From the Mountains to the Prairies

By George Holloway

This historical book, based on real events and persons, follows the tumultuous journey of one family--that of John and Elizabeth Holloway--from colonial South Carolina to North Carolina and then to the Natchez District governed by Spain before, during, and after the American Revolution. From the extensive research done by the author and other ancestors of this family, including original documents preserved at the state archives of four different state capitals, many plausible explanations for mysteries surrounding this family and others involved, including some infamous characters, are uncovered. Also included are relevant events and methods used in the decades-long search for this family's story by their ancestors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798887319759

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Chapter 1: Between Europe and America

Chapter 2: Incident at Marr's Bluff

Chapter 3: A Very Good Woman but…

Chapter 4: The Globe

Chapter 5: Quaker Meadows

Chapter 6: Upon Long Glady Creek

Chapter 7: Frederick Stump

Chapter 8: Cumberland Settlement

Chapter 9: Whites Creek

Chapter 10: Cumberland Compact

Chapter 11: Red River Massacre

Chapter 12: Kings Mountain

Chapter 13: Big Rivers, Small Boats

Chapter 14: Battle of the Bluffs

Chapter 15: Rebellion

Chapter 16: Shot and Scalped

Chapter 17: Retirement

Chapter 18: Holloway Mountain Road

Chapter 19: The Adventure II

Chapter 20: Americans by Birth but Not Sentiment

Chapter 21: Land for Sale

Chapter 22: St. Catherine's Creek

Chapter 23: Sent Up the River

Chapter 24: Black Widows

Chapter 25: He Lives…Without Destiny

Chapter 26: Natchez Trace

Chapter 27: A Place Time Forgot

Chapter 28: Methodism

Epilogue

About the Author

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From the Mountains to the Prairies

George Holloway

Copyright © 2023 George Holloway

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-974-2 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-975-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

In memory of George M. Holloway.

Chapter 1

Between Europe and America

March 1, 1977

Gambier, Ohio

George Holloway was in his final semester of college and thought it would be a cake walk. Just get into business school and go to parties. He had enrolled in classes that he expected to be a lot easier than those in his major, math. One class in the History Department called Between Europe and America even had several of his fraternity brothers in it. The fraternity George belonged to was overloaded with football players, not merit scholars. George knew that he had to keep his grades above a B average because one of the four business schools he had applied to had predicated acceptance on it. Many other seniors apparently thought the class would boost their GPA. It was the largest attended class he had enrolled in during all the four years. The largest classroom on campus, the size of a movie theater, had to be used. That classroom, as were most of the classrooms, was originally built in the 1880s. The college was small but dwarfed the town it was located in. Enrollment was even smaller due to the fact that just seven years prior, women were finally admitted to the college.

Several weeks into the course, the professor started into his usual lecture mode but in the middle of it blurted out, "By the way, you should all be watching Roots!" George's fraternity was housed in one-third of one of the three original nineteenth-century dorms on the original quadrangle and had only one TV, and it was located in the upstairs lounge, where the frat parties were held. By this time, quite an audience of fraternity brothers had been gathering for each of the eight episodes of the series.

At the next class, the professor gave the students its term paper assignment, which would substantially determine their final grades for the course.

"All of you have immigrants in your family history. I want you to write about them and their history and how they assimilated into America. It can be social, religious, cultural, etc. Sources and footnotes are required, meaning footnotes in the paper citing sources…and a lying uncle is not a source."

George turned to one of his fraternity brothers and said, Great! This is the fourth term paper for me this semester. His first worry was that he would not have time to type the four papers as well as the papers of a few other members of the fraternity who were paying him $1 a page. But there was another worry. He needed to keep his GPA up to be accepted into the one business school that had not yet rejected his application. In fact, to get a GPA high enough, to graduate cum laude, he needed at least a B in all four classes, which meant he needed to get an A in all four term papers. Last semester, he thought cum laude was out of reach, but the college was transitioning to a more universally accepted grade scale, which lowered the cum laude minimum GPA to be almost exactly the number pi rounded to hundreds, 3.14.

