Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  “Tusquittee Mar 10th /62

  “Dear Will:

  I will now answer yours of the 28th Jan, which I recd. some days ago. I am a slow hand to write letters, and it may take me two or three nights to finish. Your Pa & Addie has been over to see us. Staid nearly two weeks, went home last Saturday. When I wrote you before I stated that I had sold 8 head of Hogs at 9 cents gross, 1084 lb, which amounts to $97.56. Henry Brown paid me $50 when he got the Hogs, and promised I should have the balance in a few days, in the mean time your Pa called on me for $20, which I of course let him have, which left me $30, and which I still have. Henry Brown did not pay me the balance as he promised to do, but give it to Frank Brown, and he seemed disposed to retain it on a note he holds against you; it run on so, till week before last, when he paid the money to your Pa. So your Pa had $67.56 of your Hog money. You see then it will be but little stock I can buy with $30, even if it was in the county to sell, and I tell you it is very scarce. Hogs & cattle are remarkably high for this county. If I had had any idea the Browns intended to act as they did, Henry should have paid me the money before he drove the Hogs off, but I thought he was a gentleman and would do what he said. I am satisfied now that it was an understanding with Henry & Frank, to retain the money on that debt. I was a little mad about it, but as the fellow said, I had a “poor way of helping myself,” but as the money has been paid to your Pa I suppose it will all be right, enough on that subject.

  “We had the coldest weather last week that has been this winter, rain wind and snow plenty. This week begins a little warmer, but still wet, bad weather on farmers, as well as soldiers, but I guess it is worse on soldiers. I have plowed some, would have been nearly done braking up, but for the rain. Your Pa sold Chaimbers 15 Bu corn & 10 Bu oats on your debt. Paid I. Alexander also in corn.

  “Excuse my awkwardness, for you will observe, the 3rd page is the fourth one in this letter.

  “All your stock looks well. Ben & Marge are mean as ever and fat enough for beef. There is only seven Hogs left, including the spotted sow. She has seven pigs. The Teauge sow was about on the lift when I came here, and I put her up fatened and sold her. She brought 12.96 by weight. We lost two sheep, one died and the other is lost strayed or stolen. The rest are up, and have 5 lambs. They are very troubelsom won’t stay over the creek, nor any where else long if they can help it. I have hauled them over the creek twice this winter, and they came back, both times. I have to side line them to keep them off the rye. Gramp wont stay with us at all lately he has took up quarters at J. C. Moores.

  “As for making the saw-mill pay, that is out of the question, while Rose has controle of it. He is not the kind of a man to make any thing pay, but I can tell you what he can do, and will do, he will swindle you out of many dollars, worth of plank. The Mill is in fine order now Rose got a man to fix it up, by the name of Woods, and he fixt it right.

  “I have not paid any more tax money nor don’t intend to untill the matter is investigated, instead of geting it scaled down from $25, (which we thought was too much,) they have increased it to 31 or 2 Dollars, we will have it attended to at June Court, if they don’t try to force collection before then. Believe I did not tell you in my last letter that Sir Walter Teauge had moved back to Nantahala. Hiram Sisk is living where Teauge left, he is good sort of an old fellow, a good hand to work, he has one son & two or three girls able for the field and I think if he can get enough to live on will make a good crop, but he has nothing only as he works for it, he is plowing old Darkey and I am plowing old Ray. Marion has been with us all winter but your Pa talks like he will have to take him home, this Spring, if he does I will have it all to do, for I tell you there is no body to hire, that I can hear of. Sisk will help me some but he can’t help much and tend his own crop. I will do what I can though and the balance must ly over.”

  Below, we have reprinted a newspaper article which Frank has in his scrapbook. Since it was cut out, we do not know what paper it appeared in or the date.

  “Capt. William Moore’s Indian Fort

  Of ’76 Stood on Present Enka Site

  By Rachel Dyas

  “What do you suppose the spirit of Captain William Moore would say if that intrepid old Indian fighter and Revolutionary soldier could rise from his solitary grave on a ridge near the Sand Hill school, stand overlooking his beloved Hominy valley and see the snorting steam shovels and panting engines scooping out and leveling the valley where his Indian fort, the first west of the Blue Ridge stood, and which will soon be covered by the gigantic buildings of the Enka rayon plant?

