Gillespie Gap

08/14/2023

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/north-carolina/overmountain-victory-trail-gillespie-gap-to-lynn-gap/photos

08/14/2023

Overmountain Victory Trail: Gillespie Gap to Lynn Gap

Length: 3.2 mi
Elevation gain: 561 ft
Route type: Out & back

Get to know this 3.2-mile out-and-back trail near Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Generally considered an easy route, it takes an average of 1 h 30 min to complete. This trail is great for hiking, running, and walking, and it's unlikely you'll encounter many other people while exploring. The trail is open year-round and is beautiful to visit anytime. Dogs are welcome, but must be on a leash.

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/us/north-carolina/overmountain-victory-trail-gillespie-gap-to-lynn-gap?mobileMap=false&ref=sidebar-static-map

08/14/2023

https://amrevnc.com/gillespie-gap/

👉Walk to the stone monument on the far side of the museum. Read the monument if you like. For unknown reasons it also mentions a 1761 battle at Etchoe Pass, but that site is near the Georgia border!

👉Look to your left into the meadow.

More than 800 “Overmountain Men,” as they are now called, passed through here on Friday, September 29, 1780. These were militia members and volunteers who lived on the far side of the Appalachians, in Virginia and today’s Tennessee (then western North Carolina). They were on their way to attack a Loyalist army under British Maj. Patrick Ferguson. Last known to be camped at Gilbert Town near today’s Rutherfordton, Ferguson had threatened to cross the mountains to attack them.

The Overmountain Men and a herd of cattle for food had climbed by way of Grassy Creek, which starts nearby to the west. Then they marched along the ridge line to enter this cove.

👉Directly behind the small, brown Overmountain Victory Trail sign uphill is an entrance to the Appalachian Trail (AT). It roughly follows the path the soldiers used from the head of Grassy Creek.

The men did not camp here, but would have filled this cove, probably wooded at the time, as they rested. Meanwhile their leaders, Cols. William Campbell, John Sevier, and Isaac Shelby, made a decision. The colonels are said to have climbed to the top of Gillespie Gap, perhaps near the modern intersection on the far side of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and looked into the Catawba Valley on the other side while discussing their options.[1] The gap was named for Henry Gillespie, who lived at the bottom of the mountain (see our Turkey Cove page for details).

The colonels were concerned that Ferguson was already fulfilling his threat. Their fear was heightened by the disappearance of two of the men a couple of nights earlier from their camp near Roan Mountain, whom they thought might be going to warn Ferguson. The officers decided to split their force. This served three purposes: It blocked both of the main mountain passes to their homes; prevented Ferguson from wiping out their whole force if he struck one wing; and left the possibility of the other wing attacking him from behind if that happened.

After a break, the divisions took off. Shelby and Sevier led their 480 men east along the ridge line (across today’s NC 226) several miles before heading downhill. Campbell’s 200 troops, and probably 160 others who had retreated from the Battle of Cane Creek near Gilbert Town, headed across the gap where the Parkway runs and down the route now taken by NC 226, following Cox Creek.

👉You can follow in the footsteps of the Overmountain Men! Walk up to the marker and into the woods along the trail as far as you like, and then turn around and imagine walking along with them. Another Overmountain Trail marker is visible directly across the highway. It marks the AT trail portion you can use to follow the wing under Shelby and Sevier after the split.

Since you’ve come this far, you might want to check out the museum, if open, for its collection of minerals and details on the history of mining in this area.

08/14/2023

Colonel Waightstill Avery
findagrave.com/memorial/15027938

Waightstill Avery was a Patriot and the first Attorney General of the State of North Carolina. He was instrumental in establishing the state constitution as well as supporting the Continental Congress in its vote for Independence.

Avery graduated from Princeton in 1766 then studied law in Maryland. He moved to North Carolina circa 1770 and was one of the men who wrote the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, which stated that British laws were no longer in effect. It was drafted more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

In 1778, Avery fought a duel with Andrew Jackson, which was an accepted way to settle disagreements in those days. However, each man shot over the other's head.

Avery married Leah Probart Francks on 3 October 1778 at New Bern, North Carolina. He sent his wife Leah, his children, and his slaves to Burke County, North Carolina in the late 1770's. They settled on a tract of land which he called Swan Ponds. He joined them there after the Revolutionary War.

When he was past 60 years old, he was seriously injured in a fall from a horse. Despite this, he continued to serve as a judge in the county court.

Waightstill Avery died while in the judges' chambers at the Burke County courthouse.

08/14/2023

Editor’s Note: The following is the second of a two-part feature on the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail.

