In the Jailhouse Now | By Michael Hardy

ORIGINAL WILKES COUNTY JAILHOUSE

RESTORED WILKES COUNTY JAILHOUSE

WNC’s Historic Jail Buildings

WATAUGA COUNTY JAILHOUSE

AVERY COUNTY JAILHOUSE

“In the Jailhouse Now” By Michael Hardy

It was said that Tom Dula was an uncommonly good fiddle player. Perhaps a visitor passing by the jail in Wilkesboro in July 1866 heard Dula playing some mournful dirge as he waited his fate.

The Old Wilkes Jail was built in 1859 and survived the Civil War. It had four rooms, along with living quarters for the jailer and his family. It is where Tom Dula was taken after being captured near Trade, Tennessee. Dula was wanted for the murder of Laura Foster, a local Wilkes County girl who was missing. Ann Melton, another one of Dula’s girlfriends, was also arrested in the matter once the body was discovered. Dula’s trial was later moved to Statesville. His attorney, former governor Zebulon Baird Vance, believed Dula would get a fair trial outside the mountains. Fair or not, Dula was found guilty, twice, and was hanged in Statesville on May 1, 1868. Local legend has it that Dula rode in a wagon to the gallows, sitting atop his coffin and playing a fiddle tune that we all recognize as “Hang Down your Head, Tom Dooley.”

Most of the inmates in the Old Wilkes Jail were local bootleggers and horse thieves rather than inspirations for popular folk songs. However, there was one other person of note to pass through the cells in Wilkesboro. Otto Wood was called a “Depression-era desperado.” He was born in Wilkes County in 1894, and as a young boy, stole a bicycle. Wood was caught and locked up in the Wilkes County jail. The court found him guilty, and he was sentenced to serve on the chain gang but he was sent home because of his age. Wood lived a life of crime, and was incarcerated in jails not only in North Carolina, but in Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia as well. He is credited with breaking out of jail ten times throughout his criminal career, including four times from the state prison. He was killed after his last jailbreak in a shootout with police in Salisbury on December 31, 1930.

The old Wilkes County Jail continued to hold prisoners until 1915, when a new facility was opened. Today, the jail is considered one of the best preserved examples of nineteenth-century penal architecture in North Carolina. The restored building is now a part of the Wilkes Heritage Museum Complex.

When Stoneman’s raiders came through Boone in March 1865, they went to the Watauga County Jail, sprung all of the prisoners, and set the building on fire. Another jail was built following the war, but in the 1880s, it was decided that a new facility was needed. A plan was adopted, and construction on the brick building began in July 1889. By December, the new Watauga County Jail was open. The cells were brought by wagon from Lenoir, and the furniture

Continued on next page

JAILHOUSES: Continued from previous page

from T. J. Coffey and Brother in Boone. Polly Greer was paid for making quilts for the beds. A few months later, a tenfoot high stockade was erected around the perimeter of the jail.

Just two years later, it looked like a full-scale battle was to be fought around the Watauga County Jail. O. J. Potter was locked up in Boone, charged with the death of Sylvanus Church. A group of “outlaws” from Kentucky and Tennessee made their way into Pottertown, bent on freeing Potter from his confinement. Word arrived in Boone, and according to the Watauga Democrat, “a heavily armed guard was summoned by the sheriff, and stationed at the jail, with orders to hold the prisoner even if it resulted in the sacrifice of many lives.” After a local detective was shot near Pottertown, and the home of Henry Main “riddled with bullets,” the sheriff took a number of deputies to Pottertown and the band fled.

In 1927, the Watauga County Jail on Water Street was closed, and the inmates were moved to a new facility. The old jail survives, and currently houses the Southern bistro-style restaurant Proper.

Avery County was created in 1911, the last and one-hundredth county formed in North Carolina. Prior to the county’s establishment, there were a couple of calabooses, local holding cells in Linville Falls and Montezuma. These were used to hold wrongdoers until the sheriff could arrive. There was also some type of jail in Elk Park as well.

A new county needs a new jail, and work began on that building and the adjoining courthouse in 1912. The new Avery County Jail opened in 1913. Not only were there cells upstairs for men and downstairs for women, but living quarters as well. For many years, local sheriffs were elected for two-year terms. They could move into the jail, or appoint one of their deputies to move in and become the jailer. When the man moved in, he moved his entire family in as well. Deputy Will Banner became jailer in 1913, under Sheriff John Henry Von Cannon. Banner brought along his wife, Lucy, and their children: Otis, Sarah, Gertrude, Pearl, Bruce, Bob, and Carrie.