  “From Indian fort to vast industrial development in less than one hundred and fifty years, is the history of the Hominy valley, one of the oldest cultivated spots in this section. The first Indian fort, the establishment of which made possible the settlement of Asheville and a dozen other communities, really stood where the new Enka rayon plant will stand.

  “The great plant which will really cover the exact spot where the fort stood, by the old Indian trail. And will cover many another fair acre beside for its vast buildings are expected to spread over 75 acres when completed in about 18 months.

  “Captain Moore is really buried on a ridge of land overlooking the valley where men and mules, engines and steam shovels now make a moiling hive of activity. Captain Moore has rested there since Nov. 6, 1812, as his headstone above the grave records. He was 86 years old, a Revolutionary soldier and six years older than George Washington.

  “Perhaps the old pioneer would not have been so shocked at the boiling activity in Hominy valley. He was himself a man of great enterprise and courage as his exploit in transporting himself, his sons and his daughters and their husbands and wives and children, slaves and cattle into a hostile savage land, and subduing it despite the rigors of nature and the attacks of the Indians, proved.

  “It is reported by legend that taking part in the campaign of Rutherford in 1776 against the Indians in which a number of the savages were captured, Captain Moore purchased the unfortunate Indians, and kept them as slaves. The auction was said to have been somewhere near Candler as the party was returning.

  “When Captain Moore drove the first wagon that crossed the French Broad river up the old Indian trail into Hominy valley that was the main route between the settlements to the east and the country that later became Tennessee. It was only an Indian trail, but it was the only road, the highway, and all the important men of the day, who later went into and conquered the west stopped there for a visit with Captain Moore. It was the last outpost in civilization, the last frontier, for many years.

  “The grant for Captain Moore’s land was signed by North Carolina’s first constitutional governor, Richard Caswell. A descendant, Mrs. T. P. Gaston, who lived always on the farm which has descended through the family to her and which was sold to the Enka rayon plant, now has that grant. It was the first grant of land west of the Blue Ridge dated 1787 and was made when what is now Buncombe county was a part of Burke county.

  “Captain Moore’s descendants in Buncombe county can probably be numbered by the hundred, for he was twice married and had many children. Mrs. Gaston, and her brother, Judge Walter Moore, William G. Candler and Mrs. Mal Lindsey, of Candler, are among the descendants and there are many others.

  “A most picturesque figure of Buncombe history was one of Captain Moore’s sons, Billy Moore, who was a famous prize fighter, never defeated in the rough and tumble contests of that day, and for whom the creek that runs directly beside the rayon tract is called “Billy Moore creek.”

  “The first fort in this section stood there. In eighteen months or more a great industrial plant covering 75 acres will be humming with the roar of business, where not more than 150 years ago only the stealthy Indian trod. But that is America.”

  Lawrence Richardson Moore

  Lawrence Moore was especially interesting because, toward the end of his life, he wrote down what he knew of his family and Tusquittee. The map reproduced here is one fascinating example of
his record. Drawn on a manila envelope, it locates the 125 homes in the Tusquittee Valley. As was typical then, he knew most of the families. Occasionally, however (as in space 31), the word “strangers” appears—apparently someone who moved in from the outside. Frank told us about him:

  William Moore’s second child, Lawrence, was my daddy. He was a farmer, a merchant, and a blacksmith. That was the way he made his living. When he was first married, he didn’t have nothing. Started out with nothin’, and he borrowed his daddy’s scissor-tailed coat to be married in. Didn’t have a dime and he married in his daddy’s long-tailed coat. Then they went to housekeeping. I’ve heard him tell it. They didn’t have dishes to eat out of. They just eat out of what dishes they could get. They just didn’t have anything.

  And along at the time, they began to build a little house up on the hill. They didn’t have it completed. It was just a two-room boxed house; they had the top on it, and they had it weatherboarded and the windows in, but they didn’t have no partitions in it yet. He was a great church man, and the Methodists was havin’ a big quarterly meetin’ and my daddy invited ’em, you know—not thinkin’ that they would go with him—to come over and stay all night with ’im, and they just took him up on it. And when he got up where him and Momma was buildin’ their house, they had no partitions between the rooms, so they took quilts and made a partition so that he and Momma could stay in one part and them in another. Now they done that. That was how poor they was when they started.

