Ambrose Adams

We recently made pictures at the Adams family cemetery in the Walnut Grove community of Wilkes County, NC, looking for the grave marker of Ambrose Adams.

Ambrose Adams and Samantha Blevins Pruitt married in 1931, when Samantha was 60, a widow for the previous 15 years.  Ambrose and Samantha shared 12 years together before his death in 1943.

This was a first marriage for Ambrose, who lived with his widowed mother, Lucinda Wagoner Adams. Following their marriage, Samantha moved into the house with Ambrose and his mother, who died in 1940.

Samantha's first husband, Hamp Pruitt, was Lucinda Adams' nephew, the son of her sister Mary Wagoner Pruitt. Samantha's two husbands, Hamp and Ambrose, were first cousins.

"The Ambrose place" is the way my father-in-law refers to this house. He and his siblings were sent across the mountain path to help with chores when his grandmother was living there. It's located across the road from the Adams family cemetery.

 

 

 

 

The house is in poor condition, with the end walls gone.

 

 





The center of the house, more protected from the weather, remains fairly solid.

 

My father-in-law says that Rural Electrification brought electricity to the community in 1948. By today's standards, this house would have provided a rugged existance. But I imagine that this little four-room house held plenty of laughter in it's day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



Adams Family Cemetery

My father-in-law had described the location of the Adams Family Cemetery off of Cabin Creek Road in the Walnut Grove community of  Hays, NC. Since several collateral relatives are buried there, I had been planning to visit (when the snakes aren't crawling!)

I finally joined FindAGrave as a volunteer about 10 days ago, and lo and behold, received a request for a picture of Ambrose Adams' tombstone in the Adams Cemetery.

Equipped with my orange bucket of cemetery supplies, we visited the cemetery. The cemetery is in poor condition. There are four or five graves in this photo.

And more fieldstone markers are in this stand of young pine trees.  (I'm pointing to a fieldstone in the photo. See me?) Altogether, we counted about 20 graves. Most were either marked with stones with no writing, or were simply depressions that were obviously old burials. 

This was the only tombstone with visible markings. It appears to read:

MILLARD FOARD DID AUG THE 27, 1889

I was aware of several Foard/Ford families in the community in that era, but I don't know exactly who Millard was. If he was a child born between census years, there may be no other record of him unless his birth and death are recorded in a family Bible somewhere.  Without more information, such as a birth date, there's no way to know if Millard was a child or an adult.

Ambrose Adams was buried here in 1943, and my father-in-law doesn't remember any other burials that occurred after that. My father-in-law was a child when Ambrose passed away.

The current owner of the property says that Ambrose did not have a marker placed on his grave, only the metal marker placed by the funeral home.

The landowner also said that there were several graves with only metal markers. His description sounded like the markers were meant to be temporary, only lasting until a permanent marker could be placed. He remembered, possibly, 27 graves that could be identified in earlier years, with stones, metal markers, or depressions. We didn't find any metal markers, although there could have been one or more, buried under the leaves.

So the FindAGrave photo didn't happen. I did contact the person who made the request, who is a cousin of my husband that I have previously exchanged emails with.

It's so sad to see a cemetery fall into this state of disrepair.

Caudill Cabin

My husband and I went for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday, enjoying the fall colors. We stopped at an overlook in Doughton Park, which is part of the Parkway, to look down on the Caudill Cabin:

 

Caudill Cabin

 

My husband's grandmother, Phoebe Caudill, was born in this little cabin in 1904, the fifth child of Martin and Janie Caudill's fourteen children. The cabin was located at the upper end of a once-thriving mountain community named Basin Cove.

 

The cabin is located in the clearing in the lower left of the photo.



 

Now maintained by the National Park Service, the cabin can be visited by hiking from the nearest road (Longbottom Road in Wilkes County), and crossing Basin Creek about a dozen times, a distance of 4.8 miles. And once you arrive at the cabin, you must turn around and walk back out.

 

The Caudills and their neighbors traveled this same route on foot, horseback or wagon, reaching Longbottom Road and then traveling on to area general stores or the county seat in Wilkesboro. A school and church were located within the community.

 

Most of the homes in Basin Cove were destroyed in a flood in 1916 that occurred after the remnants of two hurricanes brought heavy rains to the area. The steep hills and saturated ground resulted in devastating landslides. Three people were killed in the July 1916 flooding, including Phoebe's younger brother, Cornelius Caudill, her brother Famon's pregnant wife, Alice Caudill, and Famon's mother-in-law. Alice's grave is alongside the trail as you hike in and out of the cove.

 



Alice Caudill's tombstone



The photo of Alice's tombstone was taken on an earlier trip, when we hiked to the cabin. We usually try to time our hikes when the leaves and snakes are fewer!

Descendants of Martin and Janie Caudill maintain a web page, Caudill Cabin, with some historic photos and additional information. Also, the Digital Blue Ridge Parkway's Driving Through Time site has several photographs taken in the 1940's.