A week ago this past Saturday, we were in Yancey County celebrating the county’s 175th birthday. Yancey County, and the Toe River Valley in general, has gone largely undocumented. Only Avery County has a somewhat formal published history.
Local residents in the Toe River Valley started petitioning the general assembly in Raleigh to establish a new county in 1825. The general assembly, controlled by people from the eastern part of the state, did not want new western counties eroding their base of power. It was not until 1833 that the measure passed for a new county, named in honor of former speaker Bartlett Yancey. Even with the passage of the act, the eastern representatives tried to slip in measures that would give the new county “administration without representation,” and they tried to establish a new county in the eastern part of the state by the name of Roanoke. Neither measure was adopted.
The new Yancey County covered the entire Toe River Valley, and then some.
Yancey County needed a county seat, and a group of commissioners was chosen: Rickles Stanley, Thomas Baker, Joseph Shepherd, Levi Bailey, and John McElroy. The commissioners first met in January 1834, and soon chose a track of land known as “Ray Flats”; the property was owned by John “Yellow Jacket” Bailey. In honor of Otway Burns, a privateer in the War of 1812, the new county seat was named in his honor. Burns’s vote for the new county in 1833 cost him his seat in the assembly.
So Yancey County is 175 years old. It is home to the highest peak east of the Mississippi River, the South Toe River, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Parkway Theater – and no history of the county exists. Who is going to take up this challenge?
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