Stroups and The Biltmore Estate

THE OLD STROUP CABIN


LORE
Eternal gratitude is owed to ALBERT MC LEAN, whose sense of history and hard work preserved a particularly beautiful old mountain cabin that once stood beside the French Broad at Long Shoals in Avery's Creek Township, across from the Biltmore Estate.
In the 1920's, George Vanderbilt turned this cabin over to an employee, the plan being to demolish it. Historian ALBERT MC LAIN asked for and got it, then painstakingly marked each stone and log, dismantled it, and carried it to his home where he lovingly re-assembled it in the hollow behind his house at 206 Aurora Drive, Asheville. He furnished the interior nicely using authentic period pieces, many of which are heirlooms from his own family, such as the round table, rocker and wall cabinets for medicines cabinets, the latter from his physician grandfather.

LORE
When Mr. MC LEAN tried to learn the cabin's history, all people could tell him it was "the old STROUPE cabin that was associated with two early STROUPE brothers, and has a dark and sinister history of violence and crime, a mysterious disappearance and a bloody murder". These clues were extremely puzzling, and they needed to be untangled to uncover the cabin's past.

THE "TWO EARLY BROTHERS" TALE
STROUP historians were completely stumped by the tale about "two early STROUP brothers living together in a cabin." The best we could come up with was the theory that JOSEPH (b. 1776 Lincoln Co.) and his younger brother, DAVID (b. ca 1785) lived together for a short time when they first moved to Buncombe County ca 1806, until they located suitable wheat lands and build two large houses on Bull Creek, their known location by 1810. However, this theory was blown sky high when it was learned that Joseph’s first Buncombe County location had been Warm Springs Cr., (now Madison County) where he had built a mill on land belonging to his father-in-law, ADAM CREASMAN, who acquired the land in 1807, and that, after a few years at Warm Springs, JOE STROUP had moved with the CREASMANS to Bull Creek.
This just deepened the puzzle about the identify of "two STROUP brothers who lived in the old Stroup cabin."

LAST KNOWN OWNERS
At the Buncombe County Courthouse, STROUP researcher RUTH (MORGAN) STROUP of Brevard located an interesting 1909 deed. GEORGE VANDERBILT, who had completely his estate, was now improving his view across the river, and to that end purchased a small farm from ZEB STROUP. The deed is: 4-22-1903, Bk. 126, p 525, to GEORGE VANDERBILT for $1,015.35, 67 acres on French Broad River from JAMES Z. STROUP and wife. Therefore, the last known local owner of the cabin was JAMES Z. STROUP. Who was this man and how had he acquired this small farm and cabin?

ZEB STROUP
JAMES Z. STROUP, better known as "ZEB", was no puzzle whatever to RUTH STROUP who located the deed: he was her husband's grandfather, and she was interested in the "old STROUP cabin" because ZEB grew up in it. His father had died in the Civil War, but his mother remarried and continued to live in it. So, we are now looking at the cabin's last known occupants.

RUFUS LOT STROUP AND WIFE NANCY JOHNSTON
RUFUS LOT STROUP was born on Aug. 19 1840, the eldest child of SILAS & SUSAN HARPER STROUP of Cane Cr. For ten years, RUFE was the only boy in his parent’s home, and had much responsibility for helping his father around the farm.

RUFE'S NATURE
When RUFE was fifteen, on Aug. 5, 1855, his mother gave birth to an infant they named DRUCILLA DELANA "LANNY" STROUP, who died when a year and a half old. Seventeen-year-old RUFE got a slab of soapstone from his grandfather, LOT HARPER, who had a quarry, and carefully carved little Lanny's tombstone saying she died at age one year, four months and 13 days. The painstaking work on the tombstone's long inscription tells something about the teenaged boy who lovingly carved it for a dead infant.

MARRIAGE
On Nov. 15, 1860, twenty-year-old RUFE married eighteen-year-old NANCY E. JOHNSTON. Both the STROUP and JOHNSTON homes were prosperous but they were filled with children, and the young couple wanted to live on their own.

THE OLD CABIN HOUSES NEWLYWEDS
Although it was believed that SILAS STROUP, a well off farmer, was the one provided his eldest and well loved son with a small farm when he married, just as he helped later children, no transfer deed nor purchase record could be located to confirm this. Perhaps he merely provided them money to purchase the place or livestock and household goods. Neither could a deed be found showing that a 67-acre farm was purchased by, nor transferred from, the bride's JOHNSTON family who owned much land along the French Broad. However, the cabin's proximity to the JOHNSTON land raises the distinct possibility that they were the original owners this little farm and its old pioneer cabin.
The lack of a deed being registered to show RUFE, SILAS or the JOHNSTONS as this farm's 1860's owner may be due to the onset of the Civil War, a time of turmoil when courthouse records were poorly kept. Whatever the legalities, RUFE and NANCY definitely lived on this 67 acre tract, and NANCY continued lived there most of her adult life. Who was the woman that once tended the fire and cooked on this hearth?

NANCY E. JOHNSTON STROUP
NANCY E. JOHNSTON was born Sept 18, 1842, a sister to HALL JOHNSTON, of the HALE JOHNSTON family who lived along the French Broad. In Nov. 1860 eighteen-year-old NANCY married RUFUS STROUP, and the newlyweds moved into the little cabin on the French Broad. The next two years were perhaps the happiest the little cabin ever knew, the bliss of young people in love, defying the gathering gloom of the Civil War.

