ShaniFaye

(I struggled with where to put this, so move if necessary, but this is me, this is my life, this is my passion, I also realize its a long read so thanks in advance for reading it)

(I realize that there are not many people besides my mama and my husband that will TRULY know what this means to me, but Im going to put it down just so cause I can lol)

LONG before there was a movie, and even longer before there was a book, way back to when I had a school project (and possibly before, but I use this as my mental touchstone) I grew up hearing the real story of "Cold Mountain"

I grew up hearing how WP Inman and his best friend John Swanger left the civil war and walked home only to be shot by the Home Guard not far from WP's father's house in Haywood County, North Carolina, causing his father to have to walk up Big Stomp Mountain to drag the bodies and get them buried in cemetary he and his wife would eventually end up buried. WP and John, both wearing union uniforms were buried together high on a hill, seemingly forgotten but for the story handed down in the family for the next 133 years.

Mama and I had been to Haywood County to do research over the years but for some reason she and I never took the time to find the cemetary where he was buried. 4 new years weekends ago Dave and I drove up for the weekend and did just that. Our side of the family said he was buried in one place (to the left of where his fathers grave is), WP's 3rd great grand daughter said they were buried in between his mother and father. This weekend we found out from my cousin Darrell that they are actually at the feet of Joshua and Mary. No stone to mark the place just a white stone, that this weekend was marked with a confederate flag.

I have talked on the phone many times with my cousin Darrell (who is about 67 years old now) but never got to actually meet him. Every time Dave and I would go to Waynesville he was always too busy with things on that particular day to meet us.

For this trip, I called him 2 weeks in advance to find out if he could make times with us to talk with me and show me some of his research, let us in our family chapel etc.

Darrell gave many interviews when Charles Fraziers book came out, everyone of them saying "The truth in that book would fit on a penny postcard with room for the address". Lots of the family was very put out with our cousin Charles for what he wrote, while the world adored him for it. I knew from our phone conversations he knew exactly where WP and John were shot and that the "foundation" of the house his father built when he moved to Haywood County in 1825 was still there. It became my mission in life to see those places and I was really hoping this weekend would be when it would happen.

I was not disappointed in many ways. This has been a very emotional and satisfying weekend (even if it has raised more questions for me).

I called Darrell when we were 20 miles from Waynesville to find out if indeed he would not be off bear hunting, or cleaning a cemetary or attending a funeral or something. Much to my surprise, he had time for me!! He said at some point he'd have to leave me to go load a dump truck with river rock but he would talk with me all he could.

He met Dave and I at Inman Chapel (much like the church built in the movie only it was built in 1902, not during the civil war and it was built by one of WP's brothers) and talked and talked and talked and then talked some more. Eventually I had a "duh" moment and got Dave to get our brand new digital voice recorder that we'd gotten for ghost hunting out of the car so we could record him.

Here are a few pics of Darrell and the church. He still has the original door key for the church lol










He then took me up one mountain to where my 4th great grandfather raised his family







the big mossy rocks are the cornerstones and chimney place of the homestead.


He has many letters written by one of WP's 7 siblings (the man who built the church) and from another brother he has "the story"

All 6 Inman boys...James (who built the church), Daniel Logan (my 3rd great grandfather), Joshua, William Pinkney (WP), Lewis Hezekiah (Hezzie, the man the story is told by), and Joseph were in the war. Joshua died of wounds suffered in battle in VA. James, Logan, WP, Hezekiah and Joseph, all ended up in a POW camp named Camp Douglas in Illinois. WP deserted the war many times, but from service records I can find he stopped doing that after November of 1862 until he switched sides in November of 1864 and became a untion soldier. The story goes that the brothers were in Camp Douglas together, as evidenced from a letter written by James to his wife. Two signed the oath to the North and were released (along with John Swanger). Logan did not and died christmas day of 1864 of Erysipelas: Contagious skin disease due to Streptococci with vesicular and bulbous lesions (which would be curable when penicillian was invented). Hezzie walked north while WP and John, in their new Federal uniforms walked home to NC (from Illinois)

