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Weaver family (North Carolina)

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Weaver
CountryUnited States
Current regionSouthern United States
Place of originGermany

The Weaver family is a locally prominent American family that founded Weaverville along Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina and were early settlers of Cocke County, Tennessee.[1][2][3][4]

Origins

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Further information: Pennsylvania Dutch, Shenandoah Germans, Fancy Dutch, and Palatines

According to family lore, the progenitor of the family was an unknown German linen weaver, surnamed Weber, that fled from the Holy Roman Empire to the United Provinces of the Netherlands due to religious persecution, likely because he was a member of the Reformed church. He married a Dutch woman and fathered 3 sons, including John.[5][6][7][8]

However, a descendant of the Weaver family in Cocke County, Tennessee recorded in 1950 that the family had come from Germany, with the original immigrant Weaver being a man named John George Weaver (Waber or Wärber). John arrived on the ship "Halifax" in 1752, which departed from Rotterdam and arrived in Philadelphia. He settled in Augusta County, Virginia. One daughter, Mary Weaver, is listed as living in Cocke County, Tennessee with her husband, Benjamin O'Dell.[9][10]

The Weaver family would intermarry with the predominantly Anglo-American, notably Scotch-Irish (descendants of Lowland Scots and northern English settlers in Ireland), population of the region.[11]

Per the Family Tree DNA Weaver DNA Project, the family has the Y-DNA haplogroup J-FTC77280, originating in the Balkans.[12]

Branches of the family exist in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas.[13][14]

History

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Initial settlement

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John Weaver maintained friendly relations with the local Cherokee in the valley and built an Indigenous-style house, before purchasing 320 acres of land to construct a European log cabin as his family's permanent residence.[15][16]

Slavery and the Civil War

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John's son, Montraville, became a slaveholder.[17] Despite the vast majority of Germans in the Antebellum South not using slaves and many being generally opposed to the practice, there was a minority of German slaveholders located primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and other parts of the region.[18]

As a slaveholding family, many members of the Weaver family fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, such as Captain Elbert Weaver (1841–1935), who was Montraville's first son, and Private Abraham Weaver (1832–1913), who deserted in northern Georgia after his unit was slaughtered during Wheeler's October 1863 Raid. Abraham was the son of John Weaver of Cocke County, TN, an early 19th century settler in the area, and relative of John Weaver of Weaverville.[19]

John Weaver (1869-1954), son of Confederate veteran, William Thomas Weaver (1821-1903), wrote in a March 21st, 1939 letter regarding his family's experience during the Civil War in Cocke County:

Sometime ago, in writing about Civil War days, we said that Colonel George Kirk commanding Union soldiers made two trips through Cocke county. On one of these trips, i do not now recall much detailed information, if I ever learned much about it. It was claimed he had a regiment of infantrymen, with [a] considerable number of mounted men. His was the largest body of soldiers that ever operated in Cocke County. On the trip of which we are writing now, he came through from Greene county, and camped for some days at Sweetwater, on the hill back of the Stanbery residence (Today Sweetwater is called Edwina.) Then on up the Pigeon river, crossing at the ford above the Denton mill, then known as John Baker mill, and through to Cosby, camping again at the John Harrison place, and on into Sevier County.

It was Kirk’s usual way to camp a few days at a place and his men forage over the country and gather supplies off of the people. But on this occasion they were hampered in their operations by the Lewis scouts that were then operating in the county. There were only some twenty-five or thirty of the scouts, and of course they could not make any successful attack on the main body, but they would skirmish around and keep them from scattering out all over the country and taking the people’s stuff. At this particular time the scouts were under the command of Captain A.L. Mims.

Captain Mims was not a regular member of the scouts, but when he would be in the county, he was forced to stay with them as a means of protection, and since he outranked Lewis, when he would be with them, he would be in command.

Mims’ men operated from the tops of the hills on the west side of the river, the top of the McNabb cliffs and the hills on up the river to the crossing place… We were told that there was a bullet hole in the door facing of a small house that stood by the roadside just above the Stanbery store that was shot by some of the scouts from across the river. In crossing the river, Kirk’s men started to carry over on their horse, but Mims’ men were stationed behind the point of a ridge on the west side of the river and drove them back and forced them to wade the river in a more compact formation.

Their route from the Denton ford was by way of the old home where this writer was born and raised. Our mother sometimes cooked for Mims and some of his men. Just in front of the house, Mims’ men formed for attack on Kirk’s advance guard. One of the scouts darted in and got one of the advance men and got him up behind on the horse and started up the hill, but the prisoner jumped and ran and made his escape.

Our father, who was home at the time, was hid in a thicket on the other side of the branch, saw this incident, and used to show me where this occurred. Mims’ men were on the hill above the house and kept Kirk’s men moving along in ranks, so they did not have much chance to search the premises. They did, however, get Mother’s turkey hen.

