"Here we are at last, after a difficult journey across the mountains. We were completely lost and whichever way we turned we were walled in. Not one of our company had ever been there before and path and trail were unknown — though how can one speak of path or trail where none existed? We crossed only dry mountains and dry valleys and when for several days we followed the river [New River] in the hope that it would lead us out, we found ourselves only deeper in the wilderness, for the river ran now north, now south, now east, now west, in short to all points of the compass!
This is a fine county for pasture and meadows, from which great numbers of cattle and sheep are raised, which bring much wealth to the farmer. The air is pure and the water is good, if not superior to any on earth. People live long in Ashe County.
The face of the country is clothed with large and lofty timber of black walnut, sugar tree maple, buckeye, hickory, chestnut, and spruce pine. Clover, strawberries and blue grapes are natural to grow everywhere. Cranberries also in great plenty.
As that country has always had plenty of game, the first settlers who lived there for the purpose of hunting, were much opposed by the Indians, in particular by the Shawnees and the Cherokees, until the end of the late war
The major factor in the development of the social order here has been the tilling of a small self-contained family farm unit. While the state's economic history in the 18th and early 19th centuries has been written mainly in agricultural terms — excepting naval stores and up to the development of textile mills — it is also true in the New River Valley. In the Coastal Plain and, to a lesser extent, in the Piedmont there were markets available and methods of transportation for getting goods and produce to them. Transportation opportunities diminished as one moved inland from the coast and away from the Tidewater Virginia and South Carolina borders so that in the mountain area agricultural practices developed less along commercial farm lines, than as the means of sustaining the family unit. Thus the size of farms changed slowly and unnoticeably, mainly increasing and decreasing through the division of a family farm or the combination of farmlands as a result of marriage. This factor also encourages the relative evenness of the buildings here. Farms of similar size would and did support families and operations of an approximate size and scale. In consequence the houses and outbuildings themselves are similar in size, material, and design
Another important factor for consideration here is the definite absence of the Georgian style, and the minimal presence of the Federal style which exerted considerable influence on the architectural character of much of the rest of the state. At the same time there is also little evidence of the Greek Revival style which so dominated antebellum building in North Carolina. The architecture of the New River Valley is, therefore, a history of building which occupies one place in the state and the oneness of response to repetitive demands — a remarkable sameness of type, form, shape, material, and ornament. It is a repetition and sameness which is never boring but, because of its unpremeditated functionalism, it appears as natural in the landscape as the very trees and hills of the terrain
The introversion of pioneer mountain life encouraged by the landscape was a deliberate extension of the strong individualism which defined their approach to life.
The hills and river wrapped and, to a considerable degree, isolated the settler and farmer in the alternating states of a vast expansive openness or intimacy. The physical containment reinforced the self sufficiency of the life on the farm on both the emotional and economic levels. The processes of birth, life, and death were all effected within the confines of the family farm. On a significant number of farms small family cemeteries survive containing several generations of a particular family and their married kin. Thus the entire history of the farm and its owners and workers was contained on its grounds and read in its fields, buildings, and cemetery. These cemeteries, generally located on the highest point of ground on the farm, are enclosed by fences of stone, metal or wood; plantings of box bushes, crepe myrtle, cedars, and sometimes lilac are interspersed among the granite, marble, and fieldstone markers
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