Riverside Cemetery (Asheville, North Carolina)

The Riverside Cemetery encompasses 87 acres of rolling hills and flower gardens overlooking the French Broad River. Riverside Cemetery dates to 1885, when the Asheville Cemetery Company established the land as a municipal graveyard to answer the growing need for burial grounds. The City of Asheville adopted the cemetery in 1952. It is still an active cemetery with more than 13,000 people buried here, 9000 monuments and 12 family mausoleums. Many of the graves in Riverside contain remains which were removed from other burial grounds and re-interred here. Once inside the large iron gates, you may take a self-guided walking tour through ancient oak, poplar, dogwood and ginkgo trees.

Riverside is the burial place of noted authors Thomas Wolfe and William Sidney Porter, better known as O. Henry. You can learn about Confederate generals James Martin, Robert B. Vance and Thomas Clingman. Some of the names recorded in Riverside Cemetery are those of the city's most prominent citizens: Jeter C. Pritchard, T. S. Morrison, Thomas Patton, and Zebulon B. Vance. Individuals of note interred at Riverside Cemetery include: Isacc Dickson, the first African American to be appointed to an Asheville City School Board; Quenn Carson, Asheville's first female public school principal; George Masa, a Japanese photographer who documented much of the Blue Ridge Mountains and was integral in the establishment of Great Smokey Mountains National Park; James H. Posey, a bodyguard to Abraham Lincoln; and the remains of 18 German sailors from WWI. Riverside Cemetery is maintained by the City of Asheville, Parks and Recreation Department and has been designated a Buncombe County Treasure Tree Preserve.

Riverside Cemetery is located along Birch St. off Pearson Dr. within the Montford Area Historic District. Visitors are welcome 8:00am to 8:00pm during daylight savings time, and until 6:00pm the rest of the year. Self-guided tour packets are available at Riverside Cemetery office Monday-Friday, 8:00am to 4:30pm. For information visit the City of Asheville's Parks and Recreation Department website or call 828-350-2066.

History of Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville and Buncombe County By Forster Alexander Sondley,  Theodore Fulton Davidson:

SETTLEMENTS

Shortly after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1784 or 1785 settlers from the headwaters of the Catawba and the adjacent country whose frontier establishment was the blockhouse at Old Fort began to cross the mountains into the Swannanoa valley. Among the first of these was Samuel Davidson who came in with his wife and infant child and one female negro slave and settled upon Christian Creek of the Swannanoa a short distance east of Gudger's Ford near the present railroad station called Azalea. He had been here but a short while when one morning he went out to find his horse. Soon his wife heard the report of guns and knowing too well what had happened she took her child and the servant and made her way along the mountains to the Old Fort. An expedition from there at once set out to avenge the death of Davidson.

Alexander Inn (Swannanoa, North Carolina)

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form

Alexander Inn is a rambling two-story log and frame structure sited just north of the old east-west roadway in the Swannanoa Valley, about twelve miles east of Asheville, N.C. The inn is sited at a strategic point where the valley floor narrows to several hundred yards, and hence faces not only the old roadway but also the railroad, highway US 70, and Interstate 40--all of the major transportation links into Asheville from the east. The Black Mountains rise gradually to the north behind the inn, eventually cresting at Mt. Mitchell, eastern America's highest peak, less than fifteen miles away.

The inn was initially a small log structure built about 1820 by George C. Alexander. It was enlarged in several stages throughout the nineteenth century until it took its present form--a two-story main block, seven bays long with an engaged two-story porch under a simple gable roof, and with a one-story ell to the rear at its eastern end. A covering of asbestos shingles, added ca. 1950, provides a deceptively unified facade, as revealed on the building's rear elevation where the recent removal of a shed addition has exposed its various framing systems. The building has suffered extensively from termite damage and poor maintenance, but still contains intact and salvageable fabric from all of its construction phases. Relatives of the present owner, a descendant of the builder, have expressed considerable interest in rehabilitating the structure and are presently searching for the means of achieving such a goal.

Hezekiah Alexander Gudger (1849-1917)

Hezekiah Alexander Gudger (1849-1917) of Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Born in Marshall, Madison County, North Carolina 27 May 1849. Son of Joseph Jackson Gudger and Sarah Emaline (Barnard) Gudger; married 10 August 1875 Jennie Hardy Smith (1854-1943); brother of James Madison Gudger, Jr.; uncle of Katherine Gudger Langley.

Republican. Lawyer. Member of North Carolina House of Representatives 1873-1876; member of North Carolina Senate 1885; candidate for Presidential Elector for North Carolina, 1896; U.S. Consul General in Panama, 1897-1905; Justice, Canal Zone Supreme Court 1905-14; Chief Justice, 1909-1914. Methodist.

