . [Ambrose] only lived one day and night, and Rube was wounded in the shoulder.”

Jasper Albert Revis to brothers John and D.W.

“Heard they had a little battle here the other day with boys that run away and the militia. Lt. Garren . . . came back after one of the boys that ran away . . . went to Rube Staton to retake him and Ambrose . . . they got to the yard . . . and Rube gathered his gun and shot Garren down and they gun fight out the door . . . . Men are running away [from the army] and coming home nearly every day, the county is full of [deserters] . . . .”

8. Alfred Wesley Wright grew up on his father’s 363-acre farm near the present site of Echo Lake on Old Fort Road. The Wright family was uninterested in the war and hoped it would be over before it dragged them in. Alfred, several of his brothers and his father were hoeing corn when armed men arrived on horses and asked the father why his boys were not off fighting, and demanded that they put down their hoes and come immediately to sign up. George told them that they could not come right now, because he needed them to finish hoeing and get his farm in shape so that he could manage without them. The ‘recruiters’ replied that if they did not enlist in a few days, they would come back for them and they would be shot if they refused to go. Alfred and two of his brothers, with little training, found themselves in the “Seven Days War.” [The Battle of the Seven Days, with Malvern Hills the final battle. June 25th to July 1, 1862] A shell hit almost on top of Alfred, blowing off one his brother’s legs, who was screaming in agony behind him. He left him to escape the shelling and stumbled across his other brother in a ditch; when he reached down to pick him up his hair and part of his skull fell off. When the war was finally over, Alfred hurried home to see his wife and child, a child he had never seen. Alfred’s father was there to greet him, and to tell his son the sorrowful news that his wife and child had died less than a week before.

9. Dr. Robert Cooper, the grandson of Fairview’s first settler, grew up on his father’s farm of 533 acres on Cane Creek near Sharon Road. The Cooper family had prospered enough for Robert to attend the Medical College of Philadelphia. After the war he became the primary doctor in Fairview, and was much beloved in the community. The Coopers had slaves and were Democrats, and young Bob was proud to enlist in the army in the spring of 1861, and give himself wholeheartedly and unreservedly to the cause of the South.” He was a Second Lieutenant, and spent much of his time giving medical aid to the sick and wounded. At the Battle of New Hope Church, between Atlanta and Marietta on July 22, 1864, Lt. Cooper was doing all he could to hold the line in the face of a heavy skirmish. “Boys, hold your posts at all hazards. If anything happens, I will take you out by the right flank.” He caught a shot through the shoulder just above his heart a moment after uttering his command. Lying on the ground, he kept trying to lead his troops, finally turning over to drain the blood from his mouth. He lay there as the union army overtook the field. He heard a voice say, “There’s one who is a goner’ and another reply, “Yes, and a damned officer too.” He braced for the coup de grace from a union bayonet, but it never came. Cooper was picked up at 2:00 am with the litter bearers out gathering up the dead, and made it to a hospital in Atlanta. His chances of survival looked slim, but he demanded that the attending physician scrub, clean and disinfect the wound. He asked for a “swabbing out.” A swab was a slender piece of material resembling a whale bone with a knob on each end, and a medicated silken cloth attached that was pushed right through the wound while dragging the cloth. In time, Dr. Cooper recovered and returned to Fairview to practice medicine.

10. Leander Freeman, known as Lee, married Elminie Wright from the Flat Creek or Marlowe Town section of Fairview in 1858. Lee was forced to join the army, and at the Battle of Stoney River near Murfreesboro, TN was wounded and contracted Typhoid fever. Thinking he would die, Lee was sent home, barefooted. He recovered, and was determined not to go back to the army. He dug out a hole under his cellar with a tunnel that came up a good distance from his house to a flower box. He lived in his hole by day, and worked by night until the war ended, and even for a time after the war ended, as he had become so accustomed to his nocturnal existence.

11. William Ben Whitaker was studying to be a lawyer when the war began. He wrote this letter to his father from a camp near Berryville, VA on Nov. 2nd, 1862.

Dear Father,

… I write you a few lines this morning as Henry Garren expects to start back today. We have moved our camp since I wrote you last, some 12 or 15 miles, but I do not think that we will remain here very long. I received a letter from a friend in Richmond who belongs to the 54th Regt. a few days ago and he said that brother, James, was there some two weeks before he wrote, but was gone and he did not know where, he did not say anything about his wounds but said he had no money, and he loaned him five dollars. There is a grate deal of talk about Small Pox but I have not seen any cases of it yet, but I suppose that it is among some of the Troops . . . . I will get Henry Garren to go through Richmond and see if he can find James and send him some money and pay the five dollars that he borrowed . . . . I also send you five hundred dollars . . . . Mr. Garren thinks that he will come back to the Regt. before long and I want you to get some things and send me . . . . Some socks, a vest, a good Blanket or two and a pair of boots no. 7 large size or small 8, a pair of woolen gloves and a dark shirt or two . . . . Your son, W.B. Whitaker.

