THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Adam Vandiver -
Truth or Legend?
In stories
that have been passed down through the generations,
it is sometimes difficult to separate truth and legend.
Such is the account of one Adam Vandiver,
supposedly the progenitor of many of the Vandivers in
About the time gold fever struck the
mountain region of
Adam Vandiver was small of stature but
his exploits measured to giant proportions.
He was sixty years old when Lanman met him.
Vandiver was described as having “a weasley
face, a long white beard, and small gray eyes.”
Born in
Vandiver told Lanman how he had been a
soldier in the Creek War, killing more Indians than any other white man
in the
army. Thrice married, he was living with
his third wife. He had fathered
thirty
children, but at the time of Lanman’s visit, only five of his offspring
were
under the Vandiver roof, the others having died young or were
“scattered to the
winds.”
Vandiver had one mule and some goats,
and faithful hunting dogs. His main
occupation was hunting the mountains of
He named his mule after a well-known
tale “The Devil and Tom Walker.” He
preferred
deer for their hides, but saved the fur of almost any four-legged
creature he
could trap or kill. The largest number
of deer skins he took home at one time was 600.
He estimated he had killed over 4,000 deer in his lifetime.
He practiced ingenuity and cunning in
pursuit of his wild prey. One day he
spotted a fine gray wolf and aimed his gun at its head.
The wolf escaped into a cave. Vandiver
waited, but hearing nothing he went
in, thinking the wolf had died. In the
back of the small cave, the wounded wolf and Vandiver engaged in a
life-or-death encounter, with the wolf receiving Vandiver’s knife to
its
heart. On dragging out the wolf, he
discovered that his initial shot had broken the animal’s jawbone and
because of
that the hunter’s life was spared.
One day when Vandiver was completely
out of ammunition, a large black bear assaulted one of his favorite
hunting
dogs and was about to squeeze it to death.
Vandiver took on the bear and again landed his trusty hunting
knife in
the big bear’s heart. The victory was
not without its price, for Vandiver lost two of his fingers to his own
sharp
knife. The bear weighed 350 pounds, a
formidable enemy for the small man to wrestle.
Another battle was with a buck which
Vandiver shot at the top of a 30-foot high precipice.
Thinking the deer dead, he approached it, but
was assaulted by the deer which pushed Vandiver over the cliff into a
pond of
water below. The deer got away, and
Vandiver suffered no broken bones, thanks to the pool that somewhat
softened
his fall. About a month later, the
mighty hunter killed a buck with a bad neck wound.
He felt sure he had finally killed the deer
that had pushed him over the precipice.
In
Was this legendary “Hunter of
Tallulah” a real person? Yes. Male children in the Vandiver family to this
very day are given the name Adam to honor this progenitor.
In cemetery records of
[*Note: Later,
I learned the grave is, indeed, that
of Adam Poole Vandiver, the “Hunter of Tallulah.”]
c2005 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published January 13, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Updated September 8, 2008
Back To Union County, Georgia GenWeb Site