There would be other families to call the building home while it served as a jail. Marion Church was jailer in the early 1920s when his daughter, Hallie Church Ellis, arrived to have her fifth child. In the 1930s, Jailer Roby Shoemaker’s foster daughter, Nell Slay, married Johnny McKee at the jail. The wedding was officiated by Reverend Gentry from Elk Park. Lynn Hughes’s father was a jailer in the 1940s, and he recalled that as a kid, he sat in front of the cells and played cards with the prisoners.

In 1970, the Avery County Jail was closed. A new one was soon constructed behind the courthouse. In 1976, the jail reopened its doors as the Avery County Historical Museum. Not only is the 1913 jail on the site, but also a late 1700s smokehouse, the Linville Depot, and the ET&WNC Caboose 505.

Today, all three counties have modern jail facilities. By visiting the museums in Wilkes and Avery, people can learn about penal institutions of the past and dig a little more deeply into an area rich in its history.

Fine Furniture Consignment

Shop with us

Consign with us

Design with us

Pick up and Delivery available

regular inventory updates on

www.shophickorytree.com | 828.324.1655 | 831 Old Lenior Road Hickory, NC 28601

Beautiful Handmade Furniture | Full line of Outdoor & Patio Furniture | Home Accessories

Full Design Service | Over 37 years experience | 11 miles from Boone, 5320 Hwy 105 South, Banner Elk | Open All Year, Mon-Sat, 10-5 | 828.963.6466

Redefining Property Management

Comprehensive property management services for private second homes & estates

Preserving the value of your investment | Saving you time Providing peace of mind | Elevating your experience

BOONE • BLOWING ROCK • BANNER ELK 828.268.8888 | cssmithpropertymanagement.com

Avery Animal Hospital

Small Animal Medicine Surgical Services CO2 Surgical Laser Hill’s Science Diet & Prescription Diets In-house Laboratory Therapy Laser Treatments Cozy Boarding

Dr. Brent Jewell 828-733-9810 351 W. Mitchell Street Newland, NC 28657

Wisdom and Ways

Weather Folklore of a Mountain Springtime

Article and Photography by Jim Casada

Spring comes to the North Carolina High Country in bits and pieces, starts and spurts, stumbling and stuttering along as it tries to find the right rhythm. A spell of balmy days with afternoon temperatures rising into the 70s is suddenly replaced by weather reminiscent of the depths of winter. Worrisome frost threatening blooming fruit trees is a distinct possibility and late snows aren’t out of the question. As was so often the case, that sweet swan of Avon, William Shakespeare, got it just as right for the High Country as for the sceptered isles of Britain when he wrote of “the uncertain glory of an April day.”

The frost-free date, even at lower elevations, doesn’t come until month’s end and there’s always the possibility of a killing frost any time in April and, especially at higher elevations, right on into the early portion of May. Old timers in the mountains, living in close harmony with the good earth and in no way dependent on any prognosticators other than themselves, readily recognized the vagaries of spring weather. Indeed, they often had quaint, highly descriptive terms connected with these vicissitudes. The ones with which I am most familiar and have heard most often throughout my life all harkened back to winter—Catbird Winter, Dogwood Winter, and Blackberry Winter. That was likely because the hard times of winter were still all too clearly in mind and each cold snap revived such thoughts in powerful fashion.

These terms, and indeed almost everything we associate with the folklore of spring, derive from the first-rate observational skills of those who went before us. Our forebears lived dramatically different lifestyles from those of us today, and weather figured far more prominently in yesteryear’s life in the High Country than it does in our fast-paced, technologically driven world. Folks lived in close harmony with the land and depended on it for their existence. Accordingly, the ability to read signs, recognize weather patterns, and move in rhythm with the good earth was vital to their existence.

All of the descriptions of winter aforementioned actually refer to spells of cold after the time of greening up was already well under way. They came with recognized regularity year after year, and you could almost count on there being a day or two in early spring when you awakened to a frost so heavy you could have tracked a rabbit in it. That would be followed, within a few hours, by sunshine revealing “scorched” foliage on newly sprung growth in garden and field. Farm folks often called it a “setback.” Sometimes the affected plants would survive, but when the frost and cold were particularly severe an apple crop might be lost for the season or row crops might require replanting.

According to my Grandpa Joe, who had a real knack for predicting the weather by reading signs, observing cloud patterns, and watching the behavior of animals, Catbird Winter was associated with the first springtime appearance of the fussy, interesting, and highly vocal grey bird whose call sounds like the mewing of a cat, hence its name. After migrating to the Deep South or beyond for the winter, catbirds return to the mountains for the mating season in April. Whenever Grandpa sighted the first one he would comment: “Look for a cold spell in the next week or so, because now that the catbirds are back we are in for a little spell of Catbird Winter.”

In truth, Catbird Winter always seemed to me to coincide quite closely, if not precisely, with Dogwood Winter. Certainly the migrant birds that provided the name invariably arrived about the time dogwoods were in full flower. Grandpa, however, would have none of that, insisting that there were two distinct cold snaps. Whatever the case, there’s no arguing that pretty predictably, year after year, there will be some chilly weather, often accompanied by a light frost (and sometimes a heavy one), when dogwood blooms are at their peak.

Blackberry Winter is the most frequently mentioned of the three springtime periods of cold as well as being the latest. Often it seems as if winter has one final fling, a last chilly hurrah bidding adieu before the full magic of May spreads its warm, soothing blanket atop the High Country and blackberries reach the stage where their blooms begin to show white and bedeck the countryside in brightness. I know that Grandpa always felt comfortable in setting out tomatoes and other plants susceptible to frost once blackberries had bloomed in association with two or three days of cold. “I’ve known it to frost once or twice in my life after Blackberry Winter,” he would say, “but a body can feel pretty comfortable with tender stuff once it has come and gone.”

There’s even an old song with the words “Go away, go away Blackberry Winter” in the chorus. It will take someone with a better memory or more musical knowledge than yours truly to pin it down, but I know that the song dates back at least to the 1950s. Of course I always thought the line should have been “Blow away, blow away Blackberry Winter,” because invariably that final chilly snap of spring seems to be associated with a cold front accompanied by strong winds.

Continued on next page

Read us online at CMLmagazine.online

OVER 20 FLAVORS OF HAND DIPPED ICE CREAM

SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM • MILKSHAKES, SUNDAES • BANANASPLITS • ETC. – Best Prices In Town –

3390 Tynecastle Hwy (across from Food Lion) Sugar Mountain, NC 28604 | (828) 898-9746

“Your Military & Outdoor Store”

150 Linville St., Newland NC 28657 828-733-3600 Military Surplus

Knives • Tools

Camping & Sporting Goods Collectibles & More

Voted Best of the Best in Avery County 2021

Protecng Your Mountain Home

lifestoreinsurance.com

FOLKLORE: Continued from previous page

There are other colloquial terms for periods of unseasonable cold in the spring, including Locust Winter and Redbud Winter. All seem peculiar to the South and particularly to the Appalachians, but other sections of the country have delightful descriptions as well. Perhaps my favorite, one I’ve heard several times over the years while turkey hunting in Missouri or Iowa, is “Long Handles Winter.” That’s a term folks there use to suggest that once that cold spell has passed, it is time to put the trusty old union suit away until it is once more needed in late fall.

Like so many other aspects of traditional mountain culture, these special aspects of spring seem increasingly to belong to a world we have lost. As we become more urbanized, depend on television meteorologists rather than personal observations for our weather predictions, and do far less gardening and farming, our sense of connection with the earth’s seasonal rhythms lessens. To me, that’s sad, and maybe why Grandpa Joe, who never drove a car and who viewed any and all things modern with skepticism, was often given to comments such as “I don’t hold much with this here progress folks are always talking about.” --

Jim Casada is a full-time freelance writer with almost two dozen original books to his credit along with contributions to many more. To learn more about his work, his forthcoming books, or to receive his free monthly e-newsletter, visit his website, www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com.

RHYTHMIC TIDBITS OF WEATHER WISDOM FOR SPRING

*Clouds on the hills that rise toward the sky, signal a day when it will be dry. But clouds lowering around the mountain’s top, mean rain soon begins to drop. *March snow is as good as manure. *When March has April weather, April will have March weather.

*When April features a constant chill, come October the barn we’ll fill.

*A moist April means a clear June.