"Slavery & The War in WNC"

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When were the first slaves in Western North Carolina?

DeSoto came through WNC, crossing the French Broad River, in May 1540 with over 600 soldiers.

Many of these soldiers were slaves from northern Africa, Spain, Portugal and Cuba.

The next known presence of slaves in WNC was in 1785 when Samuel Davidson moved to Swannanoa

with his wife, baby and a female teenage slave.

How many slaves lived in Buncombe County?

In 1860 there were 1,103 “Slave Inhabitants”

Who were some of the largest slave

owners?

The largest slave owner was Nicholas Woodfin who owned 120 people

that lived in 15 dwellings.

The other largest slave owners included Patton, McDowell, Merrimon,

Gudger, Baird and Vance.

Images from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

How do you know how many slaves there were?

A national census is taken every ten years. Here is a

page from the 1860 census called the “slave schedules”

where slave owners are listed in

the first column and slaves are

represented in the second column

with hash marks.

Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

Also, slave sales were recorded in

the court house as property deeds. This is an 1848 slave deed from

Buncombe County and it documents the purchase of a

14-year old girl for $500.

Buncombe County Court House

An ad from the Asheville Times

Sale of Negroes.

Thirteen valuable negroes belonging to the Estate of John P. Smith, deceased, will be sold at the Court House in Asheville on Friday the 27th day of August next, on a credit of 12 months...

July 22, 1858Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

Pack Square is the site of

Asheville’s first courthouse.

Slave punishments

and slave imprisonment

also took place there.

What kind of work did slaves do? Did they grow cotton and

tobacco in WNC?

No, due to the topography in WNC, there was very little large-scale farming such as cotton,

tobacco or rice production.

The largest uses of slave labor were for road and railroad building,

mining, hotel industries,

factory work – such as hat or rifle making and the maintenance of a family home.

Slave labor helped build

the Buncombe Turnpike.

Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

Hotels were also operated on slave labor. People worked as chefs, blacksmiths, trail guides, and

house keepers. This is a picture of the Eagle Hotel in Downtown Asheville.

Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial

Library

Slave labor was also used in the people’s homes – slaves were used at the Smith McDowell House near

the AB Tech Campus. People cooked, cleaned, farmed, constructed dwellings and cared for children.

Image from Smith McDowell House Archives

Were slaves allowed to gather?

Slaves were required to have a “pass” if they left the premises of their employment.

They could be put in jail or whipped if they were found somewhere without a pass.

South Asheville Cemetery on Dalton Street in Kenilworth dates back to the early 1800’s.

The McDowell family allowed African Americans to bury their dead there. There was some

congregating allowed for burials.

Slaves were members of their owners’ churches. At least in some instances, they were allowed

to gather for worship.

After 1865, many of these members formed their own separate churches such as

Hopkins Chapel AME, above (from Central United Methodist) and St. Mathias Episcopal (from Trinity Episcopal).

What happened if slaves ran away?

An ad from the Asheville Times

Look out for the runaways!!

Abolitionism!!!

$150 REWARD

November 12, 1857

Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

Did all the slaves live together or did each owner have a place

for their slaves?

In general, slaves lived close to where they worked. Sometimes this was a

single dwelling next to the owner’s home. Other times, this was a neighborhood or

community near their owner and/or their work.

For example, the Patton family lived on Main Street (now Biltmore Avenue) in a house called The Henrietta.

The Henrietta stood near where the French Broad Co-Op stands today (in the lot to the left of the Co-Op)

The slaves lived behind the house in a community with at least 15 houses, near what is now South Charlotte

Street. Many of them worked at the Eagle Hotel on Main Street which was owned by the Patton family.

Today The Fine Arts Theatre is located about where the Eagle Hotel once stood.

Sarah Gudger was born into slavery in 1815 and lived in Reems Creek and Oteen.

Her testimony is recorded in the Federal Writer’s Project

called the Slave Narratives...

“I never knew what it was to rest. I just worked all the time from morning till late at night...work in the field, chop wood, hoe corn, till sometime I felt like my

back would surely break. I did everything except split rails. You know, they split rails back in those days. Well, I never split rails.”

What were some of the things that happened during the Civil War?

North Carolina was the last state in the confederacy to secede from the Union. After the bombardment on Fort Sumter (near Charleston, South Carolina) on

April 12, 1861, Lincoln called on North Carolina to send troops

to “put down the rebellion.”

On April 15, when word arrived of Lincoln’s summons, Zebulon Vance, born in Reems Creek, was pleading for the preservation of the Union with his arms upraised.

“When my hand came down from that impassioned

gesticulation,” he said, “it fell slowly and sadly by the

side of a secessionist.”

In 1862, Vance was elected governor of North Carolina.

Patton Camp on Charlotte Street was the site of drills during the Civil War.

During the Civil War an armory was built to make rifles. The armory was largely run on slave labor.

