Tag: Tennessee

April 15, 2011 Dennis No comments exist

Bailey Ayers had four sons. By about 1840 they had all moved from Kentucky across the border into Tennessee.  The sons names were John (Jackie), Elihu (Lihu), James (Jim), and Elcanah (Cain) with our ancestor being Elihu Ayers.  They eventually homesteaded in the mountains of Campbell County in a remote area called Stinking Creek, which is a long valley with Pine Mountain on one side, Walnut Mountain on the other and the the unfortunately named stream running the length of the valley for about 20 miles.

 

The first people, other than the native Indians, to inhabit these mountains and valley lands were the long hunters like Daniel Boone and a few before him.  Liking the abundance of game, clear water and fertile land in the valleys, these hunter-explorers became the first settlers to make their homes in an untamed wilderness.

 

The first settlers actually sought out isolation, and perhaps this is why the Ayers brothers too moved to the Stinking Creek area from Kentucky which was quickly gaining population in the 1800s.  For these backwoods settlers, however, death was a constant concern. Disease and accidents were prevalent. There was a continuous threat of being killed by wild animals or even other humans. Hospitals were nonexistent, and doctors were few and far away. Children were delivered by midwives, and many infants and mothers died in childbirth. They lived in log cabins, farmed and hunted the land, and had large families.

 

Their homes were built by cutting logs by hand, and they also made crude furniture from logs. They split logs to make fence rails. It was back breaking work. Big open fireplaces were built out of rocks and used for preparing meals. They raised corn, tobacco, cotton, and potatoes as crops, and had gardens for other vegetables. They raised cattle, sheep and hogs as livestock with kept chickens for eggs. The hogs and chickens usually ran free around the farm and adjacent fields and woods. The forests furnished deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, fish and rabbits. Their clothes were hand made from the cotton and the sheep wool. They made lye from hickory wood ashes and boiled it with animal grease to make soap.

 

The Ayers brothers certainly did their part of propagating the family genes as they gave the Stinking Creek area many descendants.  For example, our ancestor, Elihu Ayers,  married Theresa (Thursey) Wilburn and together they had eleven children, eight of which were boys, and the boys that lived to adulthood in turn had large families. So, the Ayers name quickly became prominent in that part of the county with many of the same given names such as Elihu, John, James, William, etc., repeated over and over again through generations.

“Lihu” Ayers

 

In 1860, Elihu was age 41 and already had his large family.  He had a farm valued at $600 (~$15,000 in 2010) which was larger than his two next door brothers, and a personal estate of $275.  He is said to have had a high tempered nature.

 

In 1861, the Civil War became a tragedy both nationally and locally. Just prior to the outbreak of the war, Campbell County had a population of 6712 with only 61 people owning a total of 366 slaves. Since the ownership of slaves directly impacted only a few, and no one in the mountains, there was little sentiment in Campbell County for the Confederate cause. In fact, this was true for most of the counties of Eastern Tennessee, but despite their resistance to separate from the Union, they were outvoted by the rest of the state.  So, Campbell County became an island of Union sympathy surrounded by a sea of Confederate support, with many men in the county joining Union regiments formed not far away in Kentucky. Early in the war, the nearby Cumberland Gap at the border of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, was thought to be of strategic importance to both sides. As a result, Campbell County suffered greatly at times in 1862 and 1863 as both armies fought and scavenged in the county as they tried to secure the Gap for their side.

 

It is totally unclear the extent to which Elihu Ayers and his various relations in the Stinking Creek area may have participated in the Civil War. Many records were lost, especially for the Confederate service. Existing Confederate and Union service records simply do not list any Ayers from Campbell County. Perhaps his age and family situation, and the fact that he was a farmer living far off the beaten path on the backside of nowhere in the mountains, allowed Elihu to somehow avoid the conflict. Interestingly, he had cousins in Virginia and in southern TN, (tracing back to old Nathaniel Ayers in VA) also named Elihu, who did in fact fight in the war for the South.

 

Elihu was a farmer his whole life.  He died at age 77 in 1896 just a year after his wife Thursey died.

 

April 9, 2011 Dennis Ayers No comments exist

Bailey Ayers was born in North Carolina and moved to Kentucky around 1800 with his family.  At the age of 19, Bailey became one of many Kentucky volunteers in the War of 1812.

Tecumseh

 

As a result of the treaty after the Revolutionary War, the U.S. gained control of the land between Kentucky and the Canadian border, called the Old Northwest Territory.  However, despite the treaty, the British still kept forts in the territory, and continued to supply the Indians with arms.  The renowned Indian chief, Tecumseh, formed a Confederation of numerous tribes, and the Confederation’s brutal raids hindered American expansion into potentially valuable farmlands in the territory.  Americans on the western frontier greatly resented this interference, and this aggravation was just one of numerous insults by the British that led up to the U.S. declaring war.

 

Some of the major battles of the ensuing War of 1812 were in the Old Northwest Territory, along the Canadian border, and fought in large part by Kentucky militiamen.   After a British victory and subsequent massacre of a large number of Kentuckians in the area that is now Michigan, the governor of Kentucky asked for 2,000 more reinforcements.  Instead 4,000 enthusiastic Kentucky volunteers were formed in August 1813 in Newport, KY,  (near present day Cincinnati)  and sent to aid.  Bailey Ayers was one of those brave individuals, and he joined the Kentucky Mounted Volunteer Militia commanded by Colonel Taul.

