week of 5/1/02
 
 
 

Back Then
SMN
At the conclusion of last week’s installment of Back Then, we left Col. William Byrd standing on a hill in piedmont North Carolina looking westward at the Blue Ridge Mountains only 30 miles away. The year was 1728. Byrd and his party had just completed a survey of the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina from the Atlantic Ocean to Peters Creek in present-day Stokes County. He lamented that “our present circumstances wou’d not permit us to advance the Line to that Place, which the Hand of Nature had made so very remarkable.”

I noted, in closing, that “had Byrd and his party pushed on through the foothills of the Piedmont provinces of Virginia and North Carolina they would have quickly penetrated the real mountains. In that instance, Byrd’s descriptions would be ranked today as the high-water mark in the descriptive and natural history literature of the Blue Ridge Province of North Carolina prior to the arrival of William Bartram in 1775.” That honor, instead, must go to Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, who kept a fabulous diary in which he portrayed in vivid detail his exploration of the Blue Ridge in 1752-53 on behalf of the Moravian Church.

Spangenberg (1704-1792) was born in Prussia and in time became a professor of religion. He had previously become acquainted with Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and the Moravians and was much impressed with their missionary zeal; indeed, his association with them gave such offense that he was dismissed from his university position. Accordingly, he promptly joined the Moravian Church and became Zinzendorf’s assistant.

Spangenberg put himself during the 1730s at the head of a body of Moravian immigrants and established a colony at Savannah. In 1744 he became overseer of the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pa., where — with the exception of a brief period from 1749 till 1751, which he spent in Europe — he governed the church until 1761 with such singular ability that his brethren gave him the honorary name of “Brother Joseph.”

In 1752, Bishop Spangenberg made his way to Edenton, N.C. His assignment was to oversee the survey of a 100,000-acre tract of land in the North Carolina interior that John Carteret (Lord Granville) had offered to Zinzendorf. Starting out on Sept. 10, 1752, the Moravian party traveled westward from the coast headed for adventures they could never have imagined in their wildest dreams. By Nov. 24, they had reached the foothills of the Blue Ridge in present-day Burke County. As Spangenberg notes, this was a land where buffalo (wood bison) still roamed, the timber wolves still howled at night, and panthers were still a menace:

“The land is very rich, and has been much frequented by buffalo, whose tracks are everywhere, and can often be followed with profit. Frequently, however, a man cannot travel them, for they go through thick and thin, through morass and deep water, and up and down banks so steep that a man could fall down but neither ride nor walk! ... The wolves here give us music every morning, from six corners at once, such music as I have never heard. They are not like the wolves of Germany, Poland, and Livonia, but are afraid of men, and do not usually approach near them. A couple of Brethren skilled in hunting would be of benefit not only here but at our other tracts, partly to kill the wolves and panthers, partly to supply the Brethren with game. Not only can the skins of wolves and panthers be sold, but the government pays a bounty of ten shillings for each one killed.”

Five days later they had arrived in present-day western Caldwell County at the very foot of the Blue Ridge escarpment. Spangenberg confided to his diary: “We are here in a region that has perhaps been seldom visited since the creation of the world. We are some 70 or 80 miles from the last settlement in North Carolina, and have come over terrible mountains, and often through very dangerous ways.”

But things were about to become more challenging; so much so, in fact, that Spangenberg did not make another diary entry until Dec. 5, in which he described the Moravian’s adventures in the real mountains (this writer’s comments are in parentheses):

“We have reached here after a hard journey over very high, terrible, mountains and cliffs. A hunter, whom we had taken to show us the way, and who once knew the path to the Atkin (Yadkin River), missed the trail, and led us into a place from where there was no way out except by climbing an indescribably steep mountain. Part of the way we climbed on hands and knees, dragging after us the loads we had taken from the backs of the horses, for had we not unsaddled them they would have fallen backwards down the mountain — indeed, this did happen once; part of the way we led the horses, who were trembling like a leaf. When we reached the top we saw mountains to right and to left, before and behind us, many hundreds of mountains, rising like great waves in a storm. (They had passed up to the headwaters of the Johns River in present-day Caldwell County and reached the crest of the Blue Ridge a mile or so northeast of Grandfather Mountain and a similar distance southwest of Blowing Rock in present-day Watauga County.) We rested a little, and then began to descend, not quite so precipitately. Soon we found water, and oh, how refreshing it was! Then we sought pasturage for our horses, riding a long way, and well into the night, but found nothing except dry leaves. We could have wept for pity for the poor beasts. It had become so dark that we could not put up the tent, and were obliged to camp under the trees. It was a trying night! In the morning we went further, but had to cut our way through laurel bushes and beaver dams, which greatly wearied our company ... Next day we went on, and came to a creek, so full of rocks that we could not follow it, and with banks so steep that a horse could not climb them, and scarcely a man. (That evening) we put up our tent, but had barely finished when there came such a wind storm that we could hardly stand against it. I think I have never felt a winter wind so strong and so cold. The ground was covered with snow; water froze beside the fire. Then our men lost heart! What should we do? Our horses would die, and we with them. For the hunters had about concluded that we were across the crest of the Blue Mountains, and on the Mississippi watershed. The next day the sun came out, and the days were warmer, though the nights still very cold. Brother Antes and I rode over the tract, and think that it contains about 5000 acres.” (This tract encompassed lands in which the present-day city of Boone is located.)

By Dec. 14 the Moravian party had exited mountains and were camped on the Yadkin River. With time and leisure to catch up on his diary entries, Spangenberg provides one last entry regarding their memorable sojourn in the Blue Ridge.

“Here we are at last, after a difficult journey among the mountains. We were completely lost, and whichever way we turned we were walled in. Not one of our company had ever been there before, and path or trail were unknown — though how can one speak of path or trail when none existed? We crossed only dry mountains and dry valleys, and when for several days we followed the river in the hope that it would lead us out we found ourselves only deeper in the wilderness, for the river (the New River and its tributaries) ran now north, now south, now east, now west, in short to all points of the compass! Finally we decided to leave the river and take a course between east and south, crossing the mountains as best we could. One height rose behind the other, and we traveled between hope and fear, distressed for our horses, which had nothing to eat. At last we reached a stream (the Lewis Fork of the Yadkin River about 20 miles northeast of Blowing Rock) flowing rapidly down the mountain, followed it, and happily reached this side of the Blue Ridge. We also found pasturage for our horses, and oh, how glad we were!”

In October of 1753, a party of 15 Moravians was chosen to leave Pennsylvania and journey to the backcountry lands in North Carolina the Moravians had surveyed and now owned. They picked a surveyed tract called “Wachau” (later “Wachovia”) in the Piedmont Province where Winston-Salem is now situated. On Spangenberg’s advice — based, after all, on actual experience — they had chosen to avoid settling in the real mountains or even very near them. But the Bishop’s diary remains as the first extended description of the terrain and natural world of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com