Leavengood is in this class. George's fraternity brother was referring to the football team's starting strong-side linebacker. He's full-blooded Cherokee.

Who would his immigrants be? George thought.

There was only one black student in the four-year college. However, the starting fullback, also a member of the fraternity, claimed to be half black. His name was Davidson but was given the nickname of Logs because the only black student's name was Logan. Logan was in a different fraternity and was a swimmer, not a football player. Neither of them was in the class, thus spared from having to write their own versions of Roots.

Another challenge to George getting an A in this assignment was that he was in the middle of Ohio, and his mother's family research was in Philadelphia. She mailed him what she had. But there was a gap in linking the puritan New England settlers to the Minnesota/South Dakota farmers. My mother was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace. She said that she had heard there was a family history at the Buffalo library. Since George would need to find a place to live in Rochester, New York, while in business school, he decided to do both in one trip.

There indeed was a private family collection at the Buffalo library, which linked his first immigrant ancestor, possibly a stowaway on an English ship, who became wealthy in puritan New England, to his mother's South Dakota farmer relatives whose ancestors nearly all emigrated from Sweden and a part of Germany that was now Poland in the nineteenth century. He was hoping this along with migration maps would be enough to produce an A grade.

When he asked his mother about his father's immigrants, she said he didn't know who they were, but his great-great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier killed during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. His only son, George's great-grandfather, was born eight days later. In hearing this, George knew that this was not a good example of assimilation into American culture. The Confederacy wanted to secede from the United States of America, not assimilate into it. Much worse, it might turn out to be an example of the culture of the Roots antagonists, the Southern plantation owners!

Before going on the trip to upstate New York, George turned his attention to the end-of-term assignment for his History of Architecture course in the Archaeology Department, the subject of the paper being left largely up to the students and the purpose of the term paper vague. He chose to focus on the Quetzalcoatl myth, which seemed to be pervasive in all aspects of the Mayan culture before much of it disappeared along with many of the people of ancient Mexico. Every building that survived seemed to have images of fancy serpent decor. Not finding anything in the college library, George headed to the Ohio State University library in Columbus, a fifty-mile drive. There, he found only a little about Quetzalcoatl, but it was not a wasted trip that took all Saturday afternoon and evening. He found a published pamphlet with a twelve-part definition of what a religion was. George copied the table of contents and the reference information since one of the few requirements of the assignment was to document all sources with footnotes throughout the paper.

Quetzalcoatl itself was just an ornate feathered serpent and was depicted in art throughout the culture. But so was the American bald eagle. While the American symbol was real and not worshipped, this feathered serpent had its own mythology. In searching for any information at all on the myth, George realized that Quetzalcoatl could be considered a god or at least an idol associated with a lot of symbolism and ceremony—definitely ceremony—like human sacrifice for blood. More amazingly, none of the class materials mentioned religion in association with the Mayans. Mayans as pagans, yes, but religious? No, nothing. This paper had to be interesting, maybe even extraordinary, because to average out some bad grades from the two previous exams, an A+ was required to get a B+ final grade for the class.

The other two term assignments were in courses titled Labor Economics and Environmental Chemistry. The papers here would be straightforward since they were entirely based on topics covered in the classes.

The trip to Buffalo's main library turned up a private collection that documented at least seven generations of the Graves family back to the immigrant to New England, which was more than George needed. This made him wonder if such a lineage existed for his paternal family name. For now, the paper was his first concern. After a lot of photocopying and some apartment hunting in nearby Rochester, he returned to finish the paper, complete with sources, footnotes, and a migration map showing the three separate migrations—his English, German, and Swedish ancestral lines—coming together in the farmlands of Minnesota in the midnineteenth century.

He included a short paragraph at the end of the term paper explaining that not much was known factually about his paternal ancestors, even just one generation back from those still living.

