The Phantom Rider Of The Confederacy

This ghostly legend centers around The Calvalry Episcopal Church in Fletcher, NC. It is a place I have passed by too many times to count on my way from Hendersonville to Asheville and I always wondered if that old cemetery hidden behind the wrought iron gate had a story. The legend starts with two young local lovers having to sneak and meet at the old well at the church because her parents did not approve of the relationship. It was the 1860's and as the Civil War raged on, the young beau got called away to join Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee. The parents would not allow the young couple to marry before he was sent away and the young soldier was killed in battle a few short months later. The young lady grieved herself to death within two months after learning of her boyfriends death.

As the Civil War wound down in the Spring of 1865, Union General George H. Stoneman came through the mountains of Western North Carolina seeking to put down any resistance from Confederate soldiers and supporters as part of Sherman's March to the Sea. He reached Hendersonville around April 23rd and as he moved down the Howard Gap Road into Asheville around April 26th, a young female rider on a Palomino horse appeared in front General Stoneman's troops. She had long flowing blond hair, and wore a white dress and a grey, Confederate cape that trailed down her shoulders as she rode. She beckoned Stoneman's men to follow her. Stoneman thought she may have valuable information on Confederate forces in the area, and he quickly ordered her capture. She galloped down the road with Stoneman's men in hot pursuit but they could not catch up with her. She led his Union forces into a a small ravine a short distance from the church and straight into a Rebel ambush. The Confederate soldiers were positioned on both sides of the ravine and 23 of Stoneman's men were killed in the short battle. The Confederate forces escaped with very few casualties.

An incensed Stoneman ordered the female rider captured and punished for her actions but the his men could not catch up to her. The Union troops got close enough to her to fire off several shots but the bullets seemed to pass right through her and she disappeared from sight. She has been seen many times since 1865 including by one of the Episcopal Ministers of the Church. She was always dressed in the same fashion with the white dress and the Confederate cape, galloping up and down the roads surrounding the church, waiting on her young lover to return from the War.

The Narrows at Green River Cove

This story about Western North Carolina history is more about a location than it is a particular historical event. The location is the Narrows at Green River Cove. The Green River winds through Henderson and Polk Counties in North Carolina and beyond I am sure. When I was growing up, the Green River Cove was at the bottom of this long, winding dirt road and had originally been settled by several families before the turn of the 20th Century and before the great flood of 1916, had been a thriving agricultural community.

One of these families that settled the Green River Cove was the family of Posey Henderson and he was just one of the great characters that my father knew. A lot of my summers were spent in Green River Cove fishing and hiking and exploring the vast wilderness. The Green River was not that wide at any point but the Narrows is these two massive rock formations on either side of the river about six feet across from each other and the waters of the Green River are funneled between these two rock formations on either side of the river. The Narrows are a Geologists dream as thousands of years of glacial deposits, erosion, and the forces of nature are still hard at work.

My father was a volunteer fireman with the Blue Ridge Volunteer Fire Department for over 30 years, starting in the early 1960's and eventually became a "lifetime member" and is honored on a plaque at the Hendersonville Fire Department in downtown Hendersonville. Early one Sunday morning when I was about 13 or 14, my father came to me and asked me if I wanted to take a trip down to Green River Cove to the Narrows to look for a young man's body. The young man had been wading in the water up above the Narrows and had fallen in and had gotten swept down stream. We had a lot of rain that summer and the Green River was very swollen. Searching for bodies was one of the more unpleasant tasks that was often asked of the local fire departments but it still needed to be done to help provide the families of the victims with closure.

Legend has it that the rapids were so rough at the Narrows that you could throw a full sized log in above the Narrows and when it came out the other side, the log had been so beat up and chopped up, it was the size of a match stick. It was a recovery mission but it was an adventure for me, something along the lines of Stephen King's "Stand By Me." One of my father's friends, a man named Gene, went with us.

Green River Cove is still a very rural area and it was some tough hiking along the river bank and when we ran into a tributary, we had to go through the water. We saw a few snakes and some other wildlife along the way. The hike took us about four hours and it was very slow going. I slipped and fell in one time but it was hot that day, the cold water felt good, and I dried off really quickly.

The Narrows was the most impressive, natural phenomenon I had ever seen. We got to within about a mile away and you could hear the roaring water of the Narrows. It started out as a low sounding roar and the closer we got, the louder it got. I remember asking my father "What is that noise?" His response was "Wait until you see it."

We finally arrived at the Narrows and it was so loud, I had to scream at my father standing right beside me just to be heard. I remember creeping up to the edge of the Rock without getting too close so I could peer over the edge of the rocks and down into the river. I was very nervous easing up to the edge and I just wanted to take a quick look. The water from the Green River was being forced through a space way too small for the volume of water. The rocks had been worn smooth from centuries of erosion.

