Hidden History of Henderson County, North Carolina

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Part I

HISTORIC LOG STRUCTURES

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

—James Joyce, Ulysses

A PRIMER: APPALACHIAN PIONEER ARCHITECTURE

Many of us commonly refer to small—or even large—log structures as cabins, although technically the cabin would be of rudimentary construction, built with whole logs retaining all or most of their bark; and the log house would be a more finished edifice, constructed of logs hewn with an adze and broadaxe. In principle, a cabin would be hastily erected of un-hewn logs and then serve as temporary quarters on its builder’s homestead. Such a structure generally lacked windows, and at best, its roof would have been covered with lanky hewn boards rather than shingles. The building would have in lieu of a stone chimney one constructed of logs or sticks and mud and daubed on its interior facing. Whether of logs or weatherboarded, slave dwellings were oftentimes referred to as cabins. Travel writer Thaddeus Harris wrote in an 1803 account, If the logs be hewed; if the interstices be stopped with stone, and neatly plastered; and the roof covered with shingles neatly laid on, it is called a log house.

As settlers cleared their newly claimed land for home sites and fields, felling trees with axes or girdling them (cutting a ring through the bark to kill the tree), they laid in a natural supply of building materials from which they could erect their preliminary dwellings and outbuildings.

In their early married years, Reverend Jesse and Emma Osteen lived in this log home, which Jesse expanded and sheathed in weatherboarding. Family descendants believe the woman inside to be Emma and the builder to have been Jesse’s father, Montiville F. Osteen. Photo courtesy of the Osteen/Orr family.

A row of slave cabins at Many Pines, Flat Rock, North Carolina.

An example of saddle-notch construction: John Hiram Justice and Mary Jane King Justice home. Larry Ball numbered the logs with metal strips before dismantling the structure.

Log structures ranged in form and style from crudely built huts or even lean-tos to elaborate plantation houses, and in days of old, builders also constructed city dwellings, schoolhouses, churches, jails, forts and courthouses of logs. Scandinavians, Germans and other Continental Europeans brought to America log-building technology, and the English, who did not build with logs in their homeland, quickly espoused the American pioneer technique of log construction.

Another feature distinguishing a cabin from a house would be its foundation, the simplest of which consisted of log sills laid flat on the earth or on a single course of flat stones. Superior-quality houses sported sills raised on wooden blocks or stone piers, with wood flooring inside, lain on wood joists. The best of foundations, of continuous masonry—usually of stone, either dry laid or mortared—in some instances included a storage cellar. Taller foundations maintained a drier environment, less penetrable by pests and rot.

Builders constructed walls by stacking logs horizontally and joining them at the corners through one of several notching techniques: half-dovetail, V-notch or saddle notch. The logs ranged from large to small and from relatively unaltered, un-barked poles to carefully hewn rectangular planks. The most common surviving log buildings incorporate logs hewn flat on the interior and exterior faces, with tops and bottoms left round. The builder sealed the spaces between the logs, or interstices, with chinking—a caulking of moss, straw or animal hair—and then daubed the spaces with mud.

The crudest of cabins oftentimes had dirt floors—common as late as the Civil War—although, in accordance with the findings of Henderson County historian Jennie Jones Giles, earthen floors were infrequent in western North Carolina due to weather conditions and/or to the building preferences of the occupants. Certain log houses featured floors of puncheon boards—long, thick, unfinished slabs of wood, riven (hand-split along the grain) and/or hewn approximately even and with gabled roofing generally of riven shingle, although clapboard may have been a common option.

Henderson County architect John Horton (1957– ) explained that windows were generally protected with single board-and-batten shutters until glazed sashes could be obtained at some later date. Occasionally, sheets of oiled parchment were stopped in the openings to let in light while keeping out drafts. If iron hardware were not available, pintle-style strap hinges would have been carved from wood or fashioned from leather for the purpose of attaching doors and window covers.

Styles of log houses include single-pen, double-pen or saddlebag and dogtrot. A single-pen house, by and large consisting of one room—the pen—might include a chimney at one end of the structure. The saddlebag house utilizes two log pens straddling a central chimney. The dogtrot version features a room at each end, each with a fireplace, and the space between referred to as the dogtrot. The space may have originated as an open breezeway, later framed as a central hall. Any of these styles could range in height from one and a half stories, including a loft, to two stories. And any of them could have been overlaid with weatherboarding at later dates.

JOHN JONES/GOVAN KING HOUSE (CIRCA 1835)

Some refer to the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) as poplar, yellow poplar and even fiddle tree, when in fact it belongs to the order and family of wild magnolia. This species, common to western North Carolina, grows quickly, straight and tall, and falls under the category of hardwood—a winning combination for the construction of log buildings.

Old-timers remember having seen it standing in its original location, off King Road across from Atlas Lane, east of Mill Creek. The sturdy dwelling, already 130 years old and sporting hewn tulip tree logs, pine roof shingles and a stone chimney emerging from the center of its roof, housed many generations before its abandonment.

