Stories from the Smith-McDowell House (Asheville, NC)

 Stories from the Smith-McDowell House

In 2021, this immersive exhibit was on display in recreated rooms throughout the 1840s Smith-McDowell House and on its grounds.

In this virtual version, you can view the halls, stairwells, rooms, and grounds, and meet many of the people who walked these same pathways over a century ago and whose stories represent a microcosm of the history of Western North Carolina.

Stories from the Smith-McDowell House

Welcome 

Just a few miles north of George Vanderbilt's grand Biltmore Estate is a different kind of mansion–one that was nearly 50 years old when Vanderbilt's crew began construction in 1895. This house is now home to the Western North Carolina Historical Association.

In the 1840s, James McConnell Smith, who was rumored to be the first white child born west of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, broke ground on a large brick country house on his property overlooking the confluence of the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers–just one tract of the more than 30,000 acres in the county he would eventually own.

Smith paid few people to build his house or run his many businesses. Rather he purchased people, whom he would enslave, to perform the work. By the 1840s, when this house was being constructed, Smith held at least 70 people captive.

Once the house was complete, the Smiths used the property as a vacation destination from their main residence in Asheville, about two miles away. The house only became a full-time residence for a family when James's daughter, Sarah, and her husband, William McDowell, purchased the house at auction in 1857 from her brother's estate. The McDowells continued to hold people captive on the property, which contained numerous outbuildings, including at least six "slave houses," until April 1865 when freedom finally came to people enslaved in Asheville.

The McDowells lived in the house until 1881, when, in debt after the Civil War, they sold the property. From that date on, the house saw a rotating series of occupants resulting in periods of grand renovations and serious neglect, that have added new chapters to the history that it holds.

Photograph: The McDowell Family outside their family home, 1875.

Buncombe County, North Carolina, 1857 Tax Report

 

"Report of the North Carolina Comptroller of Public Accounts, for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1857."

"Statement, Exhibiting the valuation of real estate, and the Taxes derived from each subject of taxation in the several Counties of the State; also the Taxes levied by the Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for County purposes, as follows."

Source: The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, North Carolina), Wednesday, 27 January 1858

 [https://www.newspapers.com/image/58243336 - accessed 19 December 2022].

Thomas Gunn Ancestry

Thomas Gunn, Jr. (ca. 1738 VA - 1800 NC), James B. Kerner (2007)

Thomas² Gunn, Jr. (Thomas Gunn, Sr.¹) was born in or near Amelia County, VA circa 1738.¹⁸ Amelia County, VA was formed from Brunswick and Prince George Counties in 1734. Nottoway Co., VA was formed from Amelia County in 1788. Before Nottoway County established its own government, it was known as Nottoway Parish, a district of Amelia County. Thomas served in the Virginia Colonial Militia during the French and Indian War. He was paid five pounds, six shillings for militia service in 1756, During the French and Indian War, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed an act for the defense of the frontier of the colony on September 14, 1758. Thomas Gunn was among those soldiers mentioned in the schedules attached to that act. Thomas was listed in the Amelia County unit.

Thomas Gunn (or his father) was mentioned in court records in Lunenburg Co., VA in 1758. Note: Lunenburg Co., VA was formed from Brunswick Co., VA in 1746. On April 4, 1758, Thomas Gunn of Amelia Co., VA purchased 300 acres near his sister, Edith Hogan, on the north side of the Roanoke River in Lunenburg Co., VA, (present-day Mecklenburg Co., VA). Note: Mecklenburg Co., VA was formed from part of Lunenburg Co., VA in 1765.

Thomas Gunn (or his father) was listed as a resident of Lunenburg Co., VA per the 1760 tax lists.

Hanging of Sneed and Henry: Dr. James Freeman Eppes Hardy, M.D. (1802-1882)

At Asheville [May 1835]

In the following excerpt, Allen Turner Davidson¹ describes the events surrounding his trip as a sixteen-year-old to see the hanging in Asheville of James Sneed and James Henry. [footnotes and paragraph breaks added.]

"But when we got on the top of the hill west of the French Broad river, and looked down and saw the splendid river and the long narrow bridge, then known as Smith's bridge,² I was carried away completely. It was the largest river and the longest bridge I had seen. The bridge was kept by William Irwin³, I think. He lived at the same old house which stood there till recently on the west side of the river. We came straight up the hill to the top, where Melke's⁴ house stands, and where the old log Baptist church used to stand.

"I then began to see signs of 'town' by that time, and my eyes began to shine. I remember distinctly to have seen the fields about the present station of the railroad. Branan Patton⁵ lived there then. Aunt Mary Smith⁶, Dan'l's wife⁷, lived above on the river, whose house we could not see from that point, but we could see the curling smoke of the evening meal ascending from the habitation. These were pointed out to me by Paxton Cumming⁸, who had ridden this circuit and knew all the points of interest round about.

Smith's Bridge (Asheville, North Carolina)

"A Tale of Two Bridges: How the Smith-McDowell House is Tied to Spans of the French Broad River" by John Turk

Smith's Bridge

How did the builder of the Smith-McDowell House make his money? The old-fashioned way: he earned it. At first his fortune was based upon real estate; in 1826, he bought the land on which he would later build the house. But this was just the beginning. While he eventually built an empire based on earnings from his hotel, general store, and other enterprises, his first real moneymaker was a bridge.

In the 1820s, the Buncombe Turnpike was constructed to replace and organize myriad trails used to herd livestock from Tennessee and North Carolina to railroad connections in South Carolina. In Buncombe County, a good deal of this turnpike ran along the east bank of the French Broad River. Smith immediately identified a problem: How do the thousands of small farmers on the west side of the river get their livestock across the river so they can hook up with the turnpike? His solution: build a bridge.

Samuel Davidson Place, Bee Tree, 1828

Click to See Larger Image

Samuel Davidson Place, Bee Tree, 1828

"In 1928, WNC Left Dr. William Blanding in Awe" by Rob Neufeld (Ashville Citizen-Times, 4 January 2021).

Buncombe Turnpike

 The Buncombe Turnpike, the big commercial enterprise of antebellum Western North Carolina, arrives at a resort in Hickory Nut Gap, as depicted in the mural at the McClure-Ager home in Fairview.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times (Asheville, NC), 12 October 2020.

See: Drovers' Road