The young man's body that we were looking for was found several days later. The body had snagged way up in a tree because the water level was so high. When the water finally started to recede, the body washed up in a tree. I haven't been back to the Narrows since that day but seeing the Narrows was well worth the hike and a day I will never forget. It was valuable time that I got to spend with my father.

Bushwhacking At Beaumont

The mountains of Western North Carolina became a hideout during the Civil War for deserters from the Confederate Army, scouting parties from the Union Army, and bands of thieves and marauders from both sides of the War. The local citizens in and around Henderson County, North Carolina did not have much in the way of protection from the criminal element that roamed the mountains during this time.

Beaumont was an estate built as a summer retreat in 1839 in Flat Rock, North Carolina by wealthy rice planter and slave owner Andrew Johnstone of Charleston, South Carolina. Johnstone was a part of the Charleston planter class that made Flat Rock home during the summer months in the mid 1800's to escape the oppressive heat of Charleston.

Six Union soldiers showed up at the front door of Beaumont on the afternoon of 10 June,1864 and announced that they were Confederate Scouts looking for deserters in the area. They demanded to be fed. It was a customary practice during this time to feed travelers and Johnstone ordered his servants to prepare a meal. The six men were acting suspicious and Johnstone was not at ease with their presence.

His eleven year old son Elliot was also very suspicious of their nature and he slipped into a room off the kitchen and loaded a pistol. He hid it to where it could be easily reached. After the meal was over, the six men prepared to leave, but instead four of the men drew their weapons on the elder Johnstone while the other two drew on the youngest Johnstone. As the shots rang out Andrew Johnstone was hit in the stomach by a pistol ball and he managed to empty his pistol but all of his shots missed their mark. One of the shots barely missed Elliot as he quickly reached his weapon and started firing with deadly accuracy.

He had wounded four of the men by the time he emptied his pistol. One of the gunmen fell wounded on the front steps where he died an agonizing death within minutes. Elliot grabbed the dying man's pistol and continued to fire, hitting the other two men as they fled from the house. One died on the lawn and they found another body in the woods beyond the house a short time later. Elliot managed to kill three of the six and the other three made their escape into the surrounding mountains. A search party was quickly formed by neighboring men but the other three soldiers were never found.

Andrew Johnstone was taken upstairs by the household servants where he died a few hours later from his stomach wound.

The Baxter-Erwin Duel

Elias Gibbs was an eyewitness to another historical event in Henderson County brought on by the politics of the Civil War and that was the duel between Hendersonville Attorney John Baxter and Asheville newspaper editor Marcus Erwin. Baxter was an ardent supporter of the Union and Erwin was a pro-States Rights advocate and the feud was played out in the mid-1850's on the pages of the Asheville newspaper that Erwin owned. The feud reached a boiling point one morning when John Baxter was sitting on a bench in front of his law office on Main Street in Hendersonville carrying on a conversation with a then teen-age Elias Gibbs. A horse and buggy drove up to where Baxter and Gibbs sat and a man jumped out and handed Baxter a letter and drove off. Baxter read the letter and in a fit of rage, tore the letter to pieces and threw it on the ground. He got on his horse, and tore off South down Main Street. The letter was pieced together by Gibbs and some other occupants of Baxter's law office and it was a challenge from Erwin to a duel with Baxter. The letter said that Erwin would be waiting at Vance Mountain at Saluda Gap. As per the custom of duels of the day, Dr. Edward Jones was acting as Erwin's second with Dr. W.L. Hilliard of Asheville acting as his surgeon. Terrell W. Taylor acted as Baxter's second with Dr. W.D. Whitted as his surgeon. At the command of "Fire!" Baxter shot first and missed. Erwin's shot hit Baxter in the right knuckle of his right hand and the pistol ball eventually ended up lodged in Baxter's right shoulder. Erwin had been vindicated with his "victory" in the duel and Baxter left Hendersonville soon after and moved to East Tennessee a short time later. Baxter's Unionist sympathies were much more accepted in the Union stronghold of East Tennessee.

The Civil War Odyssey Of Elias Gibbs

Elias Gibbs was conscripted into the Confederate Army and joined the 64th North Carolina Regiment in 1862 when he was 19 or 20 years old. He was captured by the Union Army in Cumberland Gap, KY at the age of 22 and sent to Camp Douglass near Chicago, IL at the beginning of the winter. Shortly after he was imprisoned, the Union Army offered him a deal in which he would be able to volunteer for service in the Union Navy and it would get him out of the Prison Camp. He was sent to Brooklyn, NY for training and his first duty was serving on the USS Powhatan in a blockade of the Confederate port of Wilmington, NC and his last duty was on the USS Tallapoosa on the Mississippi River from which he was discharged in January 1866. In Elias' own words, his Civil War career lasted "3 years, 6 months, and 11 days." He had the rare distinction of being a Confederate soldier and in the United States Navy. He was turned loose in Memphis, TN to find his own way home and all of it by foot. It took him several months to get home and I know that it is about a 9 hour car ride from Memphis to Hendersonville.