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 fireplace
s 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.
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 Vi
rginia, 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.
