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    Legendary Locals of Asheville
    Legendary Locals of Asheville
    Legendary Locals of Asheville
    Ebook235 pages1 hour

    Legendary Locals of Asheville

    By Kevan D. Frazier

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    About this ebook

    Like all great cities, Asheville s story is one of people, not institutions or industries. For more than two centuries, deep in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, extraordinary women and men have created a truly unique American city. Legendary Locals of Asheville tells the stories of the people who founded, built, and rebuilt Asheville. From the first woman elected to state office in the South, who won her primary before women had the right to vote, to the grandson of a famed railroad magnate who built a 250-room chateau that became the largest home in America, to the entrepreneur who helped ignite the city s renaissance when he risked opening an art gallery downtown when most of it was still boarded up, Ashevillians are an amazing lot. Likewise, there are stories of extraordinary groups like the renowned faculty of an experimental college that redefined the American arts or the brave high school students who joined together to fight segregation. Their stories are as touching and fascinating as they are varied.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLegendary Locals
    Release dateOct 20, 2014
    ISBN9781439647868
    Legendary Locals of Asheville
    Author

    Kevan D. Frazier

    An Asheville native, Kevan D. Frazier has a doctorate in American Urban History and is a former member of the history faculty and administration at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. A local business owner, Frazier has written and lectured for several years about the history of his hometown.

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      Book preview

      Legendary Locals of Asheville - Kevan D. Frazier

      photographs.

      INTRODUCTION

      In 1794, John Burton, a land speculator, received a 203-acre land grant from the state of North Carolina. The land lay at the center of the newly created Buncombe County on a site that had been a crossroads of ancient Cherokee trading routes. To curry the favor of William Morrison, a nearby member of the general assembly, Burton called the new settlement Morristown, in hopes of his new town becoming the county seat. Within a year, however, the name was changed to honor the new governor, Samuel Ashe, and in 1797, the general assembly officially chartered the town of Asheville.

      As the county seat, Asheville became a center for government and commerce as more settlers moved into the area. Pioneer families such as the Davidsons, Pattons, and Bairds began to grow their businesses in the new village. In the early decades of the 19th century, especially after the completion of the Buncombe Turnpike, Asheville became a stopover point for livestock drovers from other parts of the mountains bringing animals to market in South Carolina.

      While Asheville would grow, its remoteness kept the town fairly small, with less than 1,000 residents in 1860. Soon after the guns fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1861, starting the Civil War, one of Asheville’s own, Zebulon Vance, was elected to lead the state as its governor during the war. Vance had not favored secession, but he supported the will of the convention as North Carolina reluctantly seceded. Though the loss of life in North Carolina would be among the highest of all the states, Asheville’s remoteness would spare it from the physical ravages of the war. General Sherman was never going to climb the mountains and march through Asheville. But like many small towns in North Carolina, the loss of life from the war had a great effect on the community.

      In the years following the Civil War, Asheville began to attract visitors drawn to the beauty, fresh air, and perceived healing powers of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The numbers were small because of Asheville’s remoteness, but all of that changed in 1880 with the coming of the railroad. In short order, Asheville became a popular resort destination. These early tourists were people of means, and the hospitality industry grew to meet their needs. Many were drawn to Asheville for their health, and the city became a popular destination for pulmonary patients suffering from the symptoms of tuberculosis. Visits for health reasons brought many outsiders, as the locals called them, who then decided to stay and make Asheville their home. Outsiders such as George Pack, George Vanderbilt, and E.W. Grove brought even more people to Asheville. By the turn of the 20th century, it had become a playground and investment opportunity for the wealthy and famous.

      While Asheville’s reputation grew in the years immediately before World War I, it was in the years following the war, during the Roaring Twenties, that it would become a boomtown. From 1920 to 1930, the city’s population exploded, from 28,504 to 50,193. A sense of urban patriotism overcame the city as Ashevillians came to realize that theirs was on the path to being one of the East Coast’s great cities. These urban patriots ignited both a civic and commercial building boom. Much of the face of Asheville today was built at the hands of these leaders in the 1920s. By the time the stock market crashed in October 1929, Asheville’s boom had led to an excruciating bust, and the city had the highest debt per capita of any city in the country.

      The Great Depression ushered in a period of steady decline for the once great city. Rather than default on its bonds, the city crafted a repayment plan that crippled its ability to grow and support development for much of the 20th century. The county would recover, as it attracted industry drawn to its cheap land, low labor costs, and the modest presence of labor unions. The city tried to rebuild its tourist industry during the Great Depression with the public opening of Biltmore, George Vanderbilt’s famous chateau, but, like the rest of the nation, it was World War II that finally revitalized the economy.

      Even with the rise of the postwar economy, Asheville continued to decline, still crippled by its Depression-era debts. When the area’s first regional mall opened in the 1970s and the department stores moved out of downtown, Asheville was all but a ghost town, much of it boarded up.

      Finally, in 1976, as part of its bicentennial celebrations, Asheville paid off the last of its Depression-era debt and burned its bonds on the steps of city hall. To the city’s fortune, its financial condition had frozen Asheville much like an insect caught in prehistoric amber, and, unlike many cities, most of its historic structures were still intact.

      With a canvas of historical architecture, a new group of rebuilders emerged in the 1980s to revitalize Asheville, not only as a tourist destination but also as a great city in which to live and work. By the 1990s Asheville’s renaissance had truly begun, the result of which has been one of the nation’s great success stories of downtown revitalization. With its roots deep in the Appalachian soil, contemporary Asheville is an extraordinary city, made so by the women and men who have called and continue to call it home.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Pioneers of the

      First Frontier

      In the late 1700s, during the early days of the New Republic, long before cowboys and wagon trains, the Appalachian range was the American frontier. The mountains had proven to be a formidable geographic barrier to westward expansion. After the Revolutionary War, however, several soldiers began to stake their claims in Western North Carolina for land promised in return for their service to the new nation. By 1784, the Davidson family had made their way up the mountains and laid claim to ancient Cherokee lands as the area’s first settlers.

      These earliest pioneers crafted a small but vital community from the wilderness. Businesses emerged to support the locals, as well as weary travelers, and, though they were remote, the women and men of Asheville were involved not only in the leadership of the state, but also in the leadership of the nation. In the years following the Civil War, there were former slaves who built new lives in Asheville and women who asserted formidable leadership in education and medicine. By the latter half of the 19th century, there emerged a group of medical pioneers who made Asheville one of the leading health destinations in the country.

      Asheville’s pioneering spirit extended well into the 20th century, from the first woman ever elected to a state office in the Southeast, to the extraordinary high school students who formed their own civil rights organization and successfully broke the stranglehold of segregation, to the retired engineer who kicked off the city’s nationally recognized craft beer movement. That pioneering spirit has never left Asheville, and it still guides its citizens as the city moves into its third century.

      Samuel Davidson

      Samuel Davidson and his wife are generally accepted as the first Europeans to settle Western North Carolina, in 1784. A colonel in the Revolutionary War, Davidson received a land grant in the Swannanoa Valley. One night, realizing that the presence of the Davidsons foretold future settlements, a group of Cherokee ambushed and killed Davidson. Members of his family avenged his death and, eventually, made a permanent settlement where Bee Tree Creek joins the Swannanoa River. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, Pack Library.)

      John Burton

      Credited as Asheville’s founder, John Burton, a farmer and land speculator, received 203 acres as a land grant from the state of North Carolina on a level plateau in the newly established Buncombe County (1791). He recorded his first sale on July 28, 1794. In hopes of making his new village Buncombe’s county seat, Burton courted the

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