A Brief History of Welbourne CountyWelbourne County was formed in 1889 from Rowan. It was named in honor of Lucius Welbourne, a well known surveyor whom then Governor John Owen contracted in 1866 to survey the land that would become the county. Mr. Welbourne brought along as his assistant Mr. Ashewood Bennett who had married Mr. Welbourne's daughter Lobelia. Mr. Bennett had no experience as a surveyor or a surveyor's assistant. Lobelia had met Mr. Bennett while on vacation with a girl friend in Norfolk, Virginia and brought him home to Raleigh two months later insisting that they get married. The birth of a boy, Ashewood II, not six months later proved why. The marriage did not begin on a positive note as an unnamed suitor crashed the wedding reception claiming to be Lobelia's fiancé and soundly trounced Mr. Bennett. He was lead away by several ushers and groomsmen but not before informing the groom that if he was still in Norfolk after three days that he would be shot. Mr. Bennett convinced his wife that they would both be better suited if they would accompany her parents back to North Carolina. In a little over a month the good Mr. Bennett ran up a rather sizeable gambling debt with an very unsavory character who threatened him with bodily injury involving the removal of various parts of his body. The very day that he broke the news to a rather unsympathetic Lobelia Mr. Welbourne returned from a work related trip to the coast and announced that he would heading to Rowan County to help lay out the land to form a new county. Mr. Bennett quickly offered to accompany his father-in-law who and not knowing Mr. Bennett's plight and being somewhat unfamiliar with his new son-in-law Mr. Welbourne was quite impressed with his industriousness and his vigor. Mr. Welbourne saw his son-in-law's true colors however when they were still on the train whic took them to Rowan County. They would ride out from there on horseback to the land that they would be surveying. Mr. Welbourne writes the following about his son-in-law in one of his journals. "It seems that my daughter's choice of a husband is a hair-brained lout with less brains that the bench on which I am presently sitting but almost as much personality. He takes one hundred steps and goes no where. He talks constantly and says nothing. He is no ungainly that he spends more time on his face that his feet and now barely a day into this assignment I am struggling to think of what duties that I can give such a man to keep him occupied and thus out of my way and away from the rest of the crew who have suggested hanging as a possible solution to the problem with which we have all been saddled. As time goes on it get's harder and harder to invent reasons not to let them." It was through Mr. Bennett’s two left feet that Ashewood Falls got its name. Anyone with any knowledge of the area can knows that there are no waterfalls of any size. The largest waterway in the county is the Keyauwee River which does not have a waterfall taller than a few inches anywhere along it. No our county seat got its name from the numerous references to Mr. Bennett’s ineptitude that Mr. Welbourne made in the extensive and detailed journals that he kept while drawing out the county lines. Some examples of those references read as follows: "July 24, 1866 9:04: Went from a large oak eighty paces to an old creek bed. 9:05: Ashewood Falls and twists his ankle. I am sending him back to camp." "July 31, 1866 4:07 went from a small creek ten paces to a large rock that jutted out of the bank above it. 4:09: Ashewood Falls into the creek. I am sending him back to camp for dry clothes." "August 12, 11:23 went from a huge white flint rock, undoubtedly a tombstone or primitive monument of some sort one hundred paces to the shore of the Keyauwee River. 11:23 I sent Ashewood back to keep him from falling in. 11:25 Ashewood Falls over a tree root and busts his nose on the trunk of the tree. I have sent him back to camp. The one favorable thing that happened as the two men traveled throughout the this part of the county is that they both seem to fall in love with it and by the time that the county was laid out and incorporated both had made up their minds to take up resident. By this time Mr. Welbourne's animosity with his son-in-law had developed into out and out loathing and he struck a deal with Mr. Bennett in which Mr. Welbourne would buy him any 300 acres of his choosing, in exchange for his divorcing Mr. Welbourne's daughter Lobelia. Mr. Bennett was given a day to think it over and it was reported that he made his decision in half the time. He, in what Mr. Welbourne saw as yet another demonstration of the young man's ignorance choise of a flat expanse of land in the central part of the county miles away from the river or any other water way. As Mr. Bennett settled down on land that would one day become Ashewood Falls, Mr. Welbourne is reported, for one reason or another, to have shown his former son-in-law all the instances in his journal when the young man had fallen and suggested calling the Bennett estate Ashewood Falls. Mr. Bennett is said to have declared the name quite pretty and agreed. When the main house was built a sign was erected out front that said just that. Mr. Welbourne having bought his former son-in-law the promised land took what he saw to be the choicest a stretch of land comparable in size to Ashewood Falls and laying to the northwest on the shore of the Keyauwee River. He sent for his wife and daughters all of which still lived at home, including the newly divorced Lobelia and his relations arrived safely a week later, preceding all of their worldly goods by two days and Mr. Welbourne's mother-in-law by a week. Mr. Welbourne's wife had informed her relations about the new land and, unbeknownst to Mr. Welbourne, invited them all to come and live on the newly acquired