Danlel Smith Cabin Location: Asheville, North Carolina

Where Was the Daniel Smith House?

What Do the Records Show?

Forster A. Sondley provided the following in 1912: "His residence stood on the hillside immediately east of the railroad and directly north of the first small branch which runs into the French Broad River above the Passenger Station of the Southern Railway at Asheville, North Carolina. The site of his home is now within the corporate limits of the City of Asheville. . . ." Sondley added: "In later life Colonel Smith was almost daily seen on the streets of Asheville mounted on his large white horse."

 Similarly, in 1922 Theodore Davidson wrote: Daniel Smith "settled immediately east of the railroad at the first branch above the passenger station at Asheville, on the hill just north of the branch where his cabin stood for many years, and where he died May 17, 1824. He was buried with military honors on the hill where Fernihurst now stands; but about 1875 his body was removed to the Newton Academy graveyard where it now rests."

An April 1796 Buncombe County court record documents the purchase by Daniel Smith of 300 acres of land. Around 1795 Daniel Smith paid £4, 14 shillings, four pence, to Benjamin Yardley "in part pay for the building a house for" Daniel Smith. In April 1792 the Buncombe County court ordered that [among others] Daniel Smith be on a jury to view and lay off a road from Colonel William Davidson's on the Swannanoa River to Benjamin Davidson's Creek "the nearest and best way according to law." This was the first order in regard to roads ever made in Buncombe County. The road became known as Boilston Road.

Portrait of the Past: Aston Park Hospital operating room, circa 1940

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Aston Park Health Care Center grew out of Aston Park Hospital, located in Asheville on the northwest corner of what had been Aston Street and South French Broad Avenue. The hospital had opened in 1927 as the French Broad Hospital. The name change to Aston occurred in the 1940s when the street the hospital was on, Willow Street., was renamed in honor of Edward Aston, historic Asheville booster and mayor. The 1940s was also when the Asheville Colored Hospital was opened, leading Dr. John Walker to leave Aston Park, where he’d served as the only African-American physician in a local hospital. One of his specialties was administering anesthesia, which he did for operations in the room pictured in this 1927 photo by Ewart M. Ball.

Aston Park had 45 beds in the 1940s, whereas Mission Hospital had 134; St Joseph’s, 95; Biltmore Hospital, 50; Norburn Hospital, 120; and the Asheville Colored Hospital, 35 beds. The French Broad Hospital had itself gone through an expansion because the newspaper reported cases related to it before ground breaking took place in August. For instance, in March, a young woman was trying to recover at the hospital from peritonitis after Ralph Riddle had seduced her and then poisoned her to abort the fetus. In 1967, Aston Park Hospital began making the shift to nursing home care as Memorial Mission Hospital assumed acute care responsibility. Photo courtesy Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNC Asheville. --Rob Neufeld, RNeufeld@charter.net, @WNC_chronicler

Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (Asheville, North Carolina), 11 June 2019.

Ripley-Shepherd Building

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Ripley-Shepherd Building

The Ripley family enjoyed early prominence in Hendersonville, especially the colonel himself. According to Lila Ripley Barnwell (the daughter of Col. Valentine Ripley) in an article that appeared in the Times News on August 29, 1938, "Colonel Valentine Ripley, a native of Rockbridge County, Virginia, came to this section in the (eighteen) thirties, settling first in Asheville, where he married Miss Ruth Smith, daughter of James Smith, who was the first white child born west of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. Shortly afterward Henderson County was cut off from Buncombe, and because of interest in the mail route, Colonel Ripley came here to live. He had large land interests, owning thousands of acres in the county.

No citizen was ever more interested in the progress and development of this section. After the War Between the States, Colonel Ripley formed a partnership with Captain M. C. Toms in the mercantile business. He was too much a lover of the out of doors and fine horses to like the confinement of that life, and while he carefully attended to the business the practical management was left largely in the capable hands of Captain Toms. One of the greatest ambitions of his life was a railroad for Hendersonville and for years he spent time and money for this accomplishment, living to see his dream realized about four months before his death in 1879."