When they started on into Sevier county, they were attacked at the Ragan ford by a detachment of General Vance’s men that had come through Haywood county, and were at the time camped at the old Liberty school house. A man living on California creek in Madison county told this writer some years ago that he was with Kirk’s men and at the attach they had at Cosby, he and another man ran across the bottom to the mountain and then made their way back home to [the] Pigeon river and to North Carolina.

I did not ask him if he helped eat the turkey hen.[20]

Places named for the family

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Weaver College

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Weaverville College (1898)

Weaver College, founded in 1851 as Weaverville College, was a co-educational Methodist academy located in Weaverville. It was founded on land gifted by the town's founder, Montraville Weaver, and operated from 1873 to 1934 before being merged with Rutherford College to form modern-day Brevard College.[21][22]

Weaver's Bend

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Bend of the French Broad River in Cocke County, Tennessee.[23]

Members

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Edward Lee Weaver, member of the Texas branch of the Weaverville Weavers, and a US Navy veteran of the Pacific theater.[14]

Sources

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  1. ^ Neufeld, Rob. "Visiting Our Past: There will be peace in the valley, Beech shows". The Asheville Citizen Times. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  2. ^ "Weaver, Zebulon | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  3. ^ Weaver, Pearl M. (1962). The Tribe of Jacob: The Descendants of the Reverend Jacob Weaver of Reems Creek, North Carolina, 1786-1868. Higginson Book Company. pp. 1–5. ISBN 9780740469220.
  4. ^ Stokley-McKillop, Mary (October 1999). "Weaver Family". www.tngenweb.org. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
  5. ^ "Wandering Weaverville: Main Street in the Countryside". Explore Asheville. 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  6. ^ "Biffle Researchers: History of Rims Creek Valley, North Carolina". biffle.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  7. ^ Jackson, Tim W.; Jackson, Taryn Chase (2015-09-14). Weaverville. Arcadia Publishing. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-4396-5318-0.
  8. ^ Arthur, John Preston (1914). Western North Carolina: A History (1730-1913). Edwards & Broughton Printing Company. pp. 154–159. ISBN 9781570720628.
  9. ^ O'Dell, Ruth (2024-06-29). "Over the Misty Blue Hills: The Story of Cocke County, Tennessee – Access Genealogy". Retrieved 2024-12-17.
  10. ^ Strassburger, Ralph Beaver; Hinke, William John (1934). Pennsylvania German pioneers; a publication of the original lists of arrivals in the port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. Norristown, Penn. : Pennsylvania German Society.
  11. ^ Arthur, John Preston (1996). Western North Carolina: A History (from 1730 to 1913). The Overmountain Press. pp. 154–158. ISBN 978-1-57072-062-8.
  12. ^ "FamilyTreeDNA - Weaver DNA Project".
  13. ^ Weaver, Martin (13 December 2021). "John and Leona Weaver of Tennessee and Texas". www.bookemon.com. pp. 250–255. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
  14. ^ a b "1945 Matagorda County Service Men and Women". www.usgenwebsites.org. Retrieved 2024-12-17.
  15. ^ Families, Filed under (2013-05-31). "Weaver, John". OBCGS. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  16. ^ Allen, Martha Norburn (1960). Asheville and Land of the Sky. Heritage House. p. 55.
  17. ^ "Slavery in the Reems Creek Valley | NC Historic Sites". historicsites.nc.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  18. ^ Barkin, Kenneth (2008). Kamphoefner, Walter; Helbich, Wolfgang; Vogel, Susan Carter; Gerstäcker, Friedrich; Di Maio, Irene S. (eds.). "Ordinary Germans, Slavery, and the U.S. Civil War". The Journal of African American History. 93 (1): 70–79. doi:10.1086/JAAHv93n1p70. ISSN 1548-1867. JSTOR 20064257.
  19. ^ Newsome, Kaye Allen; Brittain, Jan (2019). "A Personal History of Salem United Methodist Church: This Place is Holy" (PDF). Salem UMC Weaverville. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  20. ^ EDITOR, DUAY O’NEIL SMHP (2018-10-11). "John Weaver, favorite storyteller, passed along Civil War tales". The Newport Plain Talk. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
  21. ^ "Weaver College | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  22. ^ Price, Richard Nye (1908). Holston Methodism: From Its Origin to the Present Time. Publishing House of the M.E. Church, South, Smith & Lamar, agents. pp. 409–411. ISBN 9781018679501.
  23. ^ "Places to Stay in East Tennessee". METTC | The Official Website of the Middle East Tennessee Tourism Council. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  24. ^ "Weaver, Richard Malcolm, Jr. | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  25. ^ "Weaver, Zebulon | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  26. ^ "Weaver, William Trotter | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  27. ^ Ashe, Samuel A'Court (1907). Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present. C. L. Van Noppen. pp. 501–503. ISBN 9780795048227.
  28. ^ "Battle Unit Details – The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  29. ^ Bubenik, Christo (2023-08-17). "Park Views: W. T. Weaver Park". The City of Asheville. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
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