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Wilkes July 21, 2025 Remembering the 1790s in
Wilkesboro: Part 3 of 3 We’ll conclude our series on the
depositions associated with the 1859 court case Rebecca Welborn v. John
Finley by looking at the depositions of John Rousseau, Gen. Patterson,
Ben Clary, and William Smithey. You
can get caught up on how we got to this point by reading Part 1 and Part 2. There were a total of ten short depositions
recorded among the Lenoir family papers.
Page
3 of 3, depositions in the 1859 case Welborn v. Finley. All four of these depositions refer to
Finley’s lot #11 which was located on the north side of North Street behind
his hotel. His hotel, often called the
Wilkesboro Hotel, was on Main Street where the old Smithey’s building is
today. John Rousseau
knew W. in 1800 O’Riley lived first on
Finley’s lot, then Isaac Robinett. John Rousseau added very little to the court
case and to our understanding of the early history of Wilkesboro. He remembered the town of Wilkesboro in
1800, and he remembered O’Riley as being the first to live on John Finley’s
lot, and the deeds show that he was.
In 1807, lot #11 was issued to James C. O’Riley for $55 (DB GH,
p8). However, the lot was paid for by
Nathaniel Gordon, according to the deed, “in behalf of said O’Riley for the
use of the county”. It suggests that
there might have been a plan for the lot to be used for the benefit of the
county as some sort of public building.
It might not be a coincidence, then, that James Charles O’Riley served
as the jailer in 1808. In 1809, O’Riley sold the lot to Nelson
Robinett, and in 1813, he sold it to John Finley.
John
Finley had a house on lot #11. His
hotel was on lot #18. Both were on the
east side of the courthouse. Significance: This shows that John C. O’Riley was in
Wilkesboro by 1800. Gen. Samuel Finley Patterson
came to W. in Spring of
1814. Deft. lived in No.
11 Jesse Robinett __ ___ __ 12
it was in arbitration. No. 13
was said to belong to Sarah
Gordon, not occupied had been before. Deft. was on 11 till 1818, then came to
Hotel. McClelland rented of him in
19 – No. 11. Then Clary came on 11 till Barrett lot
__ numbered building in 1826. Deft who had sold
to Barrett repurchased & took possession & has been there ever
since. Waugh & Finley purchased 13 & occupied it before
he moved to Hotel (which was 1818). also No. 12 about same time
& have had possession ever since. No. 12 was enclosed & cleared in
1814. Samuel F. Patterson was clearly the
most prominent among the ten deponents.
A
short summary of his life accomplishments illustrates how he held
multiple offices at the local and state level in addition numerous business
ventures. It says that he was born in
1799, and that he came to Wilkesboro at the insistence of his uncle John Finley
when he was 15 years old. Sure enough,
in his statement, he said he arrived in Wilkesboro in the spring of 1814, and
that the defendant (his uncle John Finley) was living on lot #11. While the text is difficult to read,
the deeds show that Jesse Robinett lived on lot #12, and Sarah Gordon did,
indeed, own lot #13. He said that John
Finley lived on lot #11 until 1818 when he moved into the hotel. Finley then rented the home to McClelland
until Benjamin Clary started renting it.
From the statements of Benjamin Clary and his wife, we know that they
moved there in 1820 as a newly-married couple. Patterson goes on to say that the
partnership of Waugh & Finley purchased lots #12 and #13 during this
time. I made a map
overlaying the town lots on Google Maps.
Use the transparency slider in the upper right corner, and switch
between Map/Satellite view to see what is on each lot today. Significance: Patterson confirmed his arrival in
Wilkesboro in 1814 when he went to work for his uncle John Finley. He also seems to establish that Finley
built the hotel beside the courthouse in 1818. Benjamin Clary
In 1820 rented a tavern
of Maj. Finley & lived in it 5 or 6 years. Benjamin Clary confirmed the statements
by his wife and Gen. Patterson that he began renting from John Finley in
1820. I interpretted the word “tavern”
based on context clues and the other depositions, but it is difficult to
read. Benjamin Clary was born in 1778
in Rowan County. He died on April 26,
1860, at the age of 82, only a few months after giving his deposition. Significance: Benjamin Clary didn’t add much to the
story. William Smithey
Am going on 75. When about grown, knew O’Riley. He lived on 11. Had boarded here before. He lived there several years. Isaac Robinett lived there,
after him, Clary. When a small boy 10 or 12, Geo. Gordon
cleared the field on the bottom (east of 13). It lay out a good while after
that. Sow hemp on it shortly afterwards. Think Geo. Gordon sowed the hemp. Jos. and Jemima
Williams lived near Mrs. Vannoy’s when I was a small boy. (Horton not on Pitman grant, field __
bottom on it.) William Smithey was born in 1785. He remembered James O’Riley living on
Finley’s home lot. He recalled Isaac
Robinett and Benjamin Clary living there, also. He said that George Gordon cleared the
field in the bottom when he was about ten years old, or about 1795. This field would have been down the hill,
on the east side of the original town lots.
Today, this is at the end of Cothren Street, in the bottom land along
the Yadkin River. He rembered the
field being sowed in hemp. The names near the end of his statement
are hard to read, but they might be Joseph and Jemima Williams. There was a Joseph Williams and a James
Williams in the 1790 Wilkes census, but I wasn’t able to find a Jemima Williams. Significance: This might be the earliest document to
identify a specific crop that was grown at Wilkesboro. Smithey recalled hemp grown there in the
1790s. If the wives of Joseph and
James Williams have not been identified, then this might reveal that one of
them had a wife named Jemima, or something similar since it is hard to read. Conclusion Even though each of these individuals
didn’t have a whole lot to say, what they DID say was in their own
words. So often, we find snippets of
information in legal documents such as deeds or court proceedings which might
be written in a way that clouds how a person speaks or the message that
he/she is trying to convey. Here, we
can almost picture each person closing their eyes and thinking back 60 years
to describe what they remember from their childhood. Sometimes that’s as close as we, ourselves,
can get to imagining what things were like as the county and the town were
beginning to take shape.
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