Blog Article List Home My Research Services Contact Me

Wilkes

January 16, 2023

1848 Map of Stone Mountain Community

I found an interesting map while browsing through loose Wilkes County court papers on familysearch. The page was in a folder by itself labeled “Map of Area South of Wilkesborough – no date”. It is image 282 of 977 in group 105802592.

This loose page was found among Wilkes court papers. (Larger image)

Before I explain more about the map, I need to present one more clue. A few days after finding the map, I was browsing a different group of records and found two pages dated August 18, 1848, where a petition had been prepared in reference to a road that was being considered. I was surprised to find that the map goes with this petition! I’ll transcribe the petition then discuss where this road was located. With minor punctuation changes, the petition reads:

Running from Owen Hawl’s plantation by way of Benjamin Hawl’s, intersecting with the Elk Spur Road at Hampton Holloway’s. And do think it most prudent and advisable to discontinue said road without further proceeding, for we do not think it can ever be profitable to the community at large, but only to a few individuals as it neither leads to nor from any public place or market, only from one settlement to another, and that the expense of making such a road will be a greavous burden on the people of our mountain country.

Page 1 of the petition to discontinue the road.

The petition was signed by...... Hardin Brooks, W. H. Holloway, Leander Johnson Jr, Samuel Hanks, Osburn Bauguess, Daniel Holloway, J. M. _____, Henry Creed, R. J. Bauguses, William Jennings, Robert Bauguess, King D. Bauguess, Leander Johnson, John Poplin.

William Vannoy, Reuben Sparks, John Holloway, William Blackburn, John B. Montgomery, Daniel Holloway Jr, Ralph Pruitt, William Caudill, John Caudill, Thomas Caudill, Erasmus Walker, Josiah Byrd, Peter Brown, A. J. Thompson, E. W. Brown, T. W. Brown, Francis Bryan.

Page 2 of the petition to discontinue the road.

And continuing on the second page, Jacob Lyon, Robert B. Bryan, James A. Johnson, Stephen Johnson, Eli Blackburn, William Blackburn Sr, Abraham Buttrey, James Spicer, Joseph J. Spicer, Wiley (x) Jones, George W. (x) Spicer, Colby (x) Sparks, Ralph Holbrook, T. R. Casey, William Alexander, Samuel F. Spicer, William Jennings, William W. Johnson, Rhesa Lyon, George W. Gentry, David J. Tucker, Johnson Caudill, Larkin Upchurch, Reuben Sparks, John Sparks, Jeremiah Pruitt.

Richmond Sparks, John Sparks Jr, George W. Sparks, Jesse Billings, James Durham, John Bauguess, Hargis Holbrook, Joel Pruitt, Robert Sparks, Joel Sparks, James Sparks, William Spicer, William Holbrook, James Spicer, Harvey Burchett, Eli B. Blackburn, and Vincent Bauguess. That’s a total of 74 signatures!

Identifying the Road

After studying the map, I decided that it wasn’t oriented correctly. It shows Wilkesboro, Traphill, and several roads that lead in various directions from Traphill. The road to Longbottom is still called Longbottom Rd today. Other roads lead to Grayson, Mount Airy, Jonesville, Salisbury, and White Plains. I rotated the map a quarter turn so that Traphill is northeast of Wilkesboro.

It also shows the location of the homes for several landowners along the road. The road runs by the homes of Owen Hall, L. (Larkin) Brooks, J. (John) Brown, S. (Stokes) Brooks, Benjamin Hall, and H. (Hampton) Holloway. To make it easier to read, the map below shows the places in blue and the landowners in red.

1848 map with labels for easier reading (Larger image).

The petition says the road runs from Owen Hall’s plantation, by Benjamin Hall’s home, then intersecting with the Elk Spur Road at Hampton Holloway’s home. That’s what the map shows when following it from left to right. It also shows other homes along the road as well as a mill on the south side of the road. The map appears to have been quickly drawn by hand, and it’s not to scale.

Based on the names of the landowners, I knew right away that this was near Stone Mountain (view in Google Maps). Owen Hall, John Brown, Stokes Brooks, and Benjamin Hall each received NC grants for land that I’ve mapped along Stone Mountain Rd, the road that runs through the state park along the creek. The other names on the map are of people who bought land along this road through standard deeds. The map below shows the names from the 1848 map and where I’ve located their property along the road.

Stone Mountain Rd and the early landowners (Larger image).

I added a label for the mill that must have been located on the south side of the creek between Stokes Brooks and Benjamin Hall. The 1848 map starts at the west end of Stone Mountain Rd where it runs into Longbottom Rd (at Owen Hall’s). It continues clockwise until it meets the campground site opposite of the Upper Parking Area (at Hampton Holloway’s). This end point was at the old Elk Spur Road which ran down from near Camp Cheerio to Traphill, then continued all the way to Elkin.

This section of the park road is over five miles long. There are rocky hill sides and multiple creek crossings that would have required a lot of work to maintain back in 1848. It’s no wonder that the surrounding landowners didn’t want the responsibility of maintaining that remote section of road that served only a few families.

It’s interesting to look at the petition’s signatures because some of the men who signed it actually lived along that road. Peter Brown owned land near Garden Creek Church. Harden Brooks’ father Stokes and brother Larkin are shown on the map. Daniel Holloway also owned land along the road. But most of those who signed it lived along Traphill Rd and Longbottom Rd, and they wouldn’t have had as much use for this loop that went around Stone Mountain.

Even though the petition had 74 signatures, the court dismissed it on May 1, 1849 in a suit titled Harden Brooks & others vs Owen Hall. There’s also a note that reads, “Appeal prayed & Granted.” Does that mean they were able to appeal the ruling? I don’t know. I haven’t seen any later mention of this case in the court records.

If the case was appealed, my guess is that the appeal was also dismissed. The road must have been maintained because families continued to settle along it throughout the 1800s. And we have this exact same road today that’s used by thousands of visitors each year to Stone Mountain State Park.

Comment below or send an email - jason@webjmd.com