The information which has been collected relating to my father's descendants consists mainly of names and dates many of which have yet to be proven. For example, there are two lineages, the Bristol and McCall families which are not documented, one going back to the time of William the Conqueror, the other back to 1540. Each claims that immigration to America was via the Mayflower, but this is not corroborated by the lists of passengers. In addition, John McCall's wife supposedly gave birth to a girl on board the Mayflower and no one else says that this happened. However, there is one ancestry which gives the sources from which it was obtained. The research was the work of Blanche Wilmot Egerton Baker, of Roxboro, N.C. in 1946. But this Egerton genealogy claims that Charles Egerton (1600–1669) came to Maryland with Lord Baltimore (George Calvert 1580?–1632) who was his brother-in-law. It claims that Lord Baltimore's second wife was Dianne Egerton, Charles' sister. But his second wife seems to be named Joan, and Dianne does not appear among the names of Charles' sisters. Facts that support the relationship are common place of origin—Hertfordshire, England—and the existence of a Charles Calvert Egerton (1748?–1778) in St. Mary's County.

This is all that relates to immigration on my father's side. All that can be said (truthfully) is that the Holloway (English meaning—a road between two banks) family is that it is of English, possibly upper class, origins. Facts about later ancestors would not serve the purpose of this paper, so are not included.

During George's graduation week, he showed his parents the paper. George's father, also named George, read the last part and was now motivated to learn more about his ancestors. His parents, the younger George's grandparents, had both died two years earlier. There were no Holloway relatives from that generation still living that might know something about their ancestors. But someone, the older George remembered, once told him that there was a Holloway Mountain that was named after an ancestor. Since they vacationed in the Blue Ridge Mountains almost each summer, George and Lisabeth would start a search for Holloway Mountain and its former residents on their next trip.

September 16, 1978

Morganton-Burke Library, Morganton, North Carolina

On their next summer trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains on a warm September morning, George and Lisabeth Holloway visited the North Carolina Room of the Morganton Library to find out more about any local Holloway families. While the genealogy records there had no Holloways, there were Clontzes and Kincaids who were known surnames in the Holloway family tree. The librarian there gave them names and phone numbers of local experts and descendants of those families.

Returning to the Holiday Inn, calls were made to the numbers they received, and one of the Clontz descendants was contacted and invited them to her home in Granite Falls. This area was much closer to the small town of Lenoir than Morganton. After a half-hour drive, they arrived at her home. She kindly told them what she knew about two cemeteries, the one that the Morganton librarian had mentioned where Clontz family members were buried and the other where the old Holloways are buried.

She told them that this was the Puett Hill Cemetery. But don't go there now. It is very much overgrown, and this is rattlesnake season! She had not been to either cemetery.

Heeding this advice, George and Lisabeth drove to the other cemetery, which they were told was on the land of a Mrs. Eva Clontz Bouchard back in Morganton. First, they checked for Caldwell County marriage records at the Lenoir County Courthouse. Caldwell County was the county between Lenoir and Morganton that was formed well before the Civil War. They found no Clontzes and no Holloways. They turned off the road through Lenoir onto Route 90, a road that would take them back to Morganton. There, Mrs. Bouchard showed them a letter with information about her family. George had brought a tape recorder so that he could read gravestone inscriptions into it. He read the letter into the tape recorder. Then Mrs. Bouchard kindly took them up to the well-kept cemetery, but none of the Clontz gravestones matched any of the relatives known to them. They returned to the Holiday Inn for the night. Tomorrow they would do more searching on their way to Asheville.

Saturday was a beautiful day. After checking out of the hotel, they visited some cemeteries around Morganton, where buried relatives of the Bristol woman that had married the soldier John B. Holloway were, who was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. George's grandfather had been born eight days after he died. The Bristols were a very large family who intermarried with another large family named Kincaid. From a local information center more information was found about them. One of the widow's many siblings had lived past the age of one hundred and had come from Texas to visit George's family in Hickory. He had plenty of stories about the early Holloways, but only George's younger brother remembered him and even wrote a grade school paper on him. George's parents had both died earlier in the 1970s. George knew of no relatives who still lived in the area. While still a child, his father, who worked as an accountant for many of FDR's New Deal agencies, had moved the family many times, eventually settling in Washington, DC. The new Western North Carolina Archives was still not open yet.

