Tar Heel Junior Historian Association Carolina's Mountain Region History Journal For Inquiring Students A Fall 197 tar heel junior historian Gltaitel Gltallie's QltaU The Tar Heel Junior Historian Association is making history this year by celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. Special plans are being made for the "biggest and best" Awards Day ever. It will be held at Meredith College in Raleigh on May 18 and 19. You can start now by making a placard on poster board paper with Placard means a notice, your club name on it. This placard should be 14 inches high usually displayed on by 22 inches wide. Use your imagination to draw a design a sign or poster. that represents either your club or the historical events associated with your community. Prizes will be given for outstanding ones. Also, newly designed membership cards and special Tar Heel Junior Historian recruiting posters will soon be sent to you. Use them to help us recruit new members in this special anniversary year! Visual history is both an exciting detective game and a learning experience for junior historians. Service to the community is its own reward. Junior historians have put many thousands of hours into such work and have received national recognition for their efforts. To help you to plan for the coming Awards Day and to remind you of all the activities of last May, be sure to read the article "Awards Day 1977" in this issue. In that article, please pay particular attention to the ideas for Recruit means to get or enlist. accumulating service hours for work in your community. A new award for an outstanding preservation project National recognition is notice or attention all over the a junior historian club will be given at the annual by country. Awards Day in May. This award will be given by The Historic Preservation Society of North Carolina. We shall be sending you more information later. This year, the Tar Heel Junior Historian magazine will discuss some of North Carolina's history in three issues. The Mountain Region is featured in this issue. Material for the Piedmont Region issue will be due March 13. The last issue this year will be about the Coastal Plain Region. Any articles you want considered should be received by us by March 31. We hope those clubs in the Piedmont and in the Coastal Plain will contribute some exciting and interesting articles about their own areas. Youthgrants began in 1972 as a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The organiza- Humanities are branches of tion is an independent federal agency created by Congress learning concerned with man's culture his customs, arts, to promote national achievement "in the realm of ideas — and conveniences. and of the spirit" through support of research, education, ("Charter Charlie" cont ; d. on page 44) . 1 Cover This first issue of the 1977-78 year deals with North Carolina's Mountain Region. (See "Charter Charlie's Chats," opposite page, concerning the THJH issues for this school year.) The illustration on this issue's front cover, drawn about 1857, first appeared in an article entitled "A Winter in the South," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XV (November, 1857), p. 730. The view is of the Black Mountains, a part of the Appalachian chain that includes some of the highest peaks in the eastern United States. The highest point in the Black Mountains is Mount Mitchell (elevation 6,684 feet above sea level). Learn more about this famous mountain by reading "Mitchell: Man, Mountain, and Monument" on page 9 of this issue. Fall 1977 Contents Volume 17, Number 1 Charter Charlie's Chats inside front cover The Mountain Folk Of Western North Carolina 2 Map of Westward Advancement of North Carolina Settlers 7 Map of the Mountain Region 8 Mitchell: Man, Mountain, Monument 9 The Carolina Mountains 18 Contest 24 James Larkin Pearson: Poet Laureate of North Carolina . 25 State Historic Sites in the Mountain Region 28 Surveying in the New River Valley 29 Henderson County and Apple Corps 33 Crossword Puzzle 38 Awards Day 1977 39 Crossword Puzzle Answer 45 Going Things 46 County by County—Part V 49 Adventures in Reading 52 Tar Heel Junior Historian is published three Larry E. Tise times during the school year by the Tar Heel Director Division of Archives and History Junior Historian Association, North Carolina John D. Ellington Museum of History, Division of Archives and Administrator History, 109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, N. C. North Carolina Museum of History 27611. Copies are provided free to club members. Natalie G. Miller Individual and library subscriptions may be pur- Curator of Education chased at the rate of $2.00 per year. Davis Waters Illustration: "Charter Charlie," John F. Wilson, Jr. Executive Secretary Tar Heel Junior Historian Association Robert E. Winters, Jr. Editor Graphic Design EDITORIAL POLICY—Compositions to be submitted should be typewritten in double-spaced form and should give the full name of the student and school. When reference works are used, please include a bibliography listing author, title of work, facts of publication (place of publication, publisher, date, and edition), and pages used. If possible, black-and-white photographs to illustrate the article should accompany the written material. Due to space limitations and the need to adhere to the announced theme of each issue, it is pos- sible to only briefly cover the various topics— not to present an exhaustive study. All student compositions submitted for publication are required to meet highest literary standards and are subject to editing and revision by the editorial staff. THE MOUNTAIN FOLK The Mountain Region of North Carolina began to be settled late in the history of the colony. Following the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771, many of the defeated Regulators, and others who had similar concerns, fled westward beyond the Blue Ridge. They moved into the Watauga Settlements, joining pioneers who had violated earlier British treaties by purchasing lands from the Cherokee Indians. Far removed from the seat of North Carolina's govern- ment, representatives from the scattered Watauga Settlements met in 1772 and drew up and adopted the Articles of the Watauga Association. These laws provided for a representative form of government. A general assembly, comprised of representatives selected by free- men, was set up. From among the thirteen members of the assembly, a committee of five was chosen. This committee was to be in charge of the affairs of the settlements, to act as a court and to have the power of treaty making. With the creation of this "constitution," democracy had come to the mountains of North Carolina—which then included territory that in 1796 became the state of Tennessee. The Watauga Settlements became the first English-speaking "nation" independent of Great Britain. Cut off from the rest of colonial America by mountains and stretches of wilderness, people of the Watauga Settle- ments heard of events leading to the American Revolution weeks and often months after they had occurred. However, once they understood that there was rebellion against the crown, they supported it. One of the first celebrations of July 4 in America was that held at Fort Patrick Henry in 1777. It was a great occasion attended by four or five hundred Cherokee and militia (an organization of male citizens subject to call by law for military service during Regulators were men emergencies) from the settlements and southwest organized in portions of Virginia; Capt. Ben Cleveland's company from Surry North Carolina in 1766 to oppose English taxes. County, North Carolina, was also there. In 1771, they were defeated at the Battle The Origins of the Settlers of Alamance by British militia. A majority of the people who settled in the mountains were Scotch-Irish. Joining them were many Germans and a sprinkling of English and Huguenots. Many of the Freemen were men having full Scotch-Irish were descendants of the Celtic strains that political liberty including had fled toward Scotland during periodic invasions of voting rights. In the case of the Watauga Settlements, England. They had been coming from northern Ireland to the men took the liberty the colonies in large numbers since about 1720. By 1775, because North Carolina was they numbered perhaps as many as 600,000, or about one still under English rule. sixth of the total population of the colonies. They consti- 3 OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA Dr. Cratis Williams Special Assistant to the Chancellor Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina tuted a buffer, or a second line of settlement, between the older settlements along the Atlantic Coast and the moun- tains. They were spread from New York to Georgia, with a Crown refers to England, heavy concentration in the colony of North Carolina. which has a "crowned" royal head of government in the Having many grievances against the British person of a king or queen. government, not the least of which concerned high taxes and religious freedom, the Scotch-Irish joined the colonial Huguenots were 16th and armies in great numbers. The "overmountain" men and 17th-century French Protestants. those of like mind in the upper Piedmont and hills of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia rose nobly to the Celtic strains were people patriot cause when they learned in 1780 that the British descended from a lineage to were bringing the war to the South. The defeat of Patrick which Irish, Highland Scots, Ferguson's army at Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, Welsh, and Bretons belong. was the knockout blow that led ultimately to Cornwallis's Grievances are real or surrender at Yorktown a year later.