  And then, through the years, he began to make it all right. He farmed a long time. Raised cattle. And then he put up a store, and he run a store for fifteen or twenty years. He was runnin’ a blacksmith shop with it, and he shod horses for all the boys. The doctors of the county’d come and he’d shoe their horses, you know, and he accumulated land and become one of the biggest landowners nearly in the Tusquittee Valley. In other words, he prospered all through the years, and he was one of the biggest landowners, nearly in the Tusquittee Valley, when he died.

  He was a great man for education. He believed in education. He schooled his children as far as he could. And out of fourteen grandchildren, twelve of ’em finished college with a B.S. and some of ’em with a masters. Twelve out of fourteen of his grandchildren finished college. Nobody in the county’d ever had a bigger record’n that of children that finished college.

  PLATE 52 Frank told us about the plat above:

  “My father drew this map in 1950. He was interested in everybody in this [part of the] country and he kept it up. He was natured that way.

  “This map is a record of the early families of Tusquittee. He’s showing you where all them people lived back in that early age, don’t you see? And he’s telling every house on every branch. It starts with the Hiawassee River [bottom right], and Tusquittee Creek branches off of that, and the houses he’s marked are on the branches that run into Tusquittee Creek. You see, that would all be a lost thing if it wasn’t for this map. That’s history. It’s gone without this, don’t you see?

  “Now the first creek setting in here, you see, that’ll be Downing Creek. Then this next one will be Sandy’s Branch here. Then you come on up and this is Good’s Cove. And here’s Peckerwood, and Perry Creek, and this branch here is named the Moore Branch, and …”

  PLATE 53

  PLATE 54 Frank Moore told us about the barn in this photograph, in the process of being torn down when the picture was taken:

  “That’s my daddy’s barn. He got Doc Groves to help him build it. Doc was an old-time carpenter, and he knew how to handle logs. He helped notch them.

  “That was the prettiest barn when I was a boy that you ever saw. It was a beauty. It had a stall in each corner, a door at each end, and a space in the middle of each side, between the stalls, for storage. Then logs went on up about four feet above the stalls to make log bins upstairs for feed. Then a peak roof with a little vent house went on top. We kept pigeons up there.”

  Unfortunately, the barn passed out of the Moore family and was destroyed.

  PLATE 55 A portion of one of the barn’s sides.

  Franklin Charles Moore

  Frank Moore, my grandfather, here talks about his own life, as well as his concern for history. His son, Jerry, has inherited his interest in the family to the extent that he has had many of the more important documents carefully framed and hung safely on the walls of his Century 21 office in Conyers, Georgia.

  PLATE 56 Frank Moore.

  I went to school here at Tusquittee. The first school over there was a log hut with split logs for seats. That was where J.V.A. Moore started teaching. After he taught there, they built another one. I didn’t go to the first log school, but the next school they built was the one I went to for years. Then they did away with it and built an improved building, and I went to school there till they disposed of it.

  Back in them days, we would get up ’bout five or six grades and there wouldn’t be no more grades, so Daddy sent us to town then; me and Charles went down there and batched and we’d come home on Friday evening. It was a two-story house, seven rooms upstairs and two downstairs. I quit going to school there after the eighth grade. I started the ninth grade and got into algebra and it got too much for me. Not long after I quit there, I married, and have been married fifty-six years. Started with almost no education, no nothing. Raised a family and sent four kids through college, and we’ve made it so far. Three of them teach and one of them is a pharmacist.

  As a boy, back in my time when I was first growin’ up, they wadn’t no money hardly. We’d work for fifty cents a day. And when I got up big enough to begin to want money, you couldn’t find a job or nothin’. I’d trap for fur. You could sell fur. It was low, but you could sell it. And I trapped a good long while. I learned how to grade fur by size and color. Opossum was three sizes: small, medium, large. Skunk was graded by color: black was the highest price of any polecat. Then there was what they called a “short stripe”—a white stripe right behind their neck down to the shoulder. Next grade of polecat was the “broad stripe.” The white stripe ran plumb down to their tail. That was the cheapest. Then came the civet cat. The coons were graded by size like the opossum. They’re number ones or twos or threes. You had to learn all that. Then we’d ship them to a company and they would grade them again and pay you accordingly. They would send out fur prices through the mail and we would buy them by that.

  I got into fur business pretty big and finally got to be a pretty good fur buyer. Herbert Kitchens wanted me to go in with him. He came to see me and he said he would furnish the money to buy and let me do the buying. We would go in cahooters. We got into fur business pretty big. Then I would take them to an old fur man and he would ship ’em in sacks through the mail after they were stretched and dried. I worked with him till he got old and finally we quit.

