Appalachian History

When Gertrude Dills McKee of Jackson County took her seat in the North Carolina Senate on January 7, 1931, she became the first woman in the state's history to serve in that chamber. She was sworn in ten years after Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County became the first female member of the state House.

McKee (1885-1948) was in her day among the state's most prominent women and brought to the legislature a wealth of experience in public affairs. Born and reared in Dillsboro, she was the daughter of the town's founder. A 1905 graduate of Peace Institute, Dills in 1913 married Ernest Lyndon McKee. In 1923 the McKees bought the 2,300-acre estate of Wade Hampton at Cashiers and, with the help of investors, developed the present-day resort, High Hampton Inn.

Her first involvement in politics came in 1928 with her participation in the campaign for Congress of Zeb Weaver. Two years later Gertrude McKee successfully sought the state Senate seat from the Thirty-second District. She jokingly referred to her forty-nine male colleagues as "my children."

As chair of the public welfare committee, she took a special interest in child labor laws and old age assistance. Voters returned her to the Senate in 1937 and 1943, the year in which The State magazine speculated on the possibility of her becoming North Carolina's first female governor. In 1948, she died three weeks after being elected to a fourth Senate term.

Gertrude McKee's other activities as a civic leader and clubwoman were numerous: president, North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, 1925; president, Southeastern Council of Federated Women's Clubs, 1926; president, North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1928; Commission for Consolidation of the University of North Carolina, 1932; State Board of Education, 1943-1945; Commission to Restore Tryon Palace, 1945-1948; and a trustee of the University of North Carolina, Western Carolina University, Peace College, and Brevard College.


sources: North Carolina Manual, 1931, 1937, and 1943
The History of Jackson County, Max R. Williams, ed., 1987
"Gertrude Dills McKee: A Biographical Analysis" by Joan W. Ferguson, (M.A. thesis,
Western Carolina University, 1988)
The State, December 2, 1933, and June 5, 1943
Charlotte Observer, July 25, 1935
Asheville Citizen, November 28, 1948

No other rocks in the area have similar markings, although there are many other boulders in the vicinity. Some of the pictographs on it appear to be animals and animal tracks, while others appear to be human figures, suns, and geometric figures.

Judaculla---or Jutaculla--- Rock is one of the greatest archaeological mysteries in the United States. The largest petroglyph in North Carolina, and one of the largest in the Southeast, is named for a Cherokee legend about its formation. Judaculla Rock sits in the Caney Fork Creek valley in Jackson County, outside of Cullowhee. The details of the petroglyph's formation, as well as its origin and purpose, are unknown to scientists.

Artist rendition of Judaculla Rock engravings.

The soapstone slab is about sixteen feet long by eleven feet wide. The designs on it appear to have been produced in a variety of manners, including incising, pecking, and smoothing. These methods are evident upon close examination, but are becoming more difficult to identify with the continued erosion of the rock.

In the late 19th century, Cherokee groups were known to hold ceremonial assemblies around the rock. Additional outcrops of soapstone, used by Cherokees then to sculpt pipes, beads, bowls, and bannerstones, are located near the Judaculla Rock. Archaeologists think the Cherokees camped at, or near, the rock when they came to quarry soapstone. Furthermore, due to recent excavations of the areas surrounding Judaculla, scientists now postulate that the rock was part of a larger grouping of soapstone creations.

James Mooney, a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution, recorded the Cherokee legend of Judaculla Rock in the 1880s. According to Mooney's story, a being named Judaculla (called by the Cherokee Tsul-ka-lu or Tsu’ Kalu--- the Great Slant-eyed Giant) was the greatest of all the Cherokee mythical characters, a giant hunter who lived on the southwestern slope of Richland Balsam Mountain at the head of the Tuckaseegee River in Jackson County.

Judaculla was very powerful and could control the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. He was known to drink whole streams down in a single gulp and stomp from mountain to mountain as one might over ant hills. (In fact, according to Sequoyah’s Cherokee translation of the Bible, the word 'Goliath' was renamed Judaculla.)

One legend claims that the markings are hunting laws that Judaculla ordered. Another has it that Judaculla jumped from his mountaintop farm and landed partially on the rock, producing scratches, while running a band of American Indians off his land. The seven-toed foot at the lower right hand side of the boulder is said to depict Judaculla's footprint.

