Visiting Our Past: Emil Medicus followed his talents to Wolfe Cove

Beaverdam Creek in North Asheville has been a magnet for many larger-than-life people.

Some of the cove's settlers were first attracted by the city or by the region, and then discovered what a prize resided in the four miles of water-fed land that sloped down from the Blue Ridge to one of Asheville's main thoroughfares.

The community was attractive, too. Residents shared one long way out, and met at local stores and institutions.

While remoteness was valued, there also grew an awareness of real estate values, especially as such subdivisions as Lake View Park came into being just across the creek, where it smiled at man-made Beaver Lake.

Phenom

When 36-year-old concert flute player Emil Medicus came to Asheville with his wife, Mary, in 1918, he was already riding a storied career.

As a young man, he had studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, having embarked from New York City on Dec. 30, 1902 after a supper consisting of three bananas—a menu selected to conserve funds, he revealed in an autobiography he wrote toward the end of his life.

He won many awards at the academy, and was the first American to receive the Ross Scholarship there. Back in the states, he played with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, published articles and toured as the soloist for coloratura soprano Madam Ellen Beach Law, formerly of the Metropolitan Opera.

In Ohio, he met Dr. J.W. Blackard, a Methodist minister from Brownsville, Tennessee. Visiting there, he also met Blackard's neighbors, the Raglands and their "beautiful, attractive, and talented daughter, Mary Elizabeth, gifted in water color in art; and piano and voice in music."

"She was a true daughter of the South," Medicus wrote, "and my visits to her home became quite frequent to the extent that on one night she locked the door on me and I couldn't get away. Needless to say, I didn't try very hard."

Emil wrote flute obbligatos to songs for Mary to perform. They married at her family's Brownsville home in 1913.

Five years later, with Emil's career flourishing — in publishing as well as performing — and after having toured the country in a trio with a pianist, they decided, Emil wrote, "to plant our roots in a small city, preferably in the mountains, in the South, and Asheville was chosen."

Beaverdam land

The Medicuses first nested at 114 Cherry St., a racially mixed neighborhood; and then at 50 Woolsey Ave., where the Kimberly family lived, before the couple purchased a 4.8-acre tract on what is now Wolfe Cove Road, off Beaverdam Road.

Two years later, they would buy 137 adjoining acres from William Kimberly and from William's mother, Janie C. Kimberly, widow of Thomas Maney Kimberly (after whom Kimberly Avenue is named).

Janie was acting as guardian for her daughter, Mary Helen Kimberly Williams, a minor, though married.

The Medicuses jumped into country life with four feet. They developed a flock of Wyandotte chickens and a herd of dairy cows.

Their first purchase — the 4.8-acre one, tract No. 4 of a 12-tract subdivision (it's mapped on page 2 of Plat Book 1, Buncombe County) — was bought from Guy Weaver — lawyer, Realtor, owner of a brick factory, 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason and great-nephew of Montraville Weaver, founder of Weaverville.

At that time, Weaver's Beaverdam subdivision had excluded, by deed, sale of property to people of color. Many members of Asheville's ruling society fended off what they saw as threats to their way of life. The threats included dance halls — an issue on which Guy Weaver had once weighed in.

In 1921, Asheville commissioners enacted a prohibition against dance halls, despite owners' pledges to police them. Writing the Citizen newspaper, Weaver compared the sinful allurement of such places to "a sanitary nuisance that would endanger the community health and germinate typhoid."

Asheville was famous for its blue skies, one pundit commented in a letter to the editor, but they're "not half so blue as our laws."

What was most rarefied about Asheville, the Board of Trade trumpeted, was its restorative climate, contributing to an individual's restfulness as well as vigor — an appeal that perfectly suited Emil Medicus, whose idea of heaven featured music to play, property to work and family to love.

Two legacies

Emil's father, Charles H. Medicus, had emigrated from Germany when he was 13, and joined his uncle in Philadelphia in 1866 — three years after the death of Charles' father, who had lost his lands after supporting a democratic revolution against an autocratic government.

Many Germans emigrated to the U.S. — and eventually to this region — from the politically conflicted Palatinate at that time.

In Pennsylvania, and then Ohio, Charles became a master builder, and engaged his sons in his business.

"I shall never forget," Emil records, "the day he put me to work on an intricate (circular) oak staircase in a dwelling. I was quite pleased with the work I had done on it. He came in after lunch, inspected the work for various angles and said, 'Emil, that is not a very good job,' to which I replied 'It's good enough.' Then he let loose with 'Good enough hell; tear it out and do it right!'"

Charles was also a lover of music. He learned to play the accordion by ear, and performed for his family. On his death bed, in 1925, "he insisted on hearing, over the radio, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The air was excellent with Beethoven's 'Eroica Symphony' and Strauss' '(Ein) Heldenleben' coming over beautifully, particularly the flute voice which was his favorite."

Living an ideal

Emil first made his living with fine woodworking. Then he received from his maternal grandfather an old eight-keyed Meyer flute, which his grandfather had gotten from a patron of the luxury hotel he owned in Youngstown, Ohio.

Further supplied with a piccolo by his father, Emil took lessons with a tutor, played in bands and pursued music in school.

In Asheville many years later, all these legacies bore fruit. He ran a school. He began publishing his landmark monthly, "The Flutist."

In the first issue, January 1920, published in Asheville, Medicus wrote an essay titled, "Success," that typifies his idealistic principles.

"How is success measured?" he asked. "To the great majority it is measured in dollars and cents, hence the absolute failure of our leading poets, musicians and artists. To them, a housepainter is of more importance to civilization than the artist."

He admits, in another essay, "Character, A Happy Marriage, Attention to Detail," included in a 1920 collection titled, "Touchstones for Success," that he could have made more money in his life by compromising his artistic principles.

But he asserts his successfulness depended upon following a calling — upon "early recognition of that work which I would rather do for life than any other; the desire to perfect every detail to the best of my ability; and the will to sacrifice all, if necessary, in the pursuit of the ideal."

Rob Neufeld wrote the weekly "Visiting Our Past" column for the Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column originally was published Aug. 4, 2014.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Visiting Our Past: Emil Medicus followed his talents to Wolfe Cove