James Butler Hickok
SHULLS MILL VALLEY
SARAH SHULL
DAVID C. McCANLES
Shulls Mills Revisited T
he turn from Hwy 105 South down Shulls Mill Road near Foscoe hasn’t changed much over the 21 years since I first wrote about the town of Shulls Mill or Shulls Mills, as it was once called. A small church on the left and neatly mowed lawns that lead to Hound Ears Club are pretty much the same. Of course, the cemetery is still there on the right, up on the hill. The last time I visited the graves, the old Shull homestead was barely holding its own. The crumbling wooden structure had once been a fine two-story home belonging to Phoebe and Philip Shull and their family. The home, up on the crest above the family store and grist mill that Philip began around 1835, has since been replaced by gated condominiums. The town of Shulls Mills was then a small farming community and stopping place on the toll road from Valle Crucis to Blowing Rock. Boom times for Shulls Mills came in the early 1900s after the coming of the railroad made it easy to transport logs cut from the mountain sides; thus, Shulls Mills got its name from the timber milling, not from the grist mill that Philip Shull started. Few current High Country residents probably even realize the town held not only a large mill, but also a school, post office, several hotels and even a movie theater. If you pay attention to the side of the road as you exit from Hwy 105, you can still see the remaining stones of a retaining wall that surrounded the Robbin’s hotel. They now lay scattered
WHITINGS LUMBER MILL
By Julie Farthing
among the trees like tombstones in the shade. The only building remaining of the Shulls Mills community is a small wooden cabin and the building that replaced the first store owned by Philip Shull. Both are private residences. Time has changed the landscape, but the story of the people who lived in the shadow of Grandfather Mountain remains the same. The most noted story is that of Sarah Shull and David Colbert McCanles. Sarah was the daughter of Philip and Phoebe Shull. In 1853, 20-year-old Sarah, described as a handsome young woman, was fiercely independent, much to the dismay of her parents. She did not set her mind to marriage as did most of the girls in Shulls Mill. Instead of setting up house, she worked as a bookkeeper for her father in the family store. This path would one day lead to her footnote in history as it was here that she met David Colbert McCanles, a married man with three children. Where Sarah was handsome, “D.C.,” or “Colb,” as he was often called, was a force to be reckoned with. He was known to pick a fight if it suited him, but his intelligence, smooth-talking-tongue, and dashing good looks caused most folks to turn their heads at his transgressions. Though much of what we know about the relationship of Sarah and Colb McCanles is hearsay, one thing we do know to be fact. Sarah bore a daughter belonging to McCanles, and the child, Martha Allice, lived only one year and was buried in the
family cemetery. Sarah’s family were understandably not happy about the shame their daughter brought to the Shull name. It is said that Philip Shull refused to grind corn for Colb McCanles after his daughter was found to be in the “family way.” The only option for Sarah was to leave town and start over, and that is exactly what she and McCanles did. Although the details behind the financing of their travels remain in question, McCanles, who was the Sheriff of Watauga County, a job that included tax collecting, left with the taxpayers’ coffers. The couple fled on horseback to Johnson’s Tank, now Johnson City, Tennessee, and from there took a train headed for St. Louis. There they traveled up the Missouri River by steamboat to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, then headed west by wagon to Colorado. During their travels they were met by miners returning east, reporting the lack of gold in the over-mined Rocky Mountains, so Sarah and McCanles ended their journey at Rock Creek Station, Nebraska. Located on the Oregon Trail, this outpost was a popular route for travelers headed west. It was a pretty location but the steep cliffs surrounding Rock Creek made it one of the most treacherous on the trail. McCanles saw an opportunity for a lucrative business, so he bridged the creek and charged a toll for passage. During this time McCanles had arranged for Sarah to live on a ranch on the west side of the creek, and in September
history... 78 — Autumn 2021 CAROLINA MOUNTAIN LIFE