Leaving Asheville, they drove to their next stop, Blowing Rock, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. As they approached Blowing Rock, they came upon the closed portion where the parkway was not yet finished around Grandfather Mountain, the highest mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway. They were forced to use Route 221, which wound along the southern edge of the Blue Ridge. While on this road, Lisabeth had plenty of time to read about it in a local tour book that she had brought along.

This used to be called the Yonahlossee Trail, which translated from Cherokee means the trail of the black bear. This book says that the surveyors must have been tracking a bear when they laid it out.

After about an hour detour on the twisting Route 221, they were thankfully able to turn off it to get back onto the parkway by travelling on a road that had a street sign identifying it as Holloway Mountain Road. This road was paved the mile until it allowed reentry to the parkway. Beyond the Parkway, it was not paved and had deep ruts and drainage channels. It was so bad they had to turn the car around and return their journey on the parkway. They later found this road on the map as Road 1559, just three winding miles in total length, running north from Route 221 toward a small town called Foscoe. They asked a few other locals about Holloway Mountain and the road. One local confirmed that the road was impassable; another suggested visiting nearby Moses H. Cone Mansion, where they might find out more about the mountain. At Moses Cone, they could not find out more but enjoyed their visit and promised themselves to return. Returning to Philadelphia, George and Lisabeth had failed to discover Holloway Mountain but had thoroughly enjoyed their trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

While staying in Blowing Rock, George had stopped by one of the parkway visitor centers to find out more about Holloway Mountain. He was told to print his Philadelphia address on the front of a three-by-five Department of the Interior official business postcard, with a postage paid imprint, and write his question, which he did: Where is Holloway Mt. along Blue Ridge Pkway? at the top of the back of the card. About a week later, he received the postcard back, with an Asheville North Carolina postmark dated September 20, and the following handwritten in block letters on the back:

Where is Holloway Mtn. along Blue Ridge Parkway?

Holloway Mtn. road connects the parkway with 221 where the parkway is incomplete at north end of Grandfather Mtn. No one I could find knows Holloway Mtn.

Sincerely,

W. H. Martin

Coincidentally, Martin was a common family name in the Morganton area. George's mother was one of them, and George's middle name was Martin.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was started as a recreational road along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, connecting the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah Mountains with the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. It was started so long ago that George's grandfather Holloway had actually dug ditches for it as a teenager in Morganton. The road became a priority during the Depression as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) effort.

The very last section of the whole parkway, around the south side of Grandfather Mountain, the highest and oldest along the whole route, was not finished for years later because it was the most difficult to build. The Yonahlossee road that became Route 221 was not built until 1892. Ten million dollars of difficulty. A curved quarter-mile bridge had to be raised on pilons of up to one hundred feet high to avoid cutting into the steep extremely rocky side of the mountain. It had to be built section by section from the south to the north because there was no access to the mountain for construction workers and equipment past this Holloway Mountain Road, which made up one mile of the detour. Route 221 was the remainder of the detour around the construction. There were only Indian trails up and down Grandfather Mountain until 1753.

Chapter 2

Incident at Marr's Bluff

September 5, 1768

Marr's Bluff, Craven County, South Carolina

Robert Weaver, Esquire, as justice of the peace, looked at the handwritten petitions being presented to him by the half-dozen unkempt young men crowded into his small Marr's Bluff office.

Afternoon, gentlemen! What can I do for you?

Petitions to the South Carolina Assembly!

All right, hold on, introduce yourselves starting with whosoever initiated the petition and stating your relationship to the petitioner. The clerk came in with a logbook.

William White, I am submitting my petition and that of my father, James Taylor White.

