Rutherford County |
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The County of Rutherford was established in 1779 out of Tryon and Burke counties. It was named after General Griffith Rutherford, a soldier who led the expedition that brutally crushed the Cherokees in 1776. The northern half of the county is moderately rugged and mountainous. The northern portion contained several gold mines. However, mining did not begin in Rutherford County until 1828. Numerous property surveys were completed within the area of several streams. The principal of these were the Main Broad, which is located in the western portion of the county; the Second Broad, which runs through the center of the county from North to South; and the First Broad, which passes through the Northeast corner. Tench Coxe owned three-fourths of the original Rutherford County in 1796. The majority of surveys conducted within the Speculation Lands Collection were surveyed within the early Rutherford territorial boundaries by Francis Alexander, who held the title of Chief County surveyor. Bear in mind that when the Speculation Land Company was active in North Carolina, county boundaries were not as limited as they are at present. Only a handful of the surveys conducted appear in the signature of other surveyors (deputy surveyors), with a few possibly signed by Alexander at a later date. Realizing that a local man well acquainted with the territory was needed, the Speculation Land Company of New York appointed James Dyer Justice, an honored and revered pioneer citizen of Rutherford county (later Henderson) as their southern commissioner. The mineral wealth was very great. The Speculation Land Company realized a tidy sum when Rutherford county was the center of the gold producing area in the United States from about 1820 to 1856. This realization gave many attorneys concern and additional labor in perfecting titles to real estate in over three fourths of Rutherford county's land area. Deposits at the headwaters of First and Second Broad Rivers had been worked in an uncouth way since 1830. Numerous business transactions, deed registrations and correspondence on speculation matters originated from the County seat of Rutherfordton. Of the original 407,254 acres that were purchased for resale by Tench Coxe, 350,301 acres, by far the largest land claim of any county, rested within Rutherford's lines. In observing thousands of acres of poorly watered land during the early 1830s throughout portions of the South and particularly in Mecklenburg County, Jacob Hyatt wrote in his reconnaissance of the lands that "no part of the country is in any comparison as well watered as the County of Rutherford." In March of 1825, Hyatt was instructed by Augustus Sacket to see a number of people in Rutherford County to inquire about purchasing their land with the purpose of creating a settlement. He was told to act as a farmer from New York seeking to relocate into the area. He was instructed which lawyers to use. Furthermore, Hyatt was prepared to inform those who decided to purchase land from the new owners that they "will treat them fairly both in regard to the prices of the land and terms of payment (0473)." Joshua Forman, originally from New York, was the first resident agent in North Carolina for the Speculation Lands Company. He would spend the rest of his life in Rutherford County engaging in other business endeavors, while pioneering Sunday school and temperance society efforts in the region. |
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0069 survey |
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Bibliography: |
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Corbitt, David Leroy. The Formation of the North Carolina Counties 1633-1943. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1950. FitzSimons, Frank L. From the Banks of The Oklawaha, Vol. 3. Goldent Glow Publishing Company: Henderson, NC, 1979. Griffin, Clarence W.
Essay's
on North Carolina History. Forest City, N.C., Forest City Courier, 1951 Patton, Sadie Smathers. Buncombe to Mecklenburg Speculation Lands. Forest City, North Carolina: The Western North Carolina Historical Association, 1955. Roundtree, Lynn. The Robbins Collection of Speculation Land Company Records. Armadilo Books:Chapel Hill, NC, 2002 |