Sometime in December, WP and John arrived on Big Stomp mountain and were shot and killed by a home guarder named Teague, their bodies left in the snow at the home guards "hide out". Three families lived on that mountain and one of the women that lived there, found them and sent word to WP's father they were there. Joshua walked 3 miles in the snow with a horse and a sled to retrieve the bodies and get them buried. One only knows how long that trip took, but once he reached them, he loaded them on the sled and dragged them 1 mile to the Bethel Cemetary and dug the grave to bury them together. It took a very long time and its said he returned home "very late in the night".

Darrell told me he would take me there, but that we could only go so far in my own car, I would have to stop driving at one point and get in his 4 wheel drive and ride with him. Unfortunately this vehicle only had enuff room for me, which meant I had to leave Dave with my car while Darrell and I trudged up Big Stomp. Its about a mile and a half from where I had to leave my car. Along the way Darrell and I talked of what it must have been like for Joshua to have to do what he did that night and tried to imagine what the mountain looked like in 1864, in the snow at night.

We rounded a bend in on the mountain (please keep in mind, this is not some travelled mountain road, this is a "road" made by a four wheel drive and VERY bouncy) and there it was. I got out of the car and walked to it, my mind reeling with what I was seeing.





After all these years, I was finally standing in the place my ancestor was killed. WP's and John's bodies were left in the place between the two big boulders in the front. I wanted to savor the moment, I wanted to stay there forever and soak it in. I immediately felt connected to this stand of rocks and it broke my heart to have to leave, but it was getting dark and Dave was alone with the car on property that belonged to someone else.

This is the view of Cold Mountain from the actual place of their death on Big Stomp



Darrell drove me back down and that was pretty much the anti climatic end of it for that day at least......

Darrell told me I'm one of a 1/2 dozen living relatives he's taken up there since he found it. It took him 20 years to find the spot described by Hezzie. Not even the "great" Charles Frazier himself has been there.


Dave is as into genealogy as I am and is such a tremendous help with research. He's learning as he goes and Im having to teach him how to look for things and know what he's looking at etc. He enjoys our graveyard trips and loves looking at the graves. It absolutely broke my heart to be standing at their place of death without him because he's been into the history of it as much as me, and I had to leave him behind.

Darrell had told me that if in the future I wanted to hike it just tell anyone that might question me that Darrell had taken me there and what I was doing, so I kept that in the back of my mind Saturday while Dave and I did other research and drove to historic Cataloochee to hike around it and look at it (thats not family related, just historical)

Sunday morning we had planned to visit WP's grave and search some other cemetaries for burial places of relatives we had not been able to find. Standing on that big hill at WP's grave with Dave, I knew I could not leave Waynesville without taking him to Big Stomp. It would mean about a mile and a half hike straight up and the weather was not co operating, but fortuantely was not as bad as it would get later in the day. We knew it wouldnt be an easy hike, and would be the most physical energy I had exerted since the surgery.

We left the cemetary and drove as far as we could, just like the day before. This time when we got to the gate of the property we needed to start our hike at, there were people there. That had purchased the property where we needed to start as a surprise wedding present for their daughter. We explained why we were there and got their permission to at least be on their part of the property.

We left them behind and started up, Rain was coming in as we started up the "road", it wasnt long before we were huffing and puffing and sweating, but we trudged onward and upward knowing we were doing something special. Along the way we found, what I thought, was a most awesome OLD tree





About 1/2 way up it dawned on us, we were in black bear country, and hunters were active that weekend. We had no "orange vests" and nothing to protect us should we run into a bear. It did not deter us though we kept going. It took awhile because we had to keep stopping every 50 yards or so to catch our breath. I kept telling Dave we could turn around if he wanted, but he being the man I love and admire kept telling me no, it was important for him to see it too, and if I could manage, he could too.