Hunger, more than battles, was the biggest problem for people in Asheville during the Civil War.

“One day dear old Mammy came up and said‘Mistis, we have only a little meal in the house andall this large family of white and black to feed whatshall we do?’ Mother replied ‘Betsey I have donemy best, I can do no more, the Lord will provide.’…My Mother said she could not now possibly feedthe Negroes who were not absolutely necessary tothe comfort of the family; they should go to theiremancipators for help.”

—Katherine Polk Gale

“Recollections of Life in the SouthernConfederacy, 1861-1865,” in the Gale and PolkFamily Papers #266, Southern HistoricalCollection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill.”

Were there any free people of color in WNC?

In 1860, there were some 30,000 Free People of Color in North Carolina. The vast majority lived in urban areas, along the border of

Virginia and on the coast. In the 1850 Buncombe County Census there were 9 families listed as Free People of Color...

J.M and Eliza Edney (Maria, Susan, Harbin and Sophia)  Learda Wilson (Leandra and Becky)  Mary Baird (Henry)  Austin and Becky Dockins (Thomas, Robert, Ivanna, and Rebecca)  James and Barbara Wilson (Carolina, Jackson, William, Jane,

Henrietta, Janet, Isaac, Margaret, Sarah, and William)  Benjamin and Nancy Dockery (George, Jess, Isaac, Solomon,

Elizabeth, and Wilbur)  William and Elizabeth Gilliam (William, Bid and Mary Cousins)  Sally Childress (Marilda)  William and Mary Hammonds (Andrew, Sarah, John Wesley, Martha,

Alexandre, Miranda, Minerva, William, and Josh)

Were there any battles fought in WNC? What were their significance?

Mostly people from here went somewhere

else to fight, like Chickamauga in Chattanooga.

There is a large monument next

to the courthouse commemorating the

battle.

At the very end of the war there was The Battle of Asheville. The ramparts of the walls are located in

the Botanical Gardens in Asheville.

Did African Americans in WNC fight for the confederacy?

Some men who were slaves went with their owners to battle to care for them just as they cared for them at home – cooking their

meals, mending their clothing, and caring for their animals.

Sam Cope went to war with James Walton Patton.

The Northern army of Stoneman, led by General Gilliam, marched on Asheville on April 26, 1865. They were also known as the army of liberation

because slaves across the south fell in line with the soldiers and fled their home communities.

Stoneman’s Army marched up Main Street (now Biltmore Avenue)

“The following day the troops began to file by; theypassed just in front of our lawn; you, with the restof the children accompanied by your nurses, wentto a point where you could have a view of them inpassing...It took a long while for these troops topass. After they had all gone, it was discoveredthat your Aunt Emily’s two nurses, with severalother Negroes in the neighborhood, had joined forces and gone off with the Yankees. Poor old

Mammy and Altimore were terribly mortified andgrieved at the evidence of ingratitude; but werealized it was the beginning of the general

emancipation which would cause a completerevolution in our lives.” — Katherine Polk Gale

“Recollections of Life in the Southern Confederacy,1861-1865,” in the Gale and Polk Family Papers

#266, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library

What happened to African Americans after the War?

With his wife Margaret, Isaac Dickson bought the slave community from Thomas Walton Patton

and built “Dickson Town”

Special Collections at Hiden Ramsey Library,

UNC Asheville

Isaac Dickson and his nephew James Wilson, leftMargaret Dickson, right

Images from Special Collections at Hiden Ramsey Library, UNC Asheville

The graves of Isaac Dickson and James Wilson in Riverside Cemetery

Some African Americans left with Stoneman's Army of liberation when it marched through Asheville in April 1865 to start a new life in

other places in the United States.

Other African Americans stayed in their mountain communities and continued to

provide the types of labor and skills they had provided before the War ended.

In Asheville, just west of Pack Square,

Oscar Eastmond operated the

Freedman's Bureau.

The Freedman’s Bureau was an arm of the War

Department and “supervised all relief and

educational activities relating to refugees and

freedmen, including issuing rations, clothing

and medicine.”

This drawing from Harper's Magazine in 1868 shows African American property-owning men registering to

vote two years after the end of the war. The sketch shows what is now the south side of Pack Square.

Image from NC Collection, Pack Memorial Library

Throughout the following years, African Americans added to the infrastructure of the

community by building schools...

Allen Home School

Churches...

Hopkins Chapel

Berry Temple

Businesses...

View of Eagle Street

The YMI Cultural Center has celebrated African American culture and diversity in the

community since 1891.

And community organizations. Many of these organizations still stand today, including the YMICC.

Commissioned by George Vanderbilt in 1892, the

structure was built by and for the several hundred

Negro craftsmen who helped construct the Biltmore

House. It became known as the Young Men's Institute or YMI. Today, the YMI Cultural Center is the most enduring

African-American socio-cultural institution in

Western North Carolina and serves as a unifying voice for community concerns.