James White, brother of William.

Reuben White, also a brother.

William Loving, their brother-in-law.

John Holloway, also their brother-in-law.

Capt. George Thompson, constable, South Carolina Militia. They report to me, Your Honor.

Captain, I recall that I entrusted you to serve the warrant on Mr. Gideon Gibson in July.

Yes, sir. On the twenty-fifth day of this past July, a Monday, I led a party of fourteen militia men to Gibson's home to release Lt. Joseph Holland from their custody. It was not far from here. We were confronted by two lines of Gibson's Regulators. We were outmanned, surrounded, and insufficiently armed to execute the warrant successfully.

William added, My cutlass was useless!

Gideon Gibson was the leader of a multiracial group that associated in their minds with Regulators; that was those who wanted some form of government in the backcountry of South Carolina. The real Regulators were peaceful and wanted vagabond groups like Gibson's men expelled from the region. In a presentation to the Charleston legislature, Gideon's men were described as a gang of banditti or numerous collection of outcast mulattoes, mustees, free Negroes, all horse thieves, from the borders of Virginia and other northern colonies.

As early as 1752, settlers along the Pee Dee River where Lynches Creek flowed into it, filed a petition to create a distinct county so that they would not have to travel two hundred miles to Charleston. This petition was denied because there was no town in the area fit to be the county seat. About this time, farmers, usually growing tobacco, started moving in, buying land, which they had to survey themselves. Without local courts, the landowners sometimes relied on churches to hand down punishments. The warrant specified that Mr. Gibson was holding a militia member, Lt. Joseph Holland, hostage at his home.

Mr. Weaver looked at the brothers. You really brothers? The petitioner looks a lot shorter than the others.

Our father, James Taylor White, has also signed the petition, and he sent a petition of his own, William explained.

I know that name! Where do I know that name?

Perhaps the Cashaway Baptist Church on the Pee Dee River, sir.

Ah yes! I remember seeing his lovely daughter Elizabeth there, but not recently.

She's my wife, sir, said John.

You no longer go to that church?

We have four small children now, one just born last year.

James White added, I was suspended from said church eight years ago for excessive drinking… It has expired, but it's a long boat ride there. That church keeps getting flooded too.

Mr. Weaver turned to William. And you, petitioner, are you a member also?

No. Not a churchgoer.

Have you ever been in jail? For any reason?

No. I support a wife and eight young children of mine and three orphans from my wife's relatives.

Did you all witness the incident?

Not my brother James, he helped us get here today, sir.

Fine. Mr. William White, tell me what happened. You appear to have an injury.

Most appreciated, sir. When the lieutenant, my father, and I approached to serve the warrant, after my brother had advanced ahead of the party, I overheard Mr. Gibson say ‘Shoot down Billy White, for I have got Reuben, and if you kill Billy, we will manage the rest easy enough.' I drew my cutlass, but they knocked me down. My father helped me up so we could retreat, but he was knocked down. When I tried to help him, that's when I was wounded in the hip from a ball of a gun. Another ball went into my right arm, shattering it, and I fainted. Next thing I remember was several of them, all armed, were standing over me. One said ‘Shoot him through the head,' but another said, ‘No, damn him! He can't live long. Let him feel himself die!' I was then carried into the house where I was dumped on the floor, bleeding badly…

There was a long pause and his brother Reuben White continued, I escaped from the house, but they had taken the rest of us prisoner, then gave all of us fifty lashes outside, during which drawn-out ordeal we rescued my brother inside. He has lost the use of his right arm, making it impossible to continue his occupation as a cooper and cannot even work as a planter. We all had other injuries, but that is the most serious.

Captain Thompson added, We killed Gibson's son, but unfortunately two of ours were killed also.