After what seemed forever and the rain really starting to come down we rounded the last bend to arrive at the place. It was obvious we were going to not be able to stay long because of the rain, there was no place to get any kind of shelter at all, but I did at least have longer than I did the day before.
















I will never really be able to put into words the emotions I feel at that place, or the significance it has for me. Just like I can never really explain how my blood seems to come alive anytime we go to the moutains of Haywood Co. The "pull" of the area makes me ache sometimes when Im not there.

I think the writer Sharyn McCrumb but it best when she, who's father's family were highlanders like mine and who's mother's family were flatlanders like mine, being there is very personal for me

I don't know that I will ever get back there and that truly saddens me. The property on the mountain is being sold piece by piece and roads are being cut thru. I wish with all my heart there was something I could do to make that area some kind of historical place that cant be destroyed with "progress". I want so much for my mother who has done so much research on this side of the family...which is actually my father's side, to be able to be there just once. I feel guilty I got to be there and she didn't. I feel sick that very few people understand the "sanctity" I feel the place deserves. If I could win the lottery tomorow I would pay whatever it took to make that area mine and preserve it for future genearations of interested Inman's.

While sitting at breakfast at the bed and breakfast with the other guests and trying to explain the significance of what I'd seen I felt disgusted that all they could do was go on and on about the book/movie and not see these people as the real people they were. To not understand the real devestation of Joshua Inman that cold December day when he had to retrieve his son and bury him and tell his wife what had happened.

I guess I am an old soul who was raised to respect my family heritage, and even though it causes me great disconcertion as far as other people, I will always thank my mother for instilling that in me and I will live my life knowing that I have the depth of understanding that so many others dont.

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sillygirl

Wow. That's a pretty amazing story. I can only imagine how elated you must have been.

My grandmother and some of my aunts and uncles are very into geneology, so I did have some background in it when I was a kid. I loved it, but it was never encouraged and at this point seems overwhelming to start it.

I'm so happy for you!

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....absence makes me miss him more...

Ourcrazymodern?

Way cool travelogue, madam! I'm going to have to read it again, because there were parts I couldn't follow. -thanks

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ratbastid

That's so awesome, Shani. Thanks for giving us that.

Daniel_

Very interesting story. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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The_Jazz

Thanks, Shani. This kind of stuff is always interesting.

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Pip

Wow, that's some family history you've got there, ShaniFaye! Your respect and love for your family really shines through. Thanks for sharing your trip and family with us.

This summer we visited the old farm where grandma was born and grew up. Dad was climbing around all over the place, showing where the horses, cows and pigs were kept and how he would feed them back when he was a little kid. It's hard to imagine my urbane dad once was a flaxen-haired farm boy, but he was. There's something real special with places and things connected with your family.

hagatha

What an amazing story. I read Cold Mountain not that long ago and was struck by the brutality of the Civil War and the fortitude of the main characters. How fortunate for you to be able to connect with your ancestors on such a personal level.
Thanks for sharing that very emotional tale.

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abaya

I also read Cold Mountain when I was an English major in college (for a Southern Literature class), but your story beats it by a longshot. Thank you so much for taking the time to share all your words and pictures with us.

I know what you mean, too, about wanting to "preserve" a place like that. Places can be sacred, in a way, to families... my Icelandic family has a farm in remote, northwestern Iceland where my grandparents pastored a church and raised 10 children for 40 years. It belonged to the state (being a church), but once the parish went out of business, so to speak, my grandmother was able to get her hands on it and make it "ours." I don't have any memories of my own there, but every time I go, I feel very close to my father (whom I never met) and imagine him growing up there on the farm, next to the sea. It's beautiful.

The 2 acres of land that I grew up on (and lived for 20+ years) was taken away from me, when my mom sold it to developers 2 years ago. They bulldozed the house that my stepfather built by hand... it wrecked me for a long time. It was a sacred place for me. I can't go back to that place, not the way it is now... it would be torture to see it that way.

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