McDowell County, North Carolina 1843-1943

By James Lawton Haney and McDowell County Historic Preservation Commission

McDowell County is unique culturally and topographically. Formed by legislative action in 1842 from Burke and Rutherford Counties, McDowell's northern and western borders trace the towering heights and rugged terrain of the Blue Ridge, while its eastern and southern borders incorporate broad river bottoms and lower hills of the Piedmont. Showcasing more than 220 images, this volume is a mosaic of McDowell County's first century and covers the towns of Marion and Old Fort, as well as smaller communities like Brackettown, Crooked Creek, Dyartsville, Glenwood, Greenlee, Little Switzerland, Montford's Cove, Nebo, and North Cove. Views of waterfalls on the Catawba River and Tom's Creek, along with those of the eerie limestone formations of Linville Caverns, attest to nature's bounty. Aging photographs, many of which are published for the first time, draw attention to families, churches, schools, memorable personalities, and historic sites. This collection also brings to life the county's defining events: the arduous construction of two railways through the mountains, the destruction of Marion by fire in 1894, the disastrous flood of 1916, the textile strike of 1929, and the patriotic response by the citizenry to national crises. Photographs of selected homes, commercial sites, churches, and schools testify to the diverse architectural style and levels of economic and social well-being found in the county.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Nov 6, 2002
• ISBN: 9781439629291

James Lawton Haney

James Lawton Haney, on behalf of the McDowell County Historic Preservation Commission, has compiled this collection of images and written interpretive captions to tell historical aspects of the county in which his family has lived for over 200 years. The author holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University and is a retired Lutheran clergyman, college professor, and author of historical and genealogical works.

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photographs.

INTRODUCTION

On March 13, 1843, a group of local, propertied men met at the Buck Creek home of Col. John Carson and initiated the organization of McDowell County. The new county had been delineated the previous year by the North Carolina Legislature from parts of Burke and Rutherford Counties and named for Col. Joseph McDowell, scion of a highly respected family of local pioneers and hero of the Revolution at the Battle of King’s Mountain. The first county court was called to order in the Carson House, which functioned as the seat of county government for the next two years. A county seat was laid out by surveyors near the geographical center of the county two years later and named Marion, in honor of another Revolutionary War hero, Gen. Francis Marion. On May 12, 1845, the doors of an imposing courthouse were opened, and McDowell County was governed from this building for 78 years until it was replaced in 1923.

The culture that finds its symbolic center in the courthouse has been shaped by many factors including the interaction of the citizenry with nature, native people, and historical developments within the state and nation. At an earlier date, the attractive features of the Carolina Piedmont and the Mountain Regions, both of which the county encompassed, had led immigrant Ulster Scots and Germans to evict the native tribal population of Cherokees and Catawbas and claim the area as their own. These pioneer hunters and cattle-drivers were followed by numerous subsistence farmers and by a few large landowners who bought Black African slaves to tend their land.

The collapse of the Confederacy left the county in social and economic ruin. Dramatic social and economic change began during the period of Reconstruction, leading to a long, steady decline of agrarian culture and rapid industrialization. The construction of two railways that crossed the county from east to west and from north to south and the presence of large numbers of impoverished and undemanding laborers made the area attractive to lumber, furniture, textile, and hosiery mills. In 1909, The McDowell Democrat bragged that the population of Marion and McDowell County is shown by tax books to have more money per capita than any town or county in the Carolinas and everything has been moving forward at a fast clip. Along with new wealth, a professional class emerged in the towns and villages alongside a largely impoverished landed gentry, which was clearly distinguished from day laborers in agriculture, forest products, and industry. Institutionally excluded on the basis of race, a declining African-American population played only a minor role in defining the county’s culture before World War II—a fact attested to in this book by the relative absence of images.

The grandeur of the county’s natural setting also became accessible to tourists for the first time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the arrival of the railroads. The building of hotels, the up-grading of secondary roads, the appearance of the automobile, and the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway through the county helped to initiate a thriving tourist industry by the end of the first half of the 20th century. Two lakes, created for industrial and recreational purposes, justified promoting the county seat of Marion as The Lake City of the Mountains.

Positive development was threatened or slowed periodically by broader cultural crises and natural disasters. Among these were periodic economic depressions; a disastrous fire in 1894 that burned most of the town of Marion; floods in 1916 and 1940, which spelled financial ruin to numerous farm families and some businesses; the civil unrest surrounding the textile strike of 1929; and wars during which many lives were radically altered or lost. Out of these crises some good emerged; for example, former slaves and free Negroes began a torturous rise toward social and economic equality, the unrest of textile workers contributed to better working conditions and financial benefits for many, while World War II opened the way for women to move into careers beyond those of homemaker, nurse, and teacher.

Through eras of prosperity and adversity, churches and schools functioned as primary social institutions in McDowell County. Hardscrabble living and isolation from population centers contributed to the slow development of both churches and schools. From two white Presbyterian congregations, founded in the 18th century by Ulster Scots immigrants, the number of segregated white and black congregations had increased dramatically by the beginning of the 20th century, and Presbyterian dominance had given way to the Methodists and Baptists. For those who could pay, opportunities for education in subscription schools and private academies were available during the second half of the 19th century, but a county board of education was not founded until 1885. The quality of education remained modest through the first two decades of the 20th century. Public schools only gradually became available in every section of the county. As late as 1913, 61 schools (52 white, 9 black) served the county, of which 49 had only one teacher and only 20 offered high school level classes. Good public education arrived only with school consolidation in the 1920s with steady—though slow—improvement through the Depression years to World War II.

As McDowell County entered upon the second century of its history in 1943, the county and the nation were embroiled in war. Though unrecognized at the time, this event would prove to be another significant turning point in the history of the county and its people that would extend the horizons for cultural development and greater prosperity—an epic that lies beyond the scope of this book.

As this introduction suggests, the visual images presented here are (with few exceptions) limited to McDowell County’s first century—a period coinciding with the decades before the advent of color photography. They are intended to make some aspects of the county’s rich and varied history come alive for a new generation. Unfortunately, a book like this can offer little more than a glimpse into the lives of a few creative, courageous, and hard-working men and women who have been the makers of the county’s history.

The Historic Preservation Commission is committed to the preservation of the