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This article was published in the Yancey County newspaper and the McDowell News Saturday morning, October 7, the Young family will return to North Cove after an absence of nearly 170 years. Thomas and Naomi Hyatt Young and several other members of their family first left Baltimore County, Maryland, in the 1760s and settled along Young’s Fork of Muddy Creek near present day Marion. They were not the first to own property in the North Cove, but they were the first to clear land and settle there. “The Cove,” as they referred to it, would become a sacred ground rich in history. Although seemingly isolated by geography, it was nonetheless central to several important moments in the history of the state and the nation At a ceremony at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, October 7, the family and others interested in local history will dedicate a monument to Thomas and Naomi Hyatt Young at the old North Catawba churchyard in North Cove. The dedication will include readings from various documents spanning the area’s history. The family invites everyone interested in the local history to attend the ceremony and also to bring a picnic and join the family for lunch afterwards. The Youngs and Hyatts first came to what is now McDowell County around 1766 along with a dozen other families from Maryland—including the Browns and Wilsons and Burchfields and Legenwoods and Bradshaws and Prathers. Most of those families moved on further south and west, but many of them stayed in the area. After the French and Indian War, in 1763, the British had set the Blue Ridge as the western boundary of colonial North Carolina as a reward to the Cherokees who had helped win that war for them. The area was literally on the edge of the western frontier. It was in 1766 that Daniel Boone’s relatives, the Linvilles, were massacred by “Northern Indians.” Although the family never lived in this area, that incident left their name on the river, the falls, the gorge and the mountain that forms the southern wall of North Cove. There are many questions about another massacre in which young Lydia Burchfield was scalped along with children from the Young, Hyatt, Dobson, Legenwood and Litten families. The other children died, but Lydia would live on to the ripe old age of 83. Her tombstone at Nebo says she was born July 24, 1763 and died October 19, 1846. Her grandson has left a written record in which he says several families were fleeing the North Cove seeking refuge at a fort when they were attacked by Indians who kidnapped the children, took them up on the mountain and scalped them and left them for dead. If this sounds barbaric, consider that in retaliation for this and other incidents, on September 1, 1776, Gen. Griffith Rutherford led an army of 1,700 men from what is now Old Fort across the Swannanoa Gap into Cherokee territory. Eventually joining forces with an army of South Carolinians, Rutherford’s troops destroyed 36 Cherokee towns and laid waste their crops and storehouses, leaving the Indians to face starvation in the approaching winter. On September 29, 1780, the Overmountain Men camped out in the North Cove, where Honeycutt Creek comes into the North Fork of the Catawba River. We do not know for sure if Thomas Young or anybody else was living in the cove at that time since no names are mentioned in any of the later accounts of that historic march and battle that turned the tide in the Revolutionary War. However, as soon as Burke County had been created in 1778 in the new state of North Caroolina, Thomas Young and others did begin to claim and clear land in the cove. Young would build a fine house described as a mansion in the early deeds. His property would encompass hundreds of acres including the homeplace and the limestone quarry where Blue Ridge Golf Course is now on up to “the low gap of the Blue Ridge,” where McKinney Gap and the Orchard at Altapass are now located. The most distinguished visitors to the cove were the French botanist Andre Michaux, who stayed at Young’s house on at least three occasions in 1794, 1795 and 1796, and Methodism’s founding bishop, Francis Asbury, who preached at what he called “Young’s Cove” in 1797. The late CBS newsman, Charles Kuralt, has described Michaux as “one of the most remarkable men of the 18th century, of any century.” He was the first botanist to make a scientific study of the flora in North America—and he also introduced dozens of plants from other countries that are now part of the American landscape. These include the mimosa tree from Persia and the camellia from Japan. On May 3, 1795, Michaux wrote in his diary: “started for the Mountains; at a distance of 14 miles from Burke is Wagely’s house. The Linville Mountains at whose foot this house is situated, abound in Magnolia auriculata. They were then in flower. From Wagelys to Captain Young’s is 8 miles.” This deciduous magnolia was among the more spectacular discoveries he took home for the gardens at Versailles and was the favorite flower of Napoleon’s Josephine. In his diary for March 22, 1797, Bishop Asbury noted: “We hastened across Linville Mountain, which is awfully barren, and came on to Young’s Cove. The storm followed us, with thunder, lightning and rain. We arrived after some of the people were gone; but some returned and I gave them a small talk, being very weary in walking down the mountains, and over the rocks.” Thomas and Naomi Hyatt Young were the parents of several children. Wesley Young married Nancy Agnes Dobson and died at a very young age at their farm in what is now Yancey County. Strawbridge and Martha Wilson Young moved from the North Cove into the same area where hundreds of their descendants still live. Joshua Young and his family moved to Cherokee County after the Indian “removal” in 1838. Moses Young and Wilson Young may also have been sons of Thomas and Naomi although their relationship has never been documented. Thomas and Naomi’s daughter, Elinor or “Nelly”, married an Army colonel, John Phagan, who had fought in the War of 1812 and had briefly served as an Indian agent in Florida. He is depicted as a villain in most Florida histories, the man who singlehandedly caused the Second Seminole War. He was dismissed from the Army after he took a group of Indians to the Oklahoma Territory and claimed they agreed to move there. The Indians said they’d signed nothing and went to war; John Phagan went home to the North Cove and promptly moved his wife and children and grandchildren to Benton County, Arkansas, adjacent to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Ironically, two of Phagan’s grandchildren married Cherokees and became members of the tribe. We may never know why, but Thomas Young had left his property to his daughter’s two sons and two daughters. They sold it in the 1830s and 1840s to Robert McCall and his son, William A. McCall. The McCall heirs still own much of the original property granted to Young in the 1790s. Only one Young remained in the area after the 1830s and that was James Milton Young, son of Joshua and grandson of Thomas and Naomi Hyatt Young. He would become the official surveyor for McDowell County and accumulated extensive land holdings in the county before his death. Milton Young’s son, John, was born November 18, 1840 and died October 12, 1861. His grave is only marked grave of a Young family member in the old graveyard at North Cove. Most of the older graves are marked only with fieldstones and it seems certain that Thomas and Naomi Hyatt Young are also buried there since the graveyard is directly across the river from their home site. Perry Deane Young has written extensively on the history and folklore of Western North Carolina. He is the author of two plays and 10 books, including a New York Times bestseller, The David Kopay Story. He can be reached at www.perrydeaneyoung.com. HOME • COMMENTARY • BOOKS • PLAYS • CONTACT |