TOE RIVER — In last week’s article about the Overmountain Trail, more was written about the trail itself. This week is a step back to look into the significance of the Trail to the United States and to the historical connection it has to Avery County and its residents. Overmountain Victory Trail Association

What is the connection and why should it be important to local residents? What a lot of Avery residents don’t realize is that many ancestors that settled here in the area decided to pick up arms and defend their homes when they found out that the British might come into the area and take their family and homes. Because these “Over Mountain Men” decided to stand up and fight, they inevitably helped birth a nation in the process. To help understand what led to the Battle of Kings Mountain, it’s vital to start from the beginning.

Many of the settlers in Avery County and surrounding counties were of Scotch-Irish descent and were farmers. They were not trained soldiers, but average, ordinary citizens who really did not want anything to do with the war that was going on. Many of the settlers stayed out of it until the British tried to take land that was occupied in the Blue Ridge.

“The Overmountain men were early settlers and they settled among the Cherokee in the back country behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were not really interested in politics. They were not interested in the war,” Starli McDowell, director of the Overmountain Victory North Carolina State Trail Friends group explained. “They knew that there was a war going on up north, that Ferguson invaded Charleston in May 1780 and marched to right around where Charlotte is, and they began to look into these Blue Ridge Mountains and wanted them, too. They started to look here in the mountains and met some pretty tough pioneers that scared them, and so they backed up back to Charlotte. They sent a message over the mountain that if you do not lay down your arms, that they will come over the mountain and lay waste to your farms with fire and sword.”

When the British did this, many of these mountain men from this area took it as an act of aggression and wanted to protect their homes from what they thought were invaders. A decision was made that this group of men were going to meet the British. Starting in Abingdon, Va., they worked their way to the Watauga settlement in Sycamore Shoals There were so many who wanted to engage the British and stand for the cause that a number of men were requested to stay and defend the families and homes in the area. The men held a draft, and as McDowell explained, “They said ‘We can’t all go,’ and it was really the first draft. They picked every other seventh man and the others stepped back to stay home. The rest of them headed out of Elizabethton to Shelving Rock Encampment and over Yellow Mountain Road and into (current) Avery County.”

These men were commanded by Colonel Isaac Shelby, Colonel John Sevier, Colonel William Campbell and Colonel Charles McDowell. As the militia marched through the mountain communities they picked up support from many of the pioneers who wanted to battle the British. Many local ancestors went with the ragtag fighters to defend their homes and newly acquired freedom. For many that were marching, they were not military nor had any training, but felt that they needed to fight, battling as if they realized if they lost, they would not be coming back to their homes and would lose their independence.

“As these men marched through eleven counties in western North Carolina, people joined them. So we have ancestors that picked arms up and began to march as they passed through (modern) Avery and Mitchell counties,” McDowell said. “So the people in Avery County, the Wisemans and the Davenports, went. These are our ancestors, and there should be a lot pride in that. These were not professional soldiers. They were not an organized militia. They were farmers.”

Though these men were not trained soldiers, it did not mean they were not strategic or that they did not know how to fire a gun and defend themselves. Even to this day many historians go back to the Battle of Kings Mountain and what these men did and study what and how they fought the battle and their strategies leading up to it. The British did not expect for them to be as formidable as they were. McDowell shares an example of some of the soldiers’ cunning and ingenuity while they were camping on the way to the battle.

“The next morning they did a roll call and found that there were two people missing. They had suspected that those two had been loyalists and were wanting to find out what they were doing. Then they knew that these two had likely gone ahead to tell Ferguson that they had formed a militia and were coming after them,” McDowell explained. “So, when they got to Spruce Pine, they knew there were two routes off the mountain and thought that if they took one route, the British will take the other and be able to get to their families and homes. So from there, they made a historic decision to split the troops. Half of them went down Turkey Cove and the other half went down North Cove and met back up at Quaker Meadows. They were very smart men.”

On Oct. 7, 1780, the Overmountain Men took Major Ferguson and the British completely by surprise at Kings Mountain. The battle lasted a little more than an hour, but it was a complete and total defeat for the British. After the battle a total of more than 200 British soldiers lost their lives, including Ferguson. Another 160 were injured, and around 700 British soldiers were taken as prisoners. All of this not from trained solders, but from famers and ancestors from Avery and surrounding counties.

“They wound up capturing or killing Ferguson’s entire troop,” McDowell added. “They got all of his ammunition, all of his wagons, anything that they couldn’t carry, they burned right there.”

The Battle of Kings Mountain became a turning point in the American Revolution and in Yellow Mountain Gap, in this community, it became the highest point in the Revolution. So for Avery County, it is historically significant to remember and pass on to future generations.

Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park



Previous link (now broken): https://www.wataugademocrat.com/columns/trailing-off-into-the-history-of-the-overmountain-men/article_8ed7babc-3448-11ee-a634-7b5a593f901h.html

08/14/2023

From yesterday's Avery Journal-Times
https://tinyurl.com/Overmountain

Editor’s Note: The following is the first of a two-part feature on the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail.

NEWLAND — The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail or OVNHT, is something most North Carolinians, much less a lot of people from Avery or surrounding counties, have heard of. Unless you are a history buff, many are unaware of the significance of the trail to Avery and how it is connected to the American Revolution and the United Sates.

Those questions are extremely difficult to answer in just one article, and so to answer these statements fully they will be answered in two parts, with this installment looking at the trail itself, and next week’s installment going more in depth about the history of the trail and how it’s connected to Avery County, the American Revolution and the nation.

The OVNHT is trail that traces the route of patriots who were eventually known as the Overmountain Men. This group of ragtag volunteers went from Abington, Va., and came through Sycamore Shoals in current-day Carter County, Tenn., and eventually joined with others and ended up marching to what is now Kings Mountain National Military Park. With that national trail there is a state trail that overlaps it called the Overmountain North Carolina State Trail (OVNCST) which runs through 11 counties in North Carolina.

Many who work with the state trail think that the historical aspect is one of the many reasons why the state government decided to make a designated state trail for preservation purposes.

“This is an untold story, and that is why I think they give the designation for a state trail. In 1980 Senator Broyhill spearheaded a National Historic trail and that historic trail includes Virginia,Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina,” stated Starli McDowell, executive director of OVNCST Friends. “The North Carolina legislature just recently wanted to support the trail building on the ground, leading up to the American 250, which is our Independence anniversary. So the North Carolina legislature created The OVNCST, which overlaps the National trail.”

The primary group that is looking to spearhead the movement to get as many unfinished trails back to their original splendor is the North Carolina State Trail Friends. The Overmountain North Carolina State Trail Friends is an organization that is dedicated to bring awareness to the historical significance of the trail and to work with the local governments around the surrounding counties to maintain and restore the Overmountain Trail. The group also wants the public to be able to use the trail as a recreational tool as well as an educational one. Many parts of the trail trace through Avery County and the surrounding counties, picking up many of the patriots that would later fight in the Battle of Kings Mountain.

“The trail in Avery County is on Yellow Mountain Road and it intersects the Appalachian Trail as it comes up from Shelving Rock Encampment across the top of the mountain. It comes down Roaring Creek and follows 19E all the way to Spruce Pine and the Toe River,” McDowell said.

The OVNCST has more than 230 potential trail miles that can be turned into trails and added to the state trail, complementing the already current 80 miles of trail that is able to be hiked. The OVNCST Friends are looking for opportunities to turn some of the unfinished and unused trail into something that could be beneficial for everyone in the Avery community by constructing those unusable trails into usable territory.

“We are looking for opportunities where we can put the trail on the ground for the public access, so that people can get out and enjoy nature along the trail (by putting) historic markers and telling the story so people can get out and enjoy the trail and learn at the same time,” McDowell said.

Within the next year OVNCST Friends plan on having a community wide meeting to gauge the interest of people in communities impacted by the trail, as well as talk with leaders in each town the trail traverses to see about the possibly of a trailing project there.

“So we are looking at each county, at the county’s own priorities: What does the county want? What does the county have where maybe there is an opportunity for a trail that the state can support and get behind to get a trail off the ground,” McDowell said.

The OVNCST Friends want to help build the community and work with the residents and town governments to improve what is already in the community. The group is always looking for volunteers, whether it be manual labor, simply to invest monetarily on a project that they are working on, or if there is some land that someone thinks might be a good fit for the trail.

“We are going to go into each county and have a meeting (to gauge) the counties’ priorities and perspective, because we want to work with and through the county,” McDowell added. “The residents, governments, we want to find out “What do you want to see us do?’ We are going to ask Avery County ‘What do you want us to do?’ ‘How can we work work together?’”

The potential new trails could offer the surrounding counties a wide range of benefits among outdoor activities, such as hiking and and camping along the trails. New trails may also provide great opportunities for local schools to bring their students and have a hands-on experience with Revolutionary War history and the part the Overmountain Men played in this area in shaping the heritage and origins of this region.

08/14/2023

03/10/2022

One Heroic Hour at King's Mountain
By Pat Alderman · 1990

01/20/2022

History’s footsteps: The Overmountain Victory Trail August 12, 2020 by Editor Share0Tweet0Email0Retracing the historic crossing of the Blue Ridge to fight for freedom By Michael E. Gouge The bronze frontiersman statue stands with rifle poised facing southeast toward the towering Blue Ridge Mountai...

01/20/2022

Gillespie Gap is a saddle inside of Blue Ridge Parkway.

01/20/2022