Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina

Oct 11, 2015 Sun0

Laurie and I like riding our Gold Wing motorcycle. But it is easy to get into a rut and just ride the same roads. So to force ourselves to ride to places we would not normally visit we made a goal to visit and photograph all 100 North Carolina courthouses within 1 year.

As usual, we got a little behind. We started in July 2015 and finished 99 out of 100 by June 2018. The last courthouse was in our home county of Wake and it took us until Feb 2021 to get that final one. But we made it! This blog is about one of those visits.

Many NC courthouses were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The nomination form has some interesting facts about the various courthouse styles over the years.






Courthouse Information


Wikipedia says the following about the courthouse:

The Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina is a Beaux Arts style building built in 1904. It was designed by architects Wheeler & Runge.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The Museum of Ashe County History has restored and is located in the historic Ashe County Courthouse. Exhibits include photos, artifacts from area industries, a railroad room with a model train layout and railroad artifacts, a room honoring Ashe County veterans, and the Ashe County Sports Hall of Fame.






County Information


The North Carolina History Project lists the following information for this county:

The Creek, Cherokee, and Shawnee were the first Native Americans to inhabit present-day Ashe County. In 1752, Bishop Augustus Spangenberg, leader of the Moravian church in the colonies, traversed the land and kept a record of his visit. Awarded a substantial tract of land by the Earl of Granville, Bishop Spangenberg was commissioned by Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf to explore and establish a Moravian colony where the church would be free to worship and live. Bishop Spangenberg and his surveying party entered the western of mountains in early December, and he described the winter storms that they encountered: "I think I have never felt a winter wind so strong and so cold. The ground was covered with snow; water froze by the fire." Even though the group met hardship, the Bishop concluded that the land was suitable for agriculture and raising cattle. Spangenberg's trip set the stage for future settlement of the Ashe region.

Both eastern North Carolinians and German, English, and Scottish immigrants moved to the northwestern mountains of North Carolina in the mid-eighteenth century. The northern migrants followed the Great Wagon Road and the Upper Pennsylvania Road through the Shenandoah Valley. Hunters and trappers were the ones to make the most of the new land, and David Helton, William McLain, and William Walling, all Virginia hunters, built a house near Helton Creek in 1770. However, the land remained sparsely populated throughout the rest of the century. Daniel Boone, a Kentucky trailblazer and epic hunter, has been suspected by some historians to have hunted and traveled all throughout present-day Ashe County in the late 1700s.

Perhaps one of the most tumultuous events of Ashe's early history is that the region was part of the seven county (Alleghany, Ashe, and Watauga in North Carolina; Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, and Washington in Tennessee) independent state of Franklin from 1784 until its collapse in 1788. John Sevier, along with several mountain settlers in Ashe, established Franklin because they were angry that the N.C. General Assembly had ceded the undeveloped western land to the federal government through the Resolution of Cession in 1783. Despite the fervent attitude of Franklin citizens and the relative isolation from state and federal intervention, Franklin disbanded due to the frequent attacks by hostile Cherokee and Creek. When John Sevier took an oath to North Carolina, Franklin's fate was sealed. Historians differ as to why Franklin formed: some contend it was a land speculator controversy, others make a case that it was a democratic movement by western settlers, and more than a few contend that it was a separatist movement by western citizens who refused to succumb to eastern North Carolina landholders.

After Franklin dissolved, the county of Ashe formed quickly because settlers wanted protection from the violent Cherokee. Therefore, the General Assembly decided to establish Ashe from Wilkes County in 1799. The county was named in honor of Samuel Ashe, North Carolina's governor from 1795 to 1798, and in the first years of the county's history, the citizens soon constructed a courthouse, jail, and town center. The county's seat of government, Jefferson, was established in 1803, and it was named after President Thomas Jefferson. The first communities to develop were those of small family farms around the banks of the New River, but throughout the nineteenth century the area remained sparsely populated. Other communities that make up present-day Ashe County include Todd, West Jefferson, Lansing, and Glendale Springs.



Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:29:37 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: iPhone 5sDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:29:39 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Laurie
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:29:55 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: iPhone 5sDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:30:33 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: iPhone 5sDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:31:08 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:31:31 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:32:06 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:32:26 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:32:55 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Laurie
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:33:41 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:34:52 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Oct 11, 2015 Sun 1:35:29 PM EDT Altitude: 2926 ft Camera: X100SDisplay on Google Map
Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson, North Carolina
Laurie



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Watauga County Courthouse in Boone, North Carolina




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