Mr. Weaver was visibly upset and agitated by this story. Mercy, mercy! Well told, gentlemen. You obviously were educated outside of this area. Our provincial government took action just two weeks after your ordeal, accusing Mr. Gibson of resisting the King's process. These petitions should be brought to the South Carolina Assembly immediately, for this wrong must be made right. Unfortunately, in the last month, the Assembly was dissolved because of its attempt to levy taxes despite the threat of dissolution by the Massachusetts Colony. This should be temporary, however, so I will personally take these petitions down to Charleston when the Assembly returns. They are offering amnesty to all Pee Dee Regulators if they cease their lawlessness from hence on, excepting for this scum, Gideon and his men, who did this to your men. Later, Mr. Gibson did make an attempt to surrender but changed his mind. He is a large landowner in the back country with quite a few slaves, and he is of mixed race himself. So I believe your requests will be eventually honored. Also, no less important, he has threatened my life for the original warrant, authorized by me and attempted to execute by ye brave men.

In the following months, the optimism of Robert Weaver soon was tempered by the failure of the reconvened South Carolina Assembly to create individual county governments within the colony. It was determined that for Craven County in particular, there was, in the words of the Assembly, no fit town for county seat, and since the four counties were never properly surveyed anyway, they should all be eliminated. This meant that Mr. Weaver would need to travel all the way to Charleston to have the petition of his clients considered.

August 15, 1771

Commons House of Assembly, Charleston, South Carolina

Mr. Weaver got up in front of the Assembly and read the petition of William White:

That on the 24th day of July 1768, your Petitioner was summoned by George Thompson, Sergeant of the Company of Militia, to which your Petitioner belongs, to assist him, who was also a Constable, in serving a warrant of Robert Weaver Esquire for relieving Joseph Holland, Lieutenant of the said Company of Militia, who was taken and forceable confined by a number of disorderly People. That he being ready and desirous to show his affection for the Laws and Liberties of his country, did meet at the place appointed by said Sergeant, and did on the next day, march under his Command towards the House where Mr. Holland was confined, near which they were met by a great number of People of different Colours (viz) Whites, Blacks, and Mulattoes, who formed two Lines, into which as soon as the Constable and four men had entered, the rioters immediately surrounded, and knocked them down. That when this was done, one of the chief of the Rioters, Gideon Gibson, called, shoot down Billey White, for I have got Reuben, and if you kill Billey we will manage the rest easy enough. Your petitioner finding several armed Men surrounding him, drew his Cutlass, desired them to keep off, and endeavoured to defend himself, but was soon knocked down. That by his Father's help, he got up, and tried to get his Father away, but in a very little time, the latter being again knocked down, he turned to his assistance, when several of Guns were discharged at your Petitioner, a Ball from one of which passed thro the skin of his Hip, and a second entered the Bone of his right arm, about five Inches above his Elbow, and going along the said Bone, came out a little below his Elbow, totally shattered and destroyed the bone of his said arm. That your petitioner finding himself thus disabled, either to help his Father or himself, endeavoured to make his Escape, but after running a little way, fainted and fell; after some time recovering, he found several of the Rioters about him one of which said Shoot him thro' the Head at once; but another replied, no Damn him he can't live long, let him feel himself Die. That they carried him into the House, and threw him on the Floor, where he lay weltering in his own blood; when after having whipped his Brother and others of the Party whom they had taken, they permitted your Petitioner's Brother to take him away. That your Petitioner by this Melancholy accident, hath not only lost the use of his right arm, but finds his Constitution reatly weakened and impaired by the great quantity of Blood which he lost. That your Petitioner is by Trade a Cooper, and did usually earn thirty shillings per day, by working at the Trade, by which he was enabled to support his large Family, consisting of his wife and eight young Children, besides three poor Orphans, Relatives of his wife, who have not any other Person to take care of them. But that by loss of his arm, he in not only totally disabled from working at his Trade, but also in a very great measure to do anything in the Planting business. Your Petitioner therefore humbly Prays your Honor to take his Malancholy Case into Consideration, and to grant him the Annuity allowed by the Militia Act, to such as are maimed and disabled in the Public Service, or to relieve him in such other Manner, as to your