John Jones (1815–1864), who built the stalwart house, was the son of Captain Robert Jones (1794–1890) and Elizabeth McGuffie Jones (1794–1889) and grandson of two of the region’s earliest settlers, John Jones Sr. (1764–1860) and Mary Jane Hicks Jones (1767–1857). John Jones married Elizabeth Hamilton (1814–1894). Govan Thompson King (1879–1955) and Arminta Ellen Elizabeth Case King (1877–1960), farmers at Upward, were last to reside in the home. Govan was a son of Robert Jones King (1840–1924) and Sarah Emily A. Hill King (1838/40–1912).

The John Jones home being moved from Dana to Flat Rock. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Lee.

In the 1960s, Dr. Lawrence Lee Jr. (1915–1999) and his wife, Elizabeth Lowndes Andrews Lee (1926–2010), moved Jones’s log house to Highland Fling, their property alongside the shore of Highland Lake in Flat Rock. The Lees had the chimney dismantled and then the single-pen structure lifted in one piece and moved to Flat Rock on a flatbed truck. A mountain craftsman rebuilt the chimney at one end of the log house, dropped the ceiling, sheathed the roof in metal and attached a larger structure—with the same roofing material—to one end of the Jones home. The newer addition sports bedrooms, kitchen and laundry room with heartwood pine floors and a garage, with the original Jones home serving as the dwelling’s parlor. One of the doors features a primitive bar-latch described by Frank L. FitzSimons after his visit to this log home during the tenure of Mrs. Govan King. Mr. FitzSimons later told his publisher, William P. Wick Andrews (1929– )—Mrs. Lee’s brother—about the log house, believing it should be saved. The Lees of Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina, used the restored and appended log abode as a summer residence.

The John Jones home in its current setting alongside Highland Lake.

Betty Lee and her brother, Wick Andrews, descended from the prominent Lowndes family, whose members lived full time or during summertime in Flat Rock since the seminal days of the colony that became known as the little Charleston of the Mountains.

HIRAM KING JONES HOME (CIRCA 1853)

Just north of Flat Rock, near the junction where Erkwood Drive T-bones the Greenville Highway, a thicket of laurels and pines masks a log house from any possible scrutiny of passersby. Owned since 1974 by Betty Jean Billingsley Carswell, this structure has been moved twice—from its original location where Hiram King Jones erected his family’s domicile near the Big Hungry River and, subsequently, from its relocated situation alongside the Spartanburg Highway where the Upward Community Club outfitted it as Old Homestead Crafts and Gifts in the 1950s.

Hiram King Jones’s Big Hungry home in its third and current location.

Aerial view of the Hiram King Jones home’s Big Hungry location, now owned by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Photo courtesy of Tim Culberson of Aerial Photo Professionals.

The intact springhouse at the Hiram King Jones home’s Big Hungry location.

Named for his uncle Hiram King (1792–1891), Hiram King Jones (1820–1912) and his first wife, Mary Caroline Justus Jones (1824–1887), bore thirteen children; one, Mary Ann, died before the age of three. Born and reared in Blue Ridge, Jones spent his active years as a farmer, land speculator and trader, also involving himself in the lumbering business and working the family sawmills.

Jones kept at least two mistresses on the side, and one of them, Naomi Caroline Oney (sometimes spelled Onie) Johnson (circa 1843–1887), bore three of his sons: Hiram K. Johnson (1862–1927), Andrew Jackson Johnson (1863–1940) and Grayson Leander Johnson (1867–1936). Jones kept another mistress, Sarah Elvinia Shipman Stepp (1842–1917), in a log house tucked away in the small population center known as Pink Bed within what is now the Pink Beds at Pisgah National Forest, Transylvania County.¹ An 1880 Transylvania County census listed the following boarders in this home: Sarah Elvinia Stepp and her child Mahulda² (age fifteen) and Andrew Johnson (age sixteen). After Jones’s wife Mary filed an adultery case against him in the court of Henderson County in 1867, Jones contracted to indenture his illegitimate sons until they reached the ages of twenty-one—a contract witnessed by Jones’s brother-in-law, Moses Heatherly (1815–1890). With at least seventeen children to his credit, one can only wonder how the man found time for any of his attributed trades.

When his wife Mary died, Jones married Sarah Elvinia Stepp. Jones sold the home to his daughter Emily Delilah King Jones Morrison (1853–1954) and her husband, Daniel Lafayette Fate Morrison (1855–1923), in 1887. Daniel Morrison served as the Decatur postmaster from 1899 to 1906, when a star route out of Dana took over to serve the area. Morrison, a farmer, operated the post office from his living room in the log home. When the state bought the property in the 1950s, a group of crafters moved the log house to Spartanburg Highway.

Emblematic of pioneer homes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Jones abode sports dovetailed log construction chinked with mortar; heart-pine floorboards; hand-adzed ceiling beams; native stone foundations, stoop and chimney; windows with single-panel, board-and-batten shutters; and an open front porch. The kitchen and dining ell, which sported a chimney, is no longer extant. Another ell, still intact, incorporated a loom room. Modern enhancements such as electricity and running water add to the abode’s comfort as used for vacation lodging by the Carswells’ guests.

