Day 9 - Western Carolina Thompson Roots

Day 9 - Western Carolina Thompson Roots


My Father's boyhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina...


We breakfasted at Chef David's, just a few yards from our accommodations. I had the Mozzarella Tomato Biscuit and the Portabella Cheddar Biscuit, and I must state here that they were the finest biscuits I have ever flapped a lip over. The biscuits were made from scratch by two little old ladies in the kitchen and I was able to congratulate them both. I regret the lack of photographic evidence.

We drove down the way and stopped in at my Uncle Elmer's and Aunt Christine's. After pleasantries, we discussed the location of the grave of David Thompson, the first Thompson to make it to America. Uncle Elmer decided to show the way... we met Cousin Michael and his wife Mildred near the site and commenced the hike.


The hike commenced in this frosty north Georgia field, very near to where my Father was raised (Culberson, in Cherokee County North Carolina). The area here is where North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee all come together.



A local hunter joined up for part of the march...





David Thompson's grave site. The marker was added sometime back in the 1940's by one of baseball legend Ty Cobb's relatives who lived nearby...



David Thompson was born in 1800 and hailed form Scotland. He married an English woman, Mary, and together they sailed to America. The ship wrecked a mile off the Carolina coast and the passengers had to swim to land. Mary Thompson drowned during the struggle. David Thompson then took a Cherokee Indian wife, Namie, who was the great-great-granddaughter of Chigau, the highest ranking woman of the Cherokees. Namie died a few years later in Oklahoma. David Thompson then took a third wife. The Thompson branch of which I am part is from that third union.

We proceeded on, led by Mildred... reaching the banks of the Nottley River...



This piece of bottom land along the Nottley River belonged to baseball legend Ty Cobb's relatives. As mentioned, one of Ty Cobb's relatives placed the (new) marker on David Thompson's grave back in the 1940's...

Proceeding on, we came to an old cabin...

Legend has it that this submerged, hewed log was placed by David Thompson himself, sometime during the 1840's as the start of a dam...

Proceeding on... we came to another old cabin, inhabited long ago by my father's great uncle Sion. It is said that Sion had no neck - that his head rested right on his shoulders. Cousin Michael, Uncle Elmer, and Father, at the old Sion cabin...

Next we drove a short way to Cousin Michael's home in Blairsville, Georgia. Michael has in his possession a compass used by David Thompson on the Trail Of Tears, in 1838...



A handsome old house just down the road apiece from Cousin Michael's...

Back in Blairsville at Uncle Elmer's and Aunt Christine's... we examined the archives...

Blairsville is in Union County, Georgia, so named because so many there fought with the North during the Civil War. Many of the grave yards in the Blairsville / Murphy area contain the graves of local men who wore the Yankee blue...


Father's siblings... Father, Lois, Elmer, Blanche, and Fred...

My Mother's first trip up to the highlands to meet my Father's family. My grandparents are on the left, Uncle Elmer and Cousin Michael on the right...

Genealogy... there's much to explore here...

Uncle Elmer has a restored 1953 Ford tractor...

My Father's boyhood church, "The Line," so named because it stands on the North Carolina / Georgia state line... and the Thompson graveyard...



The church and graveyard are situated on a hill with a commanding westward view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Standing at this spot I feel as close to my heritage as I can get...

From this spot can be seen my grandfather's grave (the closest maker), the church he sang in, the road he traveled on, and across the way, the point of his birth...

Various Thompson tombstones...




One of the afore mentioned Ty Cobb relatives...

Moving on down the road to where my Father was born and raised... Cherokee County North Carolina. Happy Top, another church where my father attended services...

This is where Uncle Clink's house stood. Though he died years before I was born I've always felt a special fondness for him, based on the stories I've heard. Uncle Clink was a fiddle player and whenever I hear Bill Monroe's "Uncle Pen" I imagine old Uncle Clink, playing his fiddle on the front porch... hat, beard, and suspenders... I'm told that Uncle Clink was well read... that he read from the Bible and Josephus everyday and was a great story teller. Something tells me he probably smoked a pipe...

In my Father's boyhood times this little creek was called the "Scary Branch." Strange things were said to happen there. My Father used to tell me and my little Brother Brian stories about how he once rode a rhinoceros across that field beside the Scary Branch! In those tales, the rhinoceros lurked in the woods around the branch waiting for the kids to walk by on their ("10 mile") way home ("through 10 feet of snow") from the school house ("uphill, both ways"). My brave Father, though only a lad, took it upon himself to "drive that rhinoceros out of the area." He jumped up on the rhinoceros' back (remarkably similar to the way Tarzan used to do it in the movies) and rode that beast twenty miles into Georgia, freeing the local kids of the scourge. My boyhood images of this were very vivid and it was great to finally see the actual place where the drama unfolded...



My Father's boyhood home no longer stands...



Just down the way from my Father's boyhood home an old Indian camp once thrived, just about where the taller trees are, in the middle of the picture...

And a tad further yet... the cemetery where my grandmother's side of the family rests...

On through Murphy, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Nantahala Gorge...



Down the eastern slope to the Piedmont and back to Charlotte...

We ended up covering nearly 1800 miles on this 5-day jaunt around the heart of Dixie...