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Wilkes July 18, 2025 Remembering the 1790s in
Wilkesboro: Part 1 of 3 Hidden among more than 30,000 pages of
William Lenoir’s papers are three pages of depositions given by some of
Wilkesboro’s oldest citizens in 1859.
These individuals shared their memories of the days before Lenoir laid
out the town in 1800 with the creation of streets and individual lots. These tiny glimpses might not provide a lot
of details, but for people researching the genealogy of one of these
families, it’s the type of information not found anywhere else. In 1859, Rebecca Welborn sued John
Finley for ownership of several town lots.
Her claim was based on a technicality in a deed from 60 years earlier
where her husband James Welborn sold land without her providing signed
consent. The NC Supreme Court sided
with Finley for a variety of reasons including the fact that Finley had a
clear line of ownershp documented through multiple deeds during that
period. The case, itself, isn’t the
purpose of this article. We’re
interested in the ten depositions that were part of Finley’s evidence. The depositions primarily focus on
Wilkesboro town lot #11 where John Finley lived, it being a tract that he had
owned since 1813. This 0.69-acre lot
is located just beyond the northeast corner of the public square where the
Wilkes Heritage Museum is today. The
small street of Harding Hill Drive runs through the middle of the lot. Looking south from the front porch of his
home – and through the limbs of the famous Tory Oak – Finley had a view of
the county courthouse and of his Wilkesboro Hotel which was located where
Dooley’s Tavern and Grill is today in the old Smithey’s Building. In this article, we’ll focus on the
first of the three pages of depositions with statements from Mrs. Clary, John
W. Reynolds, and Hugh Jones.
Page
1 of 3, depositions in the 1859 case Welborn v. Finley. Mrs. Clary Some of the handwriting is difficult to
read, and where I was uncertain about a word, I underlined my best
guess. In some places, there is an
underline with no text. If you see an
error or can fill in some of the blanks, please let me know. This is Mrs. Clary’s deposition.
Mrs. Clary Boarded with Maj. Finley in
1818. __ McLelland occupied it in 1819. Richard Allen lived in it part of a year. Mr. Clary occupied it in
1820. Isaac Robinett occupied it before ____, when I was
quite small. Mr. Clary staid there between 6 & 7
years. Jesse Robinett was Isaac’s
brother. I believe that Mrs. Clary is Alla
Delphia Barnard Clary (1802-1884). She
married Benjamin Clary in Wilkes County in 1820. A man named McClelland lived there in 1819
– presumably meaning at the Finley house on lot #11. Richard Allen lived there part of a year,
and he is probably the former and first Wilkes County sheriff. Or, he could be Richard Allen Jr. who was
also a sheriff. In 1820, the home was
occupied by Mr. Clary, and this would have been about the time she and Benjamin
got married. She said that they lived
there six or seven years. Deeds reveal
that Benjamin Clary lived on the east side of the Presbyterian Church lot
from the 1830s until the 1860s. Significance: Without Mrs. Clary’s deposition, we might never
know that she and her husband started their lives together by renting rooms in
the Finley home behind the courthouse. John W. Reynolds
John W. Reynolds Milley Humphries had a
field extending to the Row of offices & to
Johnson’s lot & It was generally culti- vated think __ ______
from her. Was cultivated till the town was laid off. I’m not sure who John W. Reynolds
was. The man giving this deposition
was NOT John Ashley Reynolds (born 1774) because – spoiler alert – his
deposition was on the next page. This
was also NOT Wesley Reynolds (born 1787), son of Elisha Reynolds. He, too, gave a separate deposition, and
those will be discussed in the next article.
Any guesses who this could be? I
feel like I might be overlooking the obvious answer! He must have been born before 1795 if
he remembered the town before it was laid off in 1800. He remembered Milley Humphries having a
large cultivated field that ran from the row of offices to Johnson’s lot. This 1859 description suggests that the old
field could have been on the south side of what became Main Street in front
of the courthouse. Stephen Johnson owned
the lot where the Johnson-Hubbard house was built in 1855 diagonally in front
of the courthouse. Significance: Mr. Reynolds’ deposition allows us to
imagine Main Street in Wilkesboro as a peaceful, cultivated field in the
1790s where we now have a splash pad and a set of four-way stops. And we still have the mysetery of who this
guy is! Hugh Jones
Hugh Jones Knew W. when 8 or 10. Am a little over 75. Mrs. G. & Mrs. H. lived in old looking
buildings. Moved into the house on Gordon’s corner, I
think, before the town was laid off. In 1859, Hugh Jones said he was a
little over 75 years old which means he was born about 1784. He first remembered Wilkesboro when he was
eight or ten years old which would be between 1792 and 1794. He noted that Mrs. Mary Gordon and Mrs.
Milley Humphries lived in old-looking buildings. The subject of the next sentence is not
especially clear. Did Mary and Milley
move into the house on Gordon’s corner, or did Hugh Jones and his
family? I tend to think that he’s
talking about Mary and Milley because we know that they lived beside the
courthouse in 1798. The 1798 federal tax list tells
us so. They were mother and daughter,
both widows who owned 22 acres of the 50 acres that became the town of
Wilkesboro in 1800. According to online family trees, Hugh
Jones was the brother of Edmund Jones (born 1771) and Catlett Jones (born 1776)
who were both wealthy landowners in the early days of Wilkes County. Edmund Jones married Ann Lenoir, the
daughter of Gen. William Lenoir, in 1798. Significance: Hugh Jones remembered the Gordon and
Humphries home as being a group of old-looking buildings when he was a
child. They probably were old-looking
compared to the new buildings that were being built following the layout of
the new town in 1800. Not only was there
a new courthouse and jail, but with a new grid of streets, stores and shops
began to line the main road through town. Other Depositions To Come The next page includes the depositions
of John Ashley Reynolds, Wesley Reynolds, and Anthony Foster. The third page has the depositions of John
Rousseau, Gen. Patterson, Ben Clary, and William Smithey.
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