Source: Hendersonville Historic Preservation Commission.

Harry David Blomberg Family

Marilyn Blomberg Patton Interview

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Flood of 1916

Asheville Railroad Yard Flooded 1916

On July 14, 1916, the worst flood in western North Carolina’s history occurred after six days of torrential rain. In one 24-hour period the region saw more than half of a normal year’s total rainfall. The 22 inches of rain that fell that day set the record for the most rainfall in a single day in the United States.

Because the ground was saturated, most of the water immediately filled streams and rivers, causing them to reach flood stage in just a few hours. Eighty people lost their lives and the property damage surpassed $22 million, $1 million of that in Asheville alone. Asheville and Hendersonville were completely cut off from the outside for weeks. Railroad tracks that were not destroyed had their supports washed out from under them, leaving tracks eerily suspended over mud-covered ravines—895 miles of track were rendered useless.

Everyone was taken by surprise at the speed with which the water rose. People were stranded in trees when their cars or homes were overwhelmed and they had nowhere else to go. Industrial plants along the rivers were swept away and landslides engulfed homes. For most of western North Carolina this flood remains the benchmark for disasters.

Silas McDowell (1795-1879)

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On July 14, 1879, Silas McDowell, prolific self-taught scientist and originator of the concept of the thermal belt, died.

Originally from York, South Carolina, McDowell attended school at Asheville's Newton Academy and then began work as a tailor in Charleston. He returned to the North Carolina mountains in 1823 and bought a farm in what's now Macon County. There, in Franklin, he began a long career of farming, viticulture and horticulture, including an extensive apple production operation that developed many new varieties.

McDowell applied science to all his endeavors, published articles on agriculture and began to develop a theory of thermal belts from his observations. In 1861, he published his best-known article, "Theory of the Thermal Zone," in which he proposed the idea of the thermal belt, a mountainside temperate zone ideal for growing crops.

McDowell also made contributions to botany, guiding a number of the day's prominent botanists in explorations of the state's mountains. His wide-ranging interests also included mineralogy, geology and zoology.

In his later years, McDowell retired from farming and turned to history, literature and poetry, penning biographies of prominent local people and accounts of historical events, and writing poetry recalling his youth and the mountain landscape.

Source: "This Day in NC History," North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources

Vance Civil War Parole (1865)

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On July 5, 1865, ex-Confederate Governor Zebulon Baird Vance was paroled on his honor after imprisonment at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C.

As the end of the Civil War unfolded in North Carolina, Vance played an important role. Fleeing west in advance of General William T. Sherman’s army, Vance stopped in Greensboro and met with Confederate General Joseph Johnston. When Johnston traveled to Charlotte to meet with Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Vance followed. However, Vance returned to Greensboro after agreeing to have no further obligations to the Confederacy.

After relinquishing his ties to the Confederacy, Vance contacted Union General John Schofield and offered to surrender himself. Schofield declined to arrest him, saying he had no orders to do so. Vance informed Schofield that he would return to his home in Statesville. Vance’s stay in Statesville was short-lived. He on May 4 only to be arrested on the orders of General Ulysses S. Grant on May 13. By May 20, he was in Washington.

While he was imprisoned, his wife’s health, usually fragile, took a bad turn. Provisional Governor W.W. Holden sent a telegram on July 4 noting her ill health and asking for Vance’s release.

After the war, Vance practiced law in Charlotte. By terms of the Fourteenth Amendment he was prevented from taking the U.S. Senate seat to which he was elected in 1870, but he worked behind the scenes to develop the Conservative party until he was eligible for office in 1872. Elected governor again in 1876, Vance vacated that office with two years left in his term in 1879 to join the U.S. Senate. He would serve there until his death in 1894.

Source: North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources