William VonCanon’s Home Stood Below the Hanging Rock By Carol Lowe Timblin, with historical photos courtesy of Cliff Elder
T
he William VonCanon home, a familiar landmark located at 815 Dobbins Road, disappeared from the Banner Elk landscape several months ago. Now a grassy space fills the oncelively spot, where four generations of a founding family lived, worked, played, and died. The two-story white frame house, with its long front porch and covered upstairs veranda, was started around 1860 but not completed until after the Civil War. Built with solid beams cut from the farm, the house featured poplar and oak floors and glass windows. The original building had four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs, flanked by brick chimneys on each end. As was the custom in those days, the kitchen was located in a separate building. A dining room was later added between the kitchen and the main house, as well as upstairs bedrooms. A small room near the kitchen served as a springhouse. It had running water from two springs and provided refrigeration for milk, eggs, and other perishables.A later addition on the west side of the house completed the structure that eventually covered approximately 4,000 square feet and included four bathrooms. Jacob VonCanon, William’s father, laid claim to 1,000 acres below the
Hanging Rock around 1858 but gave the property to his son when he moved to Elk Mills in Carter County, TN, a few years later. An early picture shows family members posed around wooden fences made from trees cut from the property with buildings in the background. The family planted apple trees and built a root cellar for winter storage. They also kept bees and raised sheep for wool. The VonCanons ran water from Hanging Rock Creek to power a mill they used to cut wood and grind grain. “The water system was elaborate,” says Cliff Elder, a great grandson. “A few years ago we were digging in the meadow and found hollowed-out locust poles attached to each other, which carried the water through a reservoir at the house and then to a trough for the animals out back. Fish caught from the creek were kept in the reservoir until they were ready to cook.” “The farm grew large gardens, potatoes, wool, cattle, and timber,” relates Bill Guignard Elder, an older brother to Cliff. “My great grandfather cut curly birch and maple and hauled the lumber to Tweetsie Railroad in Elk Park to sell. The wool was processed in the wool house, where I live now. It was taken to Lenoir where it was spun into cloth and
blankets to sell to neighbors in Banner Elk. The trip took all day and William VonCanon would return home with his beard frozen in ice.” The VonCanon family moved to Banner Elk from Randolph County, NC, where they had worshipped as Quakers after emigrating from Germany. They traded their fertile farmland in the Piedmont for the rocky mountain terrain of Watauga County, where extremely cold winters cut the growing season short. The VonCanons brought their most prized possessions with them, including fine furnishings, family heirlooms, musical instruments, a Bible, hymnals, and classical books, which were used to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to children. A teaching certificate, bearing William VonCanon’s name and signed by G.W. Dugger and Samuel Trivett, members of the school committee, shows that he was paid $50 for teaching two months, from Nov. 4, 1870, to Jan. 6, 1871. When the third generation of VonCanons came along, Quaker tutors from Guilford College and students from Lenoir-Rhyne College lived with the family and taught the children. One year after the VonCanons started building their home, the Civil War broke
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