The rock was once thought to depict a map of the 1755 Cherokee victory over the Creeks at the battle of Taliwa in what is now Georgia, or perhaps a victory over another enemy, the Catawba.

Archeologists now know that the Judaculla Rock predates the Cherokee habitation of western North Carolina, but its exact time of origin is unknown. It is currently dated from the late Archaic Period, between 3000 and 1000 BCE, when evidence first appears of Native American societies forming mound societies.

The North Carolina Rock Art Survey has organized a Judaculla Advisory Committee composed of site owner Jackson County NC, members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Tribal Historic Preservation Office and Tribal Elders, the Office of State Archaeology, professors from nearby Western Carolina University, and members of the surrounding community. The Advisory Committee agreed to pursue a formal recording of the petroglyphs along with a condition assessment and conservation plan. You can read about their progress so far in the current issue of the North Carolina Archaeological Society newsletter.


sources: www.cs.unca.edu/nfsnc/rock_art
http://rla.unc.edu/lessons/Lesson/L502/H502b.htm
www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?ct=ddl&sp=search&k=Markers&sv=Q-4%20-%20JUDACULLA%20ROCK
Footsteps of the Cherokees, by Vicki Rozema, John F. Blair, Publisher, 2007
www.mountainlovers.com/vg/issues/2006/ncm_ancient_mystery.html



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Cherokee+myths Jackson+County+NC Judaculla+Rock petroglyphs

English law in the American colonies could get a bit florid on the topic of illegitimate children. A bastard child (or ‘bastarda’, if female) could become a ‘special bastard’ by the subsequent marriage of its parents. And if that couple had another, legitimate, son, that son was known to the law as ‘filius mulieratus,’ and the first or bastard son in turn became the ‘bastard eigne.’

The North Carolina colony, starting in 1736, used a tool called the bastardy bond to protect the Crown from being responsible for the support of children born out of wedlock. Bastardy bonds placed the ultimate burden of support for a bastard child upon the father should the mother become unable to provide proper support.

Otherwise, the child would become a ward of the local poor house and be an expense to the government. This English bond system was carried forward when North Carolina became a state in 1789.

As you might expect, the presence of bastardy bonds followed westward settlement right into Appalachia. Hamburg Township, for example, in today’s Jackson County, was settled in 1827. A September, 1853 bastardy bond from that county read: "Ordered that the Sherriff bring into this court on tomorrow during court hours an orphan child (illegetamant of Sarah Dills) named Andrew Jackson" Andrew Dills appointed Guardian, Phillip Dills security.

So how did bastardy bonds work? Typically the process started with public knowledge or a complaint that an unwed woman was with child. Sometimes the process was started after the fact. A warrant was issued and the woman brought into court.

She was questioned under oath and asked to name the child’s father. If she named the father, another warrant was then issued to bring him before the local justices of the peace, and he posted bond to appear in court to answer the charges on a particular date. If found guilty, he would then have to post bond for support of the bastard child. This document was the bastardy bond.

If the woman refused to name the father, she, her father, or some other interested party would post the bond.

In some cases the mother and the alleged father posted the bond together. If the woman refused to post bond or name the father, she could be sent to jail. Where support subsequently became necessary, the court would issue a judgment for collection of the requisite amount from the father and/or his bondsmen.

Bastardy cases seldom came up for trial. Usually the reputed father came into court, admitted the charge, and gave bond for the support of the child according to law.

In 1933, North Carolina’s General Assembly repealed the legislation requiring that bastardy bonds be filed, though state archives continued to store records pertaining to bastardy bonds until 1957.

There’s only one mention of bonds in the current North Carolina General Statutes, Chapter 49, Bastardy:
“At the preliminary hearing of any case arising under this Article it shall be the duty of the court, if it finds reasonable cause for holding the accused for a further hearing, to require a bond in the sum of not less than one hundred dollars ($100.00), conditioned upon the reappearance of the accused at the further hearing under this Article.”


sources: www.jcncgs.com/bastardy.htm
Suspect Relations, by Kirsten Fischer, Cornell University Press, 2002
www.infouga.org/site/



bastardy+bonds NC+law Jackson+County+NC appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history