W.B. Whitaker was killed at Fredericksburg, VA on Dec. 13, 1862.

12. Another Whitaker, John, returned home from the war in late 1862 and died soon after of blood poisoning. He was buried at the Cane Creek Cemetery, with his dog following the coffin to the gravesite. After the burial, the dog refused to leave, and refused any food or water. If someone tried to pick him up to take him home, he would try to bite him or her. In time, the dog died of starvation.

Union troops did not appear in Fairview until the very last days of the conflict. Col. William J. Palmer, leading a contingent of cavalry as a part of Stoneman’s raiders came up the beautiful gorge from Rutherfordton to Hickory Nut Gap on April 26, 1865. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, and Joe Johnston formally surrendered the last force of consequence in eastern North Carolina on the day of Palmer’s arrival. He made Sherrill’s Inn his headquarters while his men camped out in the open fields of Gerton and Fairview. The Sherrills had prepared for the Yankees, hiding valuables such as hams and silver behind a false wooden wall in the old log cabin, built 65 years before by John and Nancy Ann Ashworth. The story of General Palmer’s benevolent appearance in Asheville is well imagined and told by my respondent in his book The Secret of War.

There is but one final episode to relate regarding the Reconstruction Period in Fairview. The material and social world of the community had been ripped to shreds by the War. Many of the men who lived through it were maimed and crippled. The political structure, state, county and local, was in the hands of the Republican Party.

But as time passed, the old order began to reassert itself. One tactic the Democratic Party used in Fairview was to purge the churches of Republicans. We left James Whitaker and his family in Salt Lake City as a Mormon leader, and in 1865 we know he moved on to Marsh Valley, Idaho. In 1872, he contacted his relatives back in Fairview to collect all the names of his older relatives from the Bibles in the community. As we know, this is a task Mormons feel a strong obligation to carry out. In 1874 Mr. Whitaker came to Fairview to pick up the 599-name family history. He realized that the local churches were ostracizing many of his relatives, and that as a Mormon he had an obligation to seek converts. It helped greatly that Mormon doctrine was anti-slavery. He found great success in Fairview, and for a time some thought the Mormons outnumbered the Methodists and were pressing in on the Baptists. Cane Creek Baptist Church sent a special delegation to the families in the community to confront them about their beliefs. It was not until 1890 that a peace was struck: local Republicans could be allowed back in the churches provided they renounced the Mormon faith.

Before the Civil War, John Whitaker (the man whose loyal dog died on his grave) had placed this ad in The Carolina Baptist.

CANE CREEK HIGH SCHOOL

“The first session of the above named school will commence as soon as the teacher arrives, which will be on or before the second Monday in April. The school is located in Buncombe County, eleven miles southeast of Asheville, near the Hickorynut Road, in the center of an industrious and moral settlement. We have a house well constructed, a new and good [school]. More than this, we have no distilleries, consequently comparatively few drunkards, and but few profane men. We are not perfect but we can safely say there is not a situation between Maine and California more remote from vice of all kinds. Tuition is moderate, being but a fraction over half the ordinary price of schools of the same grade. Any young man desiring a good education can not do better than to come here, nor can he be better situated if he desire civil company, but if to the reverse, he had better go elsewhere.”

These simple words portray what the people of Fairview had worked towards in creating a civil and moral community during its first eighty years. What kind of world could they hope for after the Civil War? Was there any energy and vision left for the ‘pursuit of happiness?’ The War brought vice, disillusionment, hatred, sleepless nights, illiteracy and poverty to Fairview, and left countless families bereft of their sons. Not until 1880 did hope return: when the railroad arrived, with it came travelers anxious to see the beauty of the Southern Appalachians, and with them came opportunity once again.

Strong in its roots, its families interconnected through a century of settlement, and determined to stay true to itself, Fairview remained an agricultural community. Though the valley gradually became more and more oriented towards the growing town of Asheville, Fairview maintained its identity, as it does today; and even today many in the old Cane Creek Valley settlement still harbor notions, and hopes, of being the most vice-free community in America!