Member, Freemasons. Died in Beaverdam, Buncombe County, North Carolina 22 September 1917 (age 68 years, 118 days). Interment at Riverside Cemetery, Asheville, North Carolina.

Allen Turner Davidson(1819-1905)

Allen Turner Davidson (1819-1905)

In the group photograph Jefferson Davis is in the center, with Allen Turner Davidson to the left. Click on photograph for a larger image.

Allen Turner Davidson (9 May 1819 - 24 January 1905), lawyer, Confederate congressman, and member of the Council of State, was born in Haywood County, the son of William Mitchell, a Burke County farmer, and Betsy Vance Davidson. His grandfather was Major was Major William Davidson, an officer in the American Revolution. Captain David Vance, also an officer in the Revolution, was his maternal grandfather. Both men fought as patriots. Young Davidson's mother was the aunt of Zebulon B. Vance. He was educated in the "old fields" schools of Haywood County and at Waynesboro Academy.

At the age of twenty, Davidson began working in his father's general store. The following year he was commissioned a colonel in the state militia. Shortly thereafter he began to study law under Michael Francis. In 1843, while still a student, he was appointed clerk and master of equity for Haywood County, an office from which he resigned in the spring of 1846. On 1 January 1845, he was admitted to the North Carolina bar and moved to Murphy to begin his law practice as a solicitor for Cherokee County.

North Carolina 60th Infantry Regiment (Civil War)

The North Carolina 60th Infantry Regiment was organized at Greenville, Tennessee, during the summer of 1862 by adding four companies to the 6th North Carolina State Infantry Battalion. The men were recruited in Asheville and the four counties of Madison, Buncombe, and Polk, and a small number were from Tennessee. The The 60th fought at Murfreesboro , served in Mississippi, then participated in the campaigns of the Army of Tennessee from Chickamauga to Bentonville . It lost 3 killed, 65 wounded, and 11 missing at Murfreesboro, and in January, 1863, had 276 men present for duty. The unit reported 8 killed, 36 wounded , and 16 missing of the 150 engaged at Chickamauga, totalled 106 men and 59 arms in December, 1863, and mustered a force of 106 in January, 1865. Few surrendered in April. Assigned to Preston's, Stovall's, Reynolds', Brown's and Reynolds' Consolidated, and Palmer's Brigade. Officers included: Colonels Washington M. Hardy and Joseph A. McDowell; Lieutenant Colonels William H. Deaver, J.M. Ray, and James T. Weaver; and Majors James T. Huff and William W. McDowell.

The 60th was formed by the increasing of the 6th NC Infantry Battalion to a regiment in 1862. The regiment was in the Department of East Tennessee in 62 and the Army of Middle Tennessee. Latter in 62 they were with the Army of Tennessee. Breckingridge’s Division of the Department of the West and Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana and 2nd Corps of the Army of Tennessee in 63. In late 63 they served in Stevenson’s Division, 1 Corps and 2nd Corps of the Army of Tennessee until April of 65. In was in their service with Stevenson’s Division that they were consolidated with the 58th and designated as the 58th Infantry Regiment Consolidated at Smithfield, NC.

Asheville was not always known as peaceful, elegant or especially inviting. This mountain city became a vital Confederate military center during the Civil War. The first company of soldiers west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Buncombe Rifles, carried a flag made from the silk dresses of town belles when it marched on April 18, 1861. Seven of the 10 companies comprising the 60th North Carolina Regiment were Buncombe men.

"The Buncombe Farmers," Company E, 60th Regiment N.C. Troops
"The Buncombe Guards," Company F, 16th Regiment N.C. Troops (6th Regiment N.C. Volunteers)
"The Buncombe Life Guards," Company H, 29th Regiment N.C. Troops
"The Buncombe Light Artillery," Company A, 60th Regiment N.C. Troops
"The Buncombe Rangers," Company G, 9th Regiment N.C. State Troops (1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry)
"The Buncombe Riflemen," Company E, 1st Regiment N.C. Volunteers
"The Buncombe Rifles," Company E, 1st Regiment N.C. Volunteers
"The Buncombe Sharp Shooters," Company F, 16th Regiment N.C. Troops (6th Regiment N.C. Volunteers)

Fort McDowell

EARLY FORT IS DESCRIBED

Dr. J. M. Spainhour's description of Fort McDowell in his writing of the story of Lydia Burchfield, is of interest. Fort McDowell, according the Spainhour, was located on the bottom lands of the Catawba River, a mile and three quarters from where the town of Morganton now stands. He says,

"The fort was a stockade, and had been erected in 1756-57 when the Indians had threatened the white settlers and was constructed of logs 25 feet long; the logs were halved and the edges trimmed to fit the one it joined. A ditch five feet deep was dug in the ground and the timbers standing erected with the flat side, but were securely fastened together by cross pieces, and the lower ends securely packed in the ground.