Smokey Mountain News
10-19-05 |
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Jacob Shook
The life and legacy of an Appalachian pioneer
By Michael Beadle
The life of Jacob Shook could well be made into a movie, but a good part of
it would have to be fiction based on limited records and conflicting stories
about one of the earliest settlers of Haywood County.
Culling through records, the Shook family Web site and oral histories, there
are still a good many facts missing about the Revolutionary War veteran and
devout Methodist who built what is thought to be the oldest house still
standing in Haywood County and perhaps the oldest frame house in North
Carolina west of Asheville.
“I feel strongly that the best thing that we can say of this entire saga is
that we simply do not have all the facts,” states Joseph S. Hall, current
owner of the Shook-Smathers House in Clyde.
According to family records, Jacob Shook was born on April 19, 1749, the
first son out of nine children. His ancestors were German Lutherans who fled
religious persecution from French Catholics in the 18th Century. Many of
these German refugees fled to Holland, then to England and then to
Pennsylvania (thus the term “Pennsylvania Dutch,” which is something of a
misnomer).
As European settlers poured into American colonies, governors of the
Carolinas and Georgia offered immigrants cheap land on the frontiers along
the foothills of the Appalachians to act as a buffer between colonial
settlements and Native American tribes. In the 1760s, Jacob’s parents and
family members packed up and traveled south from Pennsylvania into the North
Carolina foothills.
Jacob Shook — also known as “Schuck” or “Shuck,” but Anglicized as “Shook”
by British census takers — grew up in the Piedmont region of North Carolina
around what is now Salisbury, according to the Shook family history’s Web
site.
When the Revolutionary War broke out, Jacob and his brother Andrew joined up
with a Patriot regiment. The Colonial Army received reports that the British
were trying to incite Cherokees to attack Colonials from the west. If Indian
tribes pushed in from the west and the British came in from the east,
Patriot forces would get squeezed in the middle.
It’s not exactly clear how much of a threat Native American tribes were
during the Revolutionary War since some had sided with the British and
others sympathized with the French, while some tribes fought against each
other over land disputes. The British were promising to give back disputed
lands in Western North Carolina to the Cherokee if the Cherokee attacked
Patriot revolutionaries.
Whatever the case, in the summer of 1776 Jacob Shook and his brother Andrew
were part of a regiment of several hundred men — other reports claim it grew
to several thousand — commanded by Gen. Griffith Rutherford. They marched
west to thwart an attack from the Cherokee. Rutherford’s troops went on a
trailblazing, terror campaign through Western North Carolina, burning
Cherokee villages and crops and killing any Cherokees in their path.
According to historical accounts, the militia, made up of ragtag soldiers
who had seen very little if any military action, met little resistance as
they marched through what is now Buncombe, Haywood, Jackson, and Macon
counties. They crossed over the Alleghany Mountains, went through Swannanoa
Gap, crossed the French Broad River, continued up through Hominy Creek, over
the Pigeon River valley to Richland Creek, past Waynesville, across the
Tuckasegee River, over Cowee Mountain and to the Tennessee River.
By the fall of 1776, Rutherford’s men met up with a similar Patriot force
from South Carolina. With supplies running low and winter coming on, the
generals decided to turn their forces back east. This military campaign
through Western North Carolina would be known as the famous “Rutherford
Trace.” (Rutherford County and Rutherfordton are both named after the
general.)
After the war, according to family records, Shook served on a few juries
against Tory supporters who had sided with the British during the
Revolutionary War. In 1786, there’s a record of a marriage between Jacob
Shook and Isabella Weitzel. Jacob would have been around 37 years old at the
time — the same age as his wife — a late marriage for both even by today’s
standards. Just after that, family records state that Jacob and his new wife
settled in what is now present-day Clyde along the Pigeon River. During the
Rutherford Trace expedition, Shook most likely passed through Haywood County
along the Pigeon River, so there’s reason to believe he remembered the area
and went to stake his claim there.
While there’s no record that Shook purchased this property — again, a
reliance on oral history — a 1794 Buncombe County record lists a survey for
a “Jacob Shoop on Pigeon,” and an 1800 census lists Jacob Shook as a
resident of the area. (Haywood County did not officially form until 1808,
and land records in the county weren’t sorted out until several years
later.)
Shook may not have had to purchase the land. Haywood County at that time was
in a contested territory that, according to a British treaty, belonged to
the Cherokee. However, since the British had lost the Revolutionary War,
that treaty was basically unrecognized by the new North Carolina government,
which was severely in debt after the war. In order to pay its war veterans,
the state either gave away or sold land at cheap prices. Shook and other war
veterans, no doubt, took advantage of the deal. He found land along the
Pigeon River to build a house. The land, an estimated 300 acres according to
oral history, covered most of what is now present-day Clyde.
Sometime around 1795, Shook built a three-story cabin dedicated to his son
Peter, who was only 5 years old at the time. We know this house today as the
Shook-Smathers House in Clyde. (See related article on the Shook-Smathers
House.)
With plenty of land in the fertile valley along the Pigeon River, Shook had
ample acres to grow crops and farm. It wasn’t long after he settled into
this frontier life that he underwent a spiritual awakening and became a
Methodist.
The Rev. T.F. Glenn records Shook’s spiritual conversion to Methodism in
History of Methodism: Shook’s “soul was flooded with joy” while plowing
through his cornfield. “He dropped the lines, left his plow, lost his hat,
and shouted all over the field. That was a happy, triumphant day ... but the
horse played havoc with the corn.”
While this scene sounds quite dramatic and amusing, it’s probably more
fiction than fact, according to Louise Harrison, one of the docents at the
Shook-Smathers House and a veteran in renovating historic homes.
In 1810, traveling Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury visited the Shook House
and presumably preached there.
“We don’t know if [Shook’s conversion] was after Asbury came,” said
Harrison.
As a member of the Rutherford Trace expedition, which witnessed war
atrocities, Jacob Shook surely saw terrible things. Had this religious
conversion been a personal discovery of amazing grace? Again, there’s little
else but speculation when wondering why a German Lutheran and Revolutionary
War veteran suddenly became a major promoter of Methodism in Haywood County.
It is widely known that the Shook House hosted regular worship services and
singing and music lessons in the third-floor attic before a church was built
nearby. Shook donated land adjacent to his home to be the site of revival
camp meetings and also set aside land for the Louisa Chapel United Methodist
Church and Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Clyde.
With all that Jacob Shook did for the area, one wonders why the Town of
Clyde isn’t called “Shookville.”
Jacob Shook died Sept. 1, 1839 and was buried along with his wife, Isabella,
in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, a short drive from the Shook-Smathers House |
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