 

After the Americans recaptured Detroit, they continued to pursue the retreating British and their Indian allies across the Canadian border.  They caught up with them about 50 miles away in Ontario where the key Battle of the Thames River took place.  When American scouts reported that the British lines were spread extremely thin, General Harrison decided on a daring strategy: a cavalry assault by the Kentucky mounted troops directly on the British lines. The British were not prepared for this type of assault and when the first wave of horseman quickly rode through the British lines, and then turned on the British from the rear, British troops quickly surrendered. The American forces then went on to defeat the Indian allies, killing most of them including their leader, Tecumseh, who had refused to flee. This victory for the Americans was the final battle in the Northwest and most of the Indian tribes abandoned their association with the British.  The Americans had defeated the British and the Indians in the territory once and for all.

War of 1812 in Northwest

 

As a member of the Mounted Militia, Bailey Ayers was no doubt one of the horsemen involved in the victory.  He later returned home to the mountains of Wayne County, KY where he married Mary Guffy and they eventually raised a family of four sons and three daughters. Sometime before 1820 the family moved slightly east to Whitley County, Kentucky, and then before 1840 moved across the Tennesee border into Campbell county, Tennessee.  He died there after 1860.

 

April 7, 2011 Dennis Ayers No comments exist

As can be clearly seen from stories up to now, our Ayers ancestors possessed a pioneering spirit that kept urging them ever onward to new lands of promise and hope.  Nathaniel Ayers in North Carolina was like those before him.

 

Up until the mid 1700s, the French had control of land west of the Appalachian Mountains, and essentially kept the English settlers hemmed in the East by playing the Indians against them, and by relying on the seemingly insurmountable mountains.  However, after the British defeated the French and Indians in 1763, the French conceded all contested lands to the Mississippi River. This initially was a cause for celebration for the settlers wanting to move to the new frontier lands. However, the royal proclamation of 1763 did much to dampen that celebration as it in effect closed off the frontier to colonial expansion, ostensibly to calm the Indians and regulate trade and settlement.

 

Daniel Boone, the legendary wilderness scout, was born in Pennsylvania and raised as a Quaker. Like the Ayers family from Maryland, Daniel’s family was one of the many that migrated southward, settling in western North Carolina in 1750.  As a young man, he was known to be fearless and for taking long hunting expeditions into Indian territory.  The region beyond the settled borders of Virginia and the mountains was called Kentucky and it was a total wilderness. Despite the proclamation and some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775 Daniel Boone blazed his Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains over into Kentucky.  He pushed even further into the state beyond the mountains and founded the Fort Boonesboro settlement in the fertile central region.  See map at the end.

 

After the colonists finally defeated the British in the Revolutionary War, all the land to the Mississippi was then ceded to the Americans, and some adventurers began traveling there. However, in the early years, many travelers fell victim to hostile Indians. Soon though, with this new opportunity to homestead and a new route through the mountains marked by Boone, more than 200,000 settlers migrated to the Kentucky frontier by 1800.  Nathaniel Ayers and his family from North Carolina were among these early pioneers.

 

It is believed Nathaniel’s wife was Mary Leake and they had at least one child in NC about 1794, named Bailey Ayers. Kentucky was admitted as a state in 1792, and the Wilderness Trail was widened to accommodate wagons pulled by oxen.  It is difficult to pinpoint, but it is believed the family relocated to the new state around 1800.  We know for certain though, that by 1810 they were living in Wayne County, KY, a mountainous area near the border with Tennessee. The family had 3 males and 6 females.  It took hardy souls to homestead in this area, which was nothing but wilderness, and still occupied by scattered Indians.  At this time there were less than 800 families in the county. Settlers lived within riding or walking distance of each other and they had large families, with their children and grandchildren inter-married into each others families. This area today is part of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

 

Nathaniel Ayers is mentioned as helping with a land survey in 1808 in Campbell County, Tennessee, and in county court records in 1815 and 1818.  At that time Campbell County was larger than today and the western part of it was just across the state border from Wayne County, KY.  Did he actually move to TN for a time?  I think the answer is probably not because he apparently lived in an area close to the border between KY and TN which was in dispute and not officially settled until 1820.  So, the border moved around him.

 

Nathaniel then disappears from all other records until he applied for his Revolutionary War pension from Laurel County, KY in 1836.  It must be assumed he was living with the family of one of his daughters and was not a head of household.  It is also assumed that he died sometime after 1836 in Laurel County which is a short distance northeast of Wayne County.

 

When Nathaniel Ayers first came into Kentucky, why did his family settle in the mountains instead of pushing further into the central area of KY where the land was certainly more amenable to farming?  One strong possibility was that he already knew other family or friends who had previously relocated there.  Another reason is that all the best lands had already been settled on before he arrived.  The actual reason is unknown today.  Whatever the reason, the mountain way of life he entered set the course of history for the next five generations of Ayers families.

Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road