> ;4 1 4 The North Carolina Historical Review Christopher Crittenden, Editor in Chief Mrs. Memory F. Mitchell, Editor Mrs. Elizabeth W. Wilborn, Editorial Associate ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD Miss Sarah M. Lemmon Miss Mattie Russeli William S. Powell George M. Stephens, Sr. Henry S. Stroupe STATE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY EXECUTIVE BOARD McDaniel Lewis, Chairman Miss Gertrude Sprague Carraway Ralph P. Hanes Robert F. Durden Josh L. Horne Fletcher M. Green Edward W. Phifer Christopher Crittenden, Director This review was established in January, 192%, as a medium of publication and dis- cussion of history in North Carolina. It is issued to other institutions by exchange, but to the general public by subscription only. The regular price is $3.00 per year. Members of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, Inc., for which the annual dues are $5.00, receive this publication without further payment. Back , numbers still in print are available for $.75 per number. Out-of-print numbers may be obtained on microfilm from University Microfilms, 813 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Persons desiring to quote from this publication may do so without special permission from the editors provided full credit is given to The North Carolina Historical Review. The Review is published quarterly by the State Department of and Salisbury Streets, Archives and History, Education Building, Corner of Edenton | Raleigh. Second class postage paid at Raleigh, North Carolina. COVER—Shown on the left is a drawing of the rare Shortia galacifolia T. & G., sought by Asa Gray; on the right is a reproduction of Helianthus occidentalis Dowellianus (Curtis) T. & G., named for Silas McDowell. For an article on McDowell, see pages 425 to 435. The drawing was done by Mrs. Elizabeth W. Wilborn. Volume XLI Published in October, 1964 Number 4 contents silas Mcdowell and the early botanical exploration of western north carolina 425 Gary S. Dunbar JONATHAN ELWOOD COX AND NORTH CAROLINA'S GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1908 436 Joseph F. Steelman A YEAR IN HERTFORD COUNTY WITH ELKANAH WATSON 448 Thomas C. Parramore SPANISH REACTION TO CAROLINA 464 J. Leitch Wright, Jr. THE PRICE AND STROTHER FIRST ACTUAL SURVEY OF NORTH CAROLINA 477 Mary Lindsay Thornton BOOK REVIEWS 484 HISTORICAL NEWS 508 BOOK REVIEWS v House, The Light That Shines: Chapel Hill, 1912-1916, by- Joseph F. Steelman 484 Hand, Popular Beliefs and Superstitutions from North Carolina (II) , 4874-8569, by Elizabeth W. Wilborn 485 Nash, Ladies in the Making, by Noble J. Tolbert 486 Johnson, The Peanut Story, by Cornelius 0. Cathey 487 Pugh and Williams, The Hotel in the Great Dismal Swamp and Contemporary Events Thereabouts, by Elizabeth G. McPherson . 488 i LOGAN, The Negro in North Carolina, 1876-1894, by Richard L. Zuber 489 Stem, Light and Rest, by Richard Walser 490 Walser, James Gay: A Collection of Various Pieces of Poetry Chiefly Patriotic, by Edgar E. Folk 491 Davis, Intellectual Life in Jefferson's Virginia, 1790-1830, by James C. Bonner 493 Bean, The Liberty Hall Volunteers: Stonewall's College Boys, by W. Harrison Daniel 494 Holland, Pierce M. B. Young: The Warwick of the South, by Stephen E. Ambrose 495 Myers, The Zollie Tree, by Louis H. Manarin 496 Hoole, Four Years in the Confederate Navy: The Career of Captain John Low on the C.S.S. Fingal, Florida, Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Ajax, by William N. Still, Jr 498 Vandiver, The Idea of the South: Pursuit of a Central Theme, by Dewey W. Grantham, Jr 499 Savelle and Middlekauff, A History of Colonial America, by M. Eugene Sirmans 500 Freidel and Pollack, Builders of American Institutions: Readings in United States History, by Peter F. Walker 501 Green, Washington, Volume II, Capital City, 1879-1950, by Ken Munden 502 Freidel, The New Deal and the American People, by Richard S. Kirkendall 503 Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, by Allen J. Going 504 Other Recent Publications 505 silas Mcdowell and the early botanical exploration of western north carolina By Gary S. Dunbar* Silas McDowell (1795-1879) was a gentle genius whose name, al- though not widely known today, keeps coming- up in a number of places. Tailor, farmer, court clerk, scientific observer, and man of letters, he has left an indelible, though unobtrusive, mark on the western North Carolina mountains, his adopted home. His best-known contribution is probably the "thermal belt" concept which he origi- nated in 1858, but present-day North Carolinians are unaware of its inventor. 1 Professor C. O. Cathey has said that McDowell was "the 2 outstanding apple producer in the state," and James Wood Davidson in The Living Writers of the South (1869) praised his prose land- scape sketches extravagantly. 