The House that VonCanon Built

William VonCanon’s Home Stood Below the Hanging Rock By Carol Lowe Timblin, with historical photos courtesy of Cliff Elder

The 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 blankets to sell to neighbors in Banner the property to his son when he moved Elk. The trip took all day and William to Elk Mills in Carter County, TN, a few VonCanon would return home with his years later. An early picture shows family beard frozen in ice.” members posed around wooden fences The VonCanon family moved to Banmade from trees cut from the property ner Elk from Randolph County, NC, with buildings in the background. The where they had worshipped as Quakers family planted apple trees and built a after emigrating from Germany. They root cellar for winter storage. They also traded their fertile farmland in the Piedkept bees and raised sheep for wool. The mont for the rocky mountain terrain of VonCanons ran water from Hanging Watauga County, where extremely cold Rock Creek to power a mill they used to winters cut the growing season short. cut wood and grind grain. The VonCanons brought their most

“The water system was elaborate,” prized possessions with them, includsays Cliff Elder, a great grandson. “A few ing fine furnishings, family heirlooms, history 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 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 birch and maple and hauled the lum- from Lenoir-Rhyne College lived with ber to Tweetsie Railroad in Elk Park to the family and taught the children. sell. The wool was processed in the wool One year after the VonCanons started house, where I live now. It was taken to building their home, the Civil War broke Lenoir where it was spun into cloth and CAROLINA MOUNTAIN LIFE Winter 2020/21 — 63

Beech Mountain from Banners Ford, Banner Elk, N.C. VonCanon home with family on horses

out. During the war it served as a safe house for people on their way north. At the age of 18, William joined the North Carolina Mounted Regiment, under the command of George Washington Kirk, a guerrilla outfit that came to be known as “Kirk’s Raiders.” Formed on February 3, 1864, the regiment was attached to the 2nd Brigade, 4th Division, 23rd Army Corps, Department of Ohio from June 1864 to February 1865 and the 2nd Brigade, 4th Division, District of East Tennessee Department of Cumberland from March to August 1865 (Wikipedia).

On September 1, 1864, VonCanon ran into Keith Blalock, who had sustained serious arm and head wounds inflicted by the Rebel Home Guard near Grandfather Mountain. “Blalock and four or five of his companions, among them his wife (Melinda), were all on their way to Crab Orchard,” recalled VonCanon. “He looked horrible. The ball of his right eye was destroyed... and from the swelling from his ruined eye down to the ear, I supposed that the ball was lodged in the inside of his head and would have to stay there.” The party spent the night at the VonCanon house and then went to Lewis Banner’s house, and finally fled to safety in Carter County, TN. Melinda, posing as a man, and her husband Keith had joined the Confederacy but switched to the Union side. Both survived the war and are buried in a Montezuma cemetery (Rebels in Blue by Peter F. Stevens).

After the war ended in 1865, the VonCanons resumed their life on Dobbins Road—cutting timber, growing crops and livestock, gathering wool, educating the children, and doing whatever needed to be done. If a family member died, a viewing was held in the parlor, a custom that continued through 2016. A rare picture of William and Mary’s family, believed to be taken during the 1890s, shows Charles Banner VonCanon (son, 1872-1922), Isaac Nathaniel Banner (a relative), William (father, 1846-1926), Anna Belle VonCanon (daughter, 18821981), Mary Mildred Banner VonCanon (mother, 1848-1928), John Henry VonCanon (son, 1879-1966), and Frederick William VonCanon (son, 1886-1965). Missing from the photo is Nancy Blanche VonCanon (daughter, 18691948), who married Robert Lowe in January 1891. As business partners, the couple ran the Banner Elk Hotel from the time they wed until they died within a few months of each other in 1948.

The wedding of Lowe and VonCanon, attended by family and friends, took place at the William VonCanon home. Dugger included an account of the event in “Origin of Presbyterian Work at Banner Elk,” a lively chapter in War Trails of the Blue Ridge, plus details on events leading up to that time. According to the story, the Rev. R. M. Hoyle, who conducted the ceremony, had also preached at the Methodist Church against the sins of drinking, only to be sprayed with whiskey from squirt guns by pranksters Isaac Banner and Alfonzo Brewer as he entered the front door a few Sundays later. Humiliated, Hoyle vowed that no Methodist minister would ever preach in Banner Elk as long as he was in control. (Isaac Banner is shown in the aforementioned family photo.) “The elder spent the night there, and Mrs. VonCanon, being crowded with company, put him and his associate minister to sleep together in a large room containing three beds, where some boys in their teens, including her son, Charles, were accustomed to sleep...After the ministers had gone to sleep, two of the boys entered in the dark….They had some whiskey, both in their stomachs and in a bottle….Charles turned back the cover and whaled Elder Hoyle in the face with a pillow, then stooping over, blew his breath in the Elder’s face, saying, “Get up, we’ve got some

Mary Banner VonCanon (8/5/1848–5/14/1928) daughter of Lewis Martin Banner, wife of William VonCanon William VonCanon Family/Hanging Rock in background

damned good whiskey.” The author goes on to explain that “Mrs. VonCanon kept one of the most respected houses in the county {Watauga} and for the boys to have some whiskey on a wedding occasion...was no disgrace whatsoever….”

Anna Belle VonCanon, who married James Sanders Guignard of Columbia, SC, inherited the house after her mother died in 1928. The couple had five sons (James, William, John, Lewis, and Charles) and one daughter (Mary). James continued to raise crops and livestock on the farm until his death in 1953. During the early 20th century he oversaw the production of Shawneehaw Co-op Cheese Company at the Cheese House on the Mill Pond. The cheese had the second highest scored entry for 93/14 grade American Cheddar at the Chicago World’s Fair. Revered as “Banner Elk’s historian,” Anna enjoyed living in the family home on Dobbins Road until her death at age 98 in 1981.

“I lived with my grandparents in the William VonCanon house during third grade while attending Banner Elk School,” says Luann Guignard, who lives near the old homeplace. “I slept with Nana (grandmother) because her room was warmed by a wood stove. PawPaw, my grandfather who slept upstairs, would get up first to make coffee and the came a year later. We had to work hard, grits. Then, they would get me ready for but it was fun.” the school bus. Mary Guignard Elder inherited the

“Years later, as a young mother with house from her mother in 1981 and lived two young daughters, I lived with my there with her husband Bill T. Elder for grandmother a second time,” Guignard several years, carrying on the family continues. “The house, with its back traditions of mountain hospitality that stairs and so many places to hide, was began with William VonCanon. After wonderful for children. Sometimes Nana her death at age 105 in 2016, the propwould bring out the old trunks and allow erty passed to her children, who sold the my children to go through the treasures house and seven acres of land around it and well-worn books—if she gave per- in 2019. mission—first. My girls were fascinated Though the old house where a Banhistory by Nana’s ring of keys. “My grandmother taught history every day of her life. She said the family would take down the beans drying in front of the fireplace if they knew the Methodist circuit riders were coming because they would often spit in the fire. The VonCanons disliked the circuit riders for replacing their tired wornout horses for the family’s fresh, rested horses.” Bill Elder, Luann’s cousin who grew ner Elk family made memories for 159 years is gone, it will live on in the hearts and minds of many who loved and cherished it. up in Florida, moved into the house during his high school years after his grandfather died. “There were cows to milk and livestock to care for on the farm,” he recalls. “We had to make sure we had wood to heat the house. My parents and siblings (Mary Frances, Cliff, and John)