By J.M. Hamlin
Having told the present generation all I knew and heard about the old camp-meetings I return to my original task--the hunting up of lost names, persons who filled their respective niches in the formation of our country and have passed away and by freaks of nature their names have been extinguished but whom some living among us claim as progenitors.
Perhaps there is not a reader of the News that is aware of the fact that once upon a time there lived a man in gunshot hearing of Brevard to be by the name of Isaac Gardner, but such is the fact; had a wife and two daughters. He was a citizen per chance of Rutherford county, certainly of Buncombe and died a tragic death about the time Henderson county came into existence [around 1838]. He resided on Williamson Creek. He left marks indicating good citizenship for which his name should not be lost and besides his blood trickles through the veins of worth while men and women of this present generation. The most prominent known fact of his worth is he voluntarily associated himself with Capt. Killian in the removal of the Cherokee Indians from Western North Carolina in 1838.
Family tradition says that on this expedition he was so captivated with the beauty and fertility of Tennessee valleys that on his return he disposed of his effects, placed his family and chattels in a wagon, and set out for his intended home. To consent to undertake an adventure of this sort through an almost trackless wilderness of hundreds of miles required a heroism no less than moved Daniel Boone. He made the venture.
After a long and strenuous journey, each day growing more dramatic, each scene wilder, and as the western sun threw the long dark shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains across his pathway, he halts for the night and takes up camp. ‘Ere the day comes forth to blaze the way, Isaac Garner, nerved with the same spirit of defiance that had overcome the many obstacles behind, finds himself at the base of the mighty mountains towering up to the clouds ready and expecting to make the scale to success. Up, onward, higher he impatiently creeps. A jaded team falters; now urging them, pushing, now goading, then at the wheel; advancing, receding ‘til twilight all too soon closes the rhythmic scene. Night’s dark curtain envelops, suggesting forgetfulness, home, rest. Yielding, the adventurer sleeps, sleeps that eternal repose from which angels only can arouse. Isaac Garner is dead. Senseless of widowed tears, deaf to orphan cries he rests as a broken pillar.
To the heart broken the night grated thrugh and the new day came. To others the sun may have shown in dazzling brightness, the birds may have chirped their paeons in softest strains; to others the echo of the near-by cataracts may have thrilled to rapturous joy, but never, never a day so dark—the stay, the hope, cold in death! all else is dead!
The funeral, the last rights to be performed, the last tokens of love to be placed, without picks or shovel to dig, without ministers to soothe, without friend to mingle a tear—traditional drops the curtain but somewhere amid the silent cliffs, underneath speechless oaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, on a spot unmarked, unknown, lie the ashes of Isaac Garner, the citizen, soldier, adventurer. The zephyons in the tree-tops still moan the requiem to the fallen hero.
This writer, 50 years ago, was told a story by one who had crossed the mountain in the days of war between the States. In speaking of the wild and rugged scenery on the right and left of his passway he was so far away from civilization, astonished to find the marks of a human grave. This mystery he could not solve. What after all some friendly passerby 30 years before had marked this sacred spot and by so added weight to the correctness of this family legion.
Tradition is also silent as to how the survivors of the family returned, (rest of sentence and much of the remainder of the column obscured). We learn that some years after Nancy Young Ca....
Daughters, Amander, married Howard Henderson, the father of Mrs. Merit Nicholson who relates the above story. The other daughter, Betsy, married Ethan Davis. He owned the present Rockbrook farm. The only descendent of the Garner-Davis line remaining among us is Mrs. L.P. Summey of Brevard.
Strange! Once the familiar names of Young, Garner, Erwin, Davis and Henderson, as applied to Howard Henderson, all blended by blood or marriage, are extinct, but their blood is still warm in other generations known by other names.
From The Brevard News, Friday, December 9, 1921. The Trail of Tears, 1837-1838, was the forced migration of Native Americans from ancestral lands.
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