Visiting Our Past: Mica, war bring changes to North Toe, Spruce Pine in 1860s

When J. Myron Houston wrote his history of Henson Creek, a cove 12 miles up U.S. 19E from Spruce Pine, he called half the original settlers "uncle."

Only one of the men he so dubbed was kin — that was Uncle Bob Houston, who ran a sawmill — but folks were so close-knit in that narrow valley, they lined up like uncles and aunts in J. Myron's mind.

J. Myron's grandparents, John and Caroline Houston, built the fourth home along the creek around 1870. The tract they bought "was covered with virgin timber ... so large that most all the trees averaged five feet or more in diameter," J. Myron related.

Woods had to be cleared for a farm. John swapped his timber with a lumberman for a Lancaster rifle.

Note: this is the second of a four part series.

More: Visiting Our Past: The history, vision of Spruce Pine, North Toe

Long hidden

Though the North Toe River valley had begun to be settled in the 1780s, it wasn't until 1860 that the Henson Creek wilderness felt the impact of its first settler, Bert Henson, a hunter and trapper who built a log cabin.

Forty years passed before the next big change.

In 1891, H. Raymond Jones and Thomas B. Vance erected "the first mica-grinding mill in North Carolina on Henson's Creek," as Michael Hardy documents in his book, "Remembering Avery County."

Vance Brown established the historic Asheville Mining Company in 1899. In that same year, Ritter Lumber Company bought a railroad, named it the Linville River Railroad and initiated major logging efforts in the area.

Yet logging and mining had taken place on a smaller scale at the start, when farmer-entrepreneurs — an expanding, populating lot — first planted feet in the giving soil.

In 1867, Joe Davis, a mica miner responding to a newly growing demand, found his way to Henson Creek, built the third house there and went to work on the mountain above his property, employing a stoked crew.

"Davis had a connection with someone down in the Piedmont where he could buy green coffee," J. Myron Houston recounted. "He would buy it in 100-pound bags and ... pay his men who worked in the mica mines with green coffee; thus, Joe Davis brought the first coffee."

Transition

When the modern era arrived, many descendants of pioneers strove to hold on to their ways, as did Bigjim, a character whom novelist Gloria Houston based on her grandfather, James Houston. The following two paragraphs come from her novel, "Littlejim's Dreams":

"Now, brother, listen to me and listen good." Bigjim's voice shifted to an intense whisper as he sat down and leaned toward Uncle Bob, pointing his finger at his brother in a most unmannerly way.

"Galen told us — you were there — you heard him — that the big lumber companies out in the West cut everything big enough to make a broom handle and left the land naked to wash away the soil so's nothing decent would grow again. ... When the lumber companies from off get through, we'll have no more than a patch of weeds."

Galen is modeled after Galen Wiseman, great-grandson of North Toe first settler William Wiseman;and the subject of Robert C. Wiseman's entry in the 1976 "Avery County Heritage" book.

"Among all the heroes who were plentiful in the Wiseman family tree, according to Papa (Clay Wiseman), there was one," Robert stated, who "made the others dim in comparison."

Galen, John Houston's stepson, ran away from home a couple of years after the end of the Civil War and was not heard from until a decade later, when his letters to his mother, Caroline, revealed he'd been having a big time with the U.S. Cavalry. On the move, he was presently in awesomely beautiful Arizona.

Caroline had just given birth to a girl, and named her Arizona. (Arizona would become a revered Avery County educator and the hero of Gloria Houston's picture book, "My Great Aunt Arizona.")

Galen lived a real-life tall tale.

He once did his wash in a geyser, and his clothes were blown to "kingdom come." He'd been on his way to Little Big Horn when his unit got the news of the massacre that killed Custer. On a campaign of retribution, his horse got swiped by a grizzly, and he shot the bear while squeezed in a rock crevice.

"Men like 'Buffalo Bill' Cody would ask for him by name," Robert Wiseman wrote. Once, in a bar, a customer abused Galen, and Galen floored him — except it wasn't a him. It was Calamity Jane, as was revealed when her hat came off, and she swore if he ever touched her again, she'd cut his throat.

Historical forces

As remote as Henson Creek and other Avery County communities were from national affairs, outside forces wrought warping changes on them.

Chief among the cataclysms was the Civil War, which affected families and individuals in individual ways.

"Every time you'd see Uncle Peyt (Wiseman)," J. Myron told interviewer Warren Moore, "why he'd fight the Civil War." Peyt had starved in a Union prison, had seen others die of starvation and disease in huge numbers, and had lived into his 80s.

Henry Houston enlisted in the Confederate Army at the first opportunity. He famously captured 15 Union soldiers by himself, surprising them in the upstairs of a house and pretending he had a platoon behind him, J. Myron said.

"After he came out of the service," J. Myron added, "he was out there working on his fish trap (where the North and South Toe rivers join) ... and a man by the name of Tolly with a high-powered rifle shot him off that fish trap out of the woods and killed him."

J. Myron's great-grandfather Joe Burleson deserted the Confederate Army toward the end, joined the Union and drew a pension. J. Myron's grandfather, John Houston, surrendered at Appomattox, came home, married and moved to Henson Creek.

Villainy and valor

Aiden Wiseman was sheriff of Mitchell County (which included present-day Avery County) during the Civil War and was zealous in going after tax evaders and fearless in breaking up fights.

After the war, according to an account Jason B. Deaton told J. Myron Houston in 1964, Aiden acquired land by setting neighbors up with illegal stills and then calling federal agents on them.

Aiden's son, Aaron, became a criminal and earned a life sentence.

"You can't do wrong and get by," Deaton proclaims at the end of his account.

Contrast Aaron to Matilda Houston, who, at age 11, according to J. Myron's Aunt Arizona, dressed as a boy and, at the end of the Civil War, retrieved stolen livestock from Kirk's raiders.

Gloria Houston invented a fiction around the tale, "Mountain Valor," starring a girl named Valor, who stood up to ill winds of fate — more effectively, it appears, than the old lady that J. Myron told about, who went up to the first locomotive that materialized in Spruce Pine and declared, "That thing'll never start."

When the engineer pulled the bell and then blew the whistle, the lady jumped each time. When he opened the throttle and steam powered the engine, the lady "ran backwards until she fell down and turned a somersault. ... (Then) she jumped back on her feet, ran up there and eyed it down the track (and) said, 'That thing'll never stop.'"

Rob Neufeld wrote the weekly "Visiting Our Past" column for the Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column originally was published June 9, 2014.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Visiting Our Past: Mica, war bring changes to North Toe, Spruce Pine