  After I was married, that was the only thing I had to accumulate any money to live on. I’d go coon hunting of a night. Sometimes I’d go for two or three nights. I’d come in and we’d have fifteen to twenty-five dollars’ worth of coon hides. At that time it was big money, you know. They used to trap mink or muskrat with a deadfall. They’d just raise up a big rock that would fall and kill ’em. The coons lived in cracks in the mountains. The way to trap ’em was to leave a big hole in the log with a auger. Then take and drive horseshoe nails from all directions. Next take and put honey and butter in the hole. A bear loves honey and so does a coon. Then they’d come and eat and keep sticking their foot on in deeper. Finally, they’d raise it up and that would hang their foot and they couldn’t get it out. Then you’d come up and shoot ’em.

  I also loved to fish back before the Nantahala dam. I’d go to the river and I’d take some friends with me who were great fishers. I remember how they’d look down at the water from up on a ridge about a mile away and they’d tell whether the fish would bite or not. They could tell by whether the water was clear if it was gonna be good fishing time. They’d say, “Hey, we’ll get ’em. That water’s right.” Y
ou could go down of an evening and that sun would go down and that water would be just speckled with trout a-jumpin’. I fished in there right up until they built the lake.

  Before they built the lake, Andrew Melton came in here and tried to build a dam over there. He came over there on the Nantahala and tried to build a tunnel where it is now, and he got a way under there and somehow died or got broke or something. Didn’t amount to anything. A few years later, they came in here and went through the same tunnel. It’s the one that Andrew Melton started, but it’s called the Nantahala. And that messed up our fishing in the river.

  Frank C. Moore, my grandfather, has seen a lot of years. The wisdom he’s acquired and the kinship he’s shared with the settlers of Clay County has earned him a good name throughout the county. But this wisdom was no match for glib outsiders who again and again took advantage of his belief in his fellow man. Here he relates a couple of stories and leaves us with his feelings about living today:

  I had one big pharmacy book, and away back somebody come along here and give me ten dollars for it, and I’ll bet it was worth fifty. It was a great ledger from back years ago. Some feller come and just said, “All right, what’ll you take for that book?” and I never thought much about it. He says, “I’ll give you ten dollars,” and I just let him have it. No tellin’ what it was worth. That was somebody just out a-pickin’ up stuff like that that knew what he was a-doin’. I sold a lot of things like that that I didn’t know what I was a-doin’ and Jerry just cleaned me up! That’s my boy, you know. He found out they was a-takin’ advantage. And I had a bunch of Indian relics that was worth a fortune and I let a feller just take ’em for nearly nothing. They’ve been in the Smithsonian Institute about ever since they left me. Finest collection of Indian relics you ever saw. And they sent a group of men here from Smithsonian Institute one morning—drove up right there and I was a-milkin’, and they wanted to excavate my garden because they had those relics in the Smithsonian Institute up there. And I’d just sold ’em one or two at a time you know and never thought about keepin ’em. Had a peace pipe, prettiest thing you ever saw. C. E. Curtis is the man that bought ’em, but he took ’em to Smithsonian Institute and displayed ’em, you know. He was over here when they was buildin’ the dam and he found out I was a-gettin’ some along, and he’d just slip in here and buy ’em as I’d find one every now and then. If I had ’em back, I wouldn’t take a fortune for ’em. I had a spear that was awful long, and one side of it was flat, and the other side was kind of on a bevel, and it was out of right slick black flint and you could nearly cut [with it] like a knife blade, it was so sharp. I found a big Indian pipe, you know, that had a bear cut off at his shoulders here and his head was turned down and his nose and shoulders made the bowl of the pipe. Down at the point of it they was a hole in there that they’d swung something in at the lower end. Up here the stem come out and on top of that stem was a bar with three holes on each side of the bar. Prettiest thing you ever saw. And then I had one pipe that I found then that had a stem back here that had a big lizard a-layin’ on there. Prettiest thing you ever saw. And I just let ’em go. They gimme about thirty-five dollars apiece. I guess you could plow it up and find more. At least that’s what [the Smithsonian] men thought but it was in the spring of the year and I had my garden out. They’d a’ really moved it if I’d a’ let ’em.