About Mitchell County
Clarissa Baker Buchanan – The Epitome of A Strong, Courageous, Mountain Woman
Driving up Cane Creek Road in eastern Mitchell County there is a community called Clarissa. (Most people may pronounce it “Claircey”.) The story of how the name of this settlement came about dates back to the era of the Civil War. Clarissa Baker, daughter of Senator...
The First Electric Lights for Bakersville and Toecane
Bill Masters is credited with bringing the first electric lights to Toecane and Bakersville from energy generated by his water wheel in a 3-story mill in Toecane. According to living relatives, Bill was a voracious reader with a table in his home piled with stacks of...
Kilmichael Tower and Little Switzerland
Judge Heriot Clarkson of Charlotte and his family were the developers of the resort community of Little Switzerland in 1910. The community between Grassy Mountain and Chestnut Ridge had been settled by several generations of hardy pioneers by the time Clarkson arrived...
Mitchell County’s Mica Mine Murders
Waightstill Avery Anderson was a Mitchell County revenue officer. Anderson married Nora Bowman, the daughter of J.W. Bowman and Mary Garland. Anderson had the reputation as a man who “possessed many enemies because he was active in running down the moonshiners who...
Roxanna Bowman Putman ~ Herb Doctor
In Appalachia, a Herb Doctor is a therapist who heals with herbs. Other labels for such practitioners, often but not always female, are “granny women,” “wise women,” or “conjurers.” One of these herb doctors from Buladean was Roxanna “Roxaner” Bowman Putman. Roxanne...
Our Earliest Highway: Bright’s Trace and the Yellow Mountain Road
Most of us journey up US Highway 19E to Avery County not realizing we’re traveling over millions of hoofprints, footprints, wagon tracks, and finally automobile tracks that have preceded us by hundreds if not thousands of years. An ancient path across the mountains...
POLLY WRIGHT STEWART SAW FIVE GENERATIONS
Mary Wright was born about 1836 according to her death certificate, but most census records show her as being a few years younger, born perhaps about 1839. Her parents, Solomon and Hannah Hughes Wright, were living in the Red Hill community of what was then Yancey...
Mitchell County’s Mica Mine Murders
Waightstill Avery Anderson was a Mitchell County revenue officer. Anderson married Nora Bowman, the daughter of J.W. Bowman and Mary Garland. Anderson had the reputation as a man who “possessed many enemies because he was active in running down the moonshiners who...
J.J. Britt: Defender of Freedom
On 19 October 1899, J.J. Britt, presiding over the North Carolina Republican Party meeting in Statesville opposing the suffrage amendment, the Campaign for Freedom In North Carolina, said: “We have entered upon a period of unparalleled prosperity in every line of...
Honoring Mitchell County’s WWII Heroes: Arthur Ray Buchanan
Speaking of Ray Buchanan, folks will say admiringly with a shudder, “Oh, yes, he was a survivor of that awful Bataan Death March.” This does not come close to what 17-year-old Arthur Ray endured for 3 and a half incredibly brutal years. Ray was born in the Clarissa...
Brad Ragan ~ Spruce Pine’s “hard-driving, cigar-chomping businessman.”
Bradley Eugene Ragan was born 14 May 1915 in Coleman, Georgia, the son of W.E. and Lillian Brown Ragan. Ragan was the founder and Chairman of the Board of Brad Ragan, Inc., (BRI) the “largest tire retreading company in the world” and “parent company of Carolina Tire,...
“One of our most cherished teachers” ~ James B. Blevins
The 1963 Senior Class of Bowman High School dedicated their annual to “one of our most cherished teachers, James B. Blevins.” Until his untimely death at 37 from complications of multiple sclerosis that year, which attacked him only 2 years before his passing, he was...
Our Earliest Highway: Bright’s Trace and the Yellow Mountain Road
Most of us journey up US Highway 19E to Avery County not realizing we’re traveling over millions of hoofprints, footprints, wagon tracks, and finally automobile tracks that have preceded us by hundreds if not thousands of years. An ancient path across the mountains...
The Bakersville Riot: The Greatest Battle In America since the Massacre of Little Big Horn
In 1893, an event known as the Bakersville Riot launched Bakersville across the front pages of newspapers worldwide.The events leading up to the riot occurred eleven years earlier. In 1882 Will, Dick, and Tom Whitson, three brothers of the Red Hill Community, murdered...
A Very Special Six Months in Buladean
For many years, churches in our community served dual roles as centers of religious and social activity on Sundays, and also during the week,as schools for students of all ages. The Presbyterian Church played a pivotal role in the early education of Mitchell County...
Toecane ~ The Commercial Center of Mitchell County
Indigenous people came through the area where Cane Creek meets the Toe River at least four thousand years ago on their way to their hunting camp up Cane Creek near Sandy Branch. In 1540, de Soto came close to the area on his way to his overnight camp at Webb then on...
“Can you hear me now?” Upgrading Spruce Pine’s Phone System
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company opened a new exchange building on Walnut Avenue in Spruce Pine in May 1953. This new, larger structure replaced the old telephone office shown above. Calvin Hall recalls that the old office also sat on Walnut, but closer...
Robert B. Phillips – Educational Giant and Farmer
Robert Blalock Phillips was born 10/30/1902 in the Snow Hill community of Mitchell County. He was the son of W.S. (Woodfin Squibb) Phillips (1874-1952) and Sophia Blalock Phillips (1876-1906). He had 4 older siblings, and his mother gave birth to another child prior...