3 Largely self-taught, McDowell was compared by his friends with Benjamin Franklin, and one eulogist claimed that his contributions were greater than those of another tailor, President Andrew Johnson, who, incidentally, as a young man 4 was briefly acquainted with Silas McDowell. In this century some writers have singled out McDowell as an outstanding representative of * Dr. Dunbar is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geography at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. This study was aided by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and by Professor Joseph Ewan of Tulane University, who made many helpful suggestions. 1 The author intends to make this topic the subject of another paper. He would like to express thanks to Mrs. Albert E. Skaggs, Sr., of Portland, Oregon, Silas Mc- Dowell's only living grandchild, who permitted the use of the McDowell manuscripts in her possession. Most of these manuscripts have been placed in the Southern His- torical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They will be cited hereinafter as McDowell Papers. 2 C O. Cathey, Agricultural Developments in North Carolina, 1783-1860 (Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press [Volume XXXVIII of The James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science], 1956), 152. 3 J. W. Davidson, The Living Writers of the South (New York: Carleton, 1869), 357-359, hereinafter cited as J. W. Davidson, Living Writers. 4 Thomas F. Glenn, "Reminiscences of Silas McDowell," The Holston Methodist (Knoxville, Tennessee), March 6, 1880, reprinted in part in Theodore F. Davidson, "The Carolina Mountaineer—The Highest Type of American Character," First Annual Trans- actions of the Pen and and Plate Club (Asheville, 1905), 89, hereinafter cited as T. F. Davidson, "The Carolina Mountaineer." In an undated letter (probably 1865) to Frank- lin Perin, Silas McDowell said, "Forty five years ago I knew the present President of the U. S. and he was then a youth of less mental promise than yourself." McDowell to Perin, McDowell Papers. This statement is hardly fair to Johnson, who was born in 1808. 426 The North Carolina Historical Review 5 the mountain region. In Human Geography of the South, Rupert Vance, in a section on "Mountain Culture," says: "One likes to think 6 of Silar McDonald Isic] ... as a native product of this culture/' Surely this is a man worth knowing! Silas McDowell was born May 16, 1795, in York District, South Carolina. He was raised mostly by his grandfather, "Pacolet William" McDowell, a cousin of General Charles McDowell and a distant rela- tive of Major Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell. From about 1805 to 1812 young Silas lived with his grandfather in Rutherford County, and in 1812 he went to Asheville and completed his formal education at the famous Newton Academy. He was an apprentice tailor in Char- leston, South Carolina, from 1814 to 1816, after which he practiced his trade in Morganton for ten years. In 1826 he moved again to Ashe- ville, married in 1828, and then in 1830 took his wife and child to the farm in Macon County which he had purchased ten years earlier. To a naturalist this is an area of exceeding richness, but it was for another reason that Silas McDowell settled there. As he told the historian Ly- man C. Draper n 1873, he had "resolved to buy the Hiddintown [sic} in the Cullasajah Valley . when a romantic youth in school [in Asheville]." His landlord, Daniel Smith, who had apparently taken part in the Rutherford expedition against the Cherokee in 1776, "was rich in Indian legend and tradition," and he told the impressionable young McDowell about the beauty of that secluded spot in the little valley of the Cullasaja River. Silas was able to buy some land there in 1820, after the Cherokee cession of 1819. After 1830 he was to live out his years in Macon County, mostly on his Cullasaja farm. From about 1830 to 1846 he served as Clerk of the Superior Court of Macon County while continuing his trade as tailor and building up his large apple orchard. Although he was a pioneer landholder in the County he seemed to lose, rather than to gain, in land transactions over the years. In the 1850's he earned some money from the sale of apples, apple tree graftings, and rhododendrons to individuals and nurseries in North Carolina and Georgia, and apparently he traveled as far as Asheville to graft trees. After the Civil War, in the face of advancing age and declining fortunes, he gave up his lands and businesses and 5 T. F. Davidson, "The Carolina Mountaineer," 87-92 ; T. F. Davidson, Reminiscences and Traditions of Western North Carolina (Asheville: Service Printing Company [1928]), 19-21, hereinafter cited as T. F. Davidson, Reminiscences; T. Cary Johnson, Scientific Interests in the Old South (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1936), 184. 6 Rupert Bayless Vance, Human Geography of the South: A Study in Regional Re- sources and Human Adequacy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1932), 247.