The circa 1880s home once owned by Hiram [Woodfin] King (1844-1935), Cradle of Forestry. This one-and-one-half-story, side-gabled, log-frame structure boasts an intact interior.

A vintage postcard showing the Hiram King Jones home in use as a folk art shop alongside Spartanburg Highway, with Mr. and Mrs. James Bradley. Photo courtesy of John Paul Jones.

JOHN MCCARSON HOUSE (CIRCA 1830)

In the early 1800s, frontiersman John McCarson (circa 1803 or 1808–1884) acquired 140 acres of land in southwestern Buncombe County on what would become known as Long John Mountain. Son of James Andrew McCarson (1779–1863) and Martha Richardson McCarson (1786–1830) and grandson of Scottish-born John David McCarson Sr. (1752–1821)—one of the region’s first white settlers—John McCarson was said to have stood at least six-foot-seven and his wife, Anne, at six-foot-five. John McCarson, tall as a poplar and strong as an oak, was a foxhunter known to raise a little Cain. On his mountainside farm, he raised sheep and purportedly grew the first peaches in what is now Henderson County.

McCarson erected his two-room house with oak, tulip tree and pine logs on the mountain later named for him. He hewed out the logs, chinked them and set the stone in the two fireplaces and chimneys. As his family grew and more timber became available on the slope, McCarson family descendants added rooms on either side by building around the nucleus of the original log home. Luther Smith, a land planner, recalled the original site of the house, in Governor’s Point—in the Carriage Park subdivision—on or near the lot of 130 Jenny Lind Drive. Smith said a springhouse stood below that point.

This Times-News photo shows the McCarsons’ original log home at the center of its added wings. Photo courtesy of Linda S. Riddle.

The industrious McCarson, said to have been honest, dependable and a man who always paid his debts, cleared land for his orchards and carved a mile-long wagon road from what is now Haywood Road up to his home on the mountain. He married Anne Frances Carver (circa 1813–circa 1880), who had a boy and a girl from a previous marriage. John and Anne had two more children. At age seventy-five, McCarson found religion and became a deacon in Shaw’s Creek Baptist Church. During the Civil War, a bushwhacker purportedly shot John H. Carver (circa 1838–1864), one of the McCarsons’ sons.

Decades ago, Scott Staton and Vernon Edney began dismantling the McCarson house, marking the logs so they could be reassembled on a plot farther down the mountainside as a guest lodge for local banker Forest V. Foffie Hunter Jr. (1901–1988), who purportedly used the log house during his hunting excursions. Staton and Edney removed the additions, returning the structure to its original two-room-plus-loft status. The builders also rescued its stonework, including the hearths, for use in the reconstruction. Today, Samuel E. and Linda S. Riddle of Riddle Construction own the property. The Riddles updated the McCarson house, maintaining for the most part its rusticity, and built their Tudor-style mansion onto one end of it, living in the log house during construction of the larger dwelling.

Long John McCarson’s log home, now attached to the Riddles’ home.

The original stair steps in Long John McCarson’s log home.

The log home’s parlor, incorporating original stones from one of McCarson’s fireplaces, mantel and chimney, proffers a charming and cozy retreat for guests. The Riddles had the original timber stair steps reassembled and added balustrade and struts fashioned from trees on the property.

Just up the road in the Creekside subdivision, one finds the McCarson Cemetery (established 1909), the burial ground of McCarson family members. Older tombstone inscriptions have mostly eroded away, with what some have identified as Long John’s monument no longer legible. Speculation suggests that McCarson’s remains were reinterred here.

Old-timers in the Haywood area claimed to have heard dogs barking toward Long John Mountain after dark, alleging that the dogs were answering the calls of Long John McCarson’s foxhounds baying in the past. On a more historically accurate note, John McCarson’s brother Jacob Pinckney McCarson (1810–1894) owned land on Echo Mountain, where there exists another McCarson family cemetery, which was desecrated for the sake of development.

MARY JANE POLLY KING JUSTICE HOUSE (CIRCA 1834)

Dana farmer Larry Ball (1936– ) has a penchant for pioneer structures, so much so that he built and lives in one—a two-story-plus-loft log home of massive proportions. Ball also rescued aged log structures and reconstructed them on his property, including the home of Doctor Mary Jane Polly King Justice (1819–1904), built by her husband, John.

Mary Jane King, daughter of Hiram King, married John Hiram Justice (1816–1901) in 1835, and the couple had thirteen children, three of whom died in infancy.

Polly, a granny woman—sometimes referred to as granny doctor—ranked among Henderson County’s earliest midwives and medical practitioners. Many granny women, self-ordained physicians, maintained a keen sense of holistic healing passed down through generations of other granny women and Native Americans. Such doctors dosed their patients with purgatives and emetics and potions or elixirs composed of natural ingredients harvested from the woodlands: herbs, berries, roots, bark and honey—earning for such women the title of yarb doctor. Backwoods doctors also coated their hands with lycopodium powder—the spores of club mosses—both