property. Over a month after completing the spacious main house that he had built for his wife, Mr. Welbourne was joined by her, his daughters, one boyfriend, one grandson (Ashewood II), his mother-in-law, father-in-law, their retarded brother and all their possessions including all matter of dogs, cats, birds and other cousins who would drop in stay for a month or two and then leave or build their own houses nearby. Remembering that Mr. Bennett had named his estate Mr. Welbourne, gave his a name that he thought suitable. He had that name engraved in a large boulder that sat in front of his domicile: Hell. During the time that the population of Hell, N.C. was multiplying Ashewood Falls for the most part kept only its initial resident. Mr. Bennett had people come in to work the fields, not being fond of hard work himself, and, according to his own accounts had many guests mostly women. He had never sought or received lasting company, or close neighbors until one day when, as Mr. Welbourne put it in his journals, Ashewood Fell. He had some friends come down from Norfolk to play poker. It's a established fact that one of these acquaintances was the very same man who had so badly beat him at he and Lobelia's wedding a little over two years before. After three days that very same man lost a beautiful but high strung black stallion to Mr. Bennett. After thrashing him again the man along with his companions left and they had no sooner vanished around the bend when Mr. Bennett took his knew prize out for a late night ride. He was not an accomplished horseman and being as inept on a horse as he was on foot he had not gone twenty yards when he fell off of the stallion, which raced away into the night and was never seen again, and right in front of another horse ridden by a man who was scouting the area for a possible location for a train depot. The man's name was Steven McAllister. Any assumptions that he is any relation, however distant, to Slobber McAllister, Welbourne County's own village idiot is ludicrous. The historical society and other local historians and/or genealogists would not even entertain the idea much less do any serious research into it even for a publication as prestigious as this. Mr. S. McAllister was sent by the Department of the Railroads in Raleigh to scout out a location for a possible rail stop in the new county to compliment the one already in service in Salisbury. He had been behind schedule having been detained in Hell (N.C.) by Mr. Welbourne who had heard of the bid for a depot and had practically begged Mr. McAllister's superiors as well as Mr. McAllister himself to put said rail stop on his property. The proximity to the river and the large number of people who would be made homeless by the construction of the depot ruined Mr. Welbourne's chances but he kept Mr. McAllister well into the night and put him on the road not a foot from Mr. Bennett when he fell off his horse. Mr. McAllister, who proved to be a very good, kind-hearted, man thought that he was the cause of Mr. Bennett’s accident. He took Mr. Bennett into the house and, not finding anyone else there, spent the night taking care of him. The next morning when Mr. Bennett came to the two men began talking and Mr. McAllister was shown not only the house but all of Ashewood Falls. The level ground most of which was clear of large trees presented the ideal location for the train depot. It was built on the Bennett property and the area began to grow quickly being incorporated into the town of Ashewood Falls in 1879 and the county seat two years later. Hell grew as well but slower. Spurred on by the construction of the Misenheimer Textile Mill in 1883. In 1953 the woman’s auxiliary of the town of Hell put an idea before the town council to change the name which they saw as undesirable. A year later the name was changed to Mullond in honor of long time mayor Harlan Mullond. Four years after Woolman College relocated there from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Both towns grew together but Ashewood Falls remained the pearl of the county, perhaps not deservingly so taking into account the behavior of their founders. Mr. Welbourne conceeded the success of Ashewood Falls when the governor honored him by naming the county after him when it was finally incorporated and named, delayed by unnamed political wheel spinning. He retired not long after moving to Welbourne County and lived out his days in that large house beside the river in Mullond with his wife and daughters all of which stayed home, for one reason or another, with a handful of grand children, one by none other than Roger McAllister who remained in the area for several years before moving on and fading from the picture. Mr. Welbourne lived to the age of 101, surrounded by his family before dying in his sleep in 1916. Mr. Bennett passed away several years earlier. Having thrown a party for new years in 1906 he got very drunk and staggered outside for a breath of fresh air during a rare, for this area, snow storm. He sat down on the porch and passing out there froze to death while the party went on inside.
There are many small communities in Welbourne County. Below are some of the larger hamlets not counting Ashewood Falls and Mullond: Again there are several other of the smaller communities here in the county and countless more stories than the one I have just told. Our county is a small one and its populace very selective. Our population isn’t blossoming as much as other areas of the state and perhaps many don’t think that we have as much to offer. We here in Welbourne County, however, love our little corner of Heaven and think it has a great deal for everyone. Most people don’t know about this little diamond in the rough and in my opinion it’s the state best kept secret. One secret that we here in Welbourne County don’t mind keeping. |