RUFE GOES TO WAR
But Confederate feelings ran very high in the area, and in May 1862 RUFE enlisted in the Confederate Army, and, although NANCY was six months pregnant, he marched off down the road with other local recruits, heading for a C.S.A. camp at Lowden, east Tennessee.
Three months later, on Aug. 6, 1862, his son JAMES ZEBULON was born, and word of this undoubtedly reached the happy father. However, that summer RUFE came down with dysentery and was probably bed ridden in camp when he began carving his initials on his powder horn. He died Nov. 12th, having carved only "R ST". The lad, who so carefully carved a tombstone for his little sister, was buried at Lowden in an unmarked grave. His powder horn was sent back home to SILAS, to be found a hundred years later in his closet when the old home place was torn down.

NANCY REMARRIES
Most likely NANCY and her infant son lived with her parents during the war years, but after it she married TOM HUNTER who had lost an arm in service, and returned in the little cabin on French Broad where for some years they supported themselves on this 67-acre tract of bottomland. Here they raised ZEB STROUP and her two children by TOM HUNTER, a son JOE HUNTER and a daughter. So, Mr. MC LEAN'S lore about "two brothers" was quite correct, but they turned out to be ZEB STROUP and JOE HUNTER, half-brothers.

1880 CENSUS:
The 1880 census for Avery's Creek showed: TOM HUNTER, aged 44, NANCY E., 38 and JAMES STROUP, 18. (JAMES "ZEB" STROUP.)

'A HISTORY OF CRIME, A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE AND MURDER'
TOM HUNTER was a prosperous man. One day about 1885, he went out on the mountain to call in his stock for the winter, taking with him a pocket full of gold coins -- and vanished without a trace! Nancy’s two sons searched, and then called in the Sheriff and neighbors, but they combed the woods in vain. HUNTER was not the type to abandon his family, so theft and murder were suspected. And there were suspected perpetrators: a nearby trashy family was inexplicably flushed with money. But, without a corpse, no charge could be brought against them.
Many years later, when a woodman was felling a tree on the mountain, out of it's hollow fell the skeleton of a one-armed man! And so was solved the dark mystery of TOM Hunter’s disappearance. As for who originally built the "old STROUP cabin", today nobody remembers, nor have record searches cleared up this part of the mystery.

THE CABIN'S BUILDER
The best guess at present is that a very early pioneer along the French Broad built this lovely old cabin. He may have been BENJAMIN, EDWARD JAMES or ROBERT JOHNSTON, all of whom had deeds starting in 1795/99. Comparison the early JOHNSTON deeds, with particular attention to the exact descriptions, might solve the last part this mystery. Or a JOHNSTON family historian may know which pioneer was the original builder and owner. Until this becomes known, for convenience we shall refer it by the name of its last owner occupant, ZEB STROUP.

THE CABIN
The old STROUP cabin is a prime example of a pioneer cabin of the type built in the Blue Ridge from about 1790 to 1825, and in use for several generations after. On a fieldstone base is a structure of chestnut logs, split and hewn, mortised at the corners. Chinks were originally caulked with mud, and then coated with a mixture of buttermilk and lime. The pitched roof was of split oak shingles. A large, stone chimney dominates one side of the house. On the porch, the young couple undoubtedly rocked and rested on summer evenings, watching their three young 'uns chase fireflies.

DAILY LIFE:
Across the porch was a line on which they hung things to dry, from wet dishtowels to strings of "leather britches" (dried beans), and red pepper pods. In the nearby sunny clearing, flats of sliced apples and peaches were set to dry for winter eating. Inside the simple door today are the hand made household furnishings, as used by old time families. There is a round dining table, spinning wheel, and a coonskin cap on a wall peg. An ox yoke now stands in the corner (which originally would have been in the barn.) The corner cupboard holds clay and pewter dishes.

PIONEER LIFE:
The STROUP cabin on French Broad consisted a single, large room with sixteen paned windows on either side of the fieldstone fireplace and hearth. Here a small, cast-iron Dutch oven which was buried in red hot coals to bake crusty, yellow corn bread, made with sour milk and soda, and eaten with the butter, along with fresh fish fried in cornmeal batter, and garden-grown green onions. Winter treats were dried apple pies, pastry triangles filled with apples and browned in a skillet.
At this hearth, we can picture the young NANCY STROUP boiling a rabbit stew seasoned with wild garlic and pepper, in her iron pots held over the fire by pot hooks, and frying fresh corn and potato cakes on an iron spider set in hot coals. In a rear shed in "cold storage" for winter eating: crocks of sauerkraut, sausages preserved in lard, and various pickles: crab apples, beets, peaches, cucumbers, pigs feet. Bushel baskets woven from reeds and packed with straw held apples, nuts, cabbages and root vegetables.


NANCY was again widowed but, with the body missing, could not remarry. Son ZEB took over running the place and, thereafter her two boys cared for her. They say the STROUP and JOHNSTON families helped, and SILAS STROUP was especially fond of ZEB. In 1894, shortly before he died, SILAS STROUP deeded the 67-acre tract and cabin to grandson ZEB STROUP.
Years later, the HUNTER mystery was accidentally solved, from a story in the ASHEVILLE CITIZEN: Someone was logging trees on the mountain and felled a large old hollow tree, when out fell the skeleton of a one-armed man!

ZEB STROUP, CABIN OWNER:
ZEB STROUP said he grew up on the French Broad, and was proud of being able to swim across, turn and swim back. One winter, he jumped into the river in mid-winter and saved a man who was drowning after breaking through the ice trying to cross.
But the old cabin was too small and outdated for modern use, and so, on April 22, 1909, ZEB STROUP and wife, CAROLINE "Corrie" MILLER STROUP, sold it and the 67-acre tract for $1,015.00 to George Vanderbilt. The Biltmore Estate was already built, but Vanderbilt was adding nearby farmlands to his other large holdings, probably to maintain his view and to prevent civilization's encroachments.

History by Jessie Stroupe and Ethel Stroupe Vochko, revised July 1989.