THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
John Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
John
Henry Stonecypher, Jr. was the Revolutionary War ancestor of many
descendants
in
John Henry Stonecypher, Jr. was born
in
John Henry Stonecypher died in
1850. On
This
Rose, This Tomb, This Wooded Dell
Struggling
roses shed fragrance
In
July afternoon.
Sunshine
slanting
through oaks and elms
Falls
dappled on
the soapstone tomb.
We
gather at
secluded gravesite, voices hushed,
Minds
awash in
floods of imagination
About
our
Revolutionary War ancestor.
Ninety-six
years
from womb to tomb
The
gravestone
tells us.
We
know but
sketches
Of his
long and
fruitful life.
A
pioneer, a
mountain man,
He
weighed the
choices given him:
Ignore
the call of
freedom’s price
Or go
resolutely
to the fray.
In
He
heeded the call
to arms.
At
King’s Mountain
he lifted musket,
Sharp-shot
at
Beatty’s Ford,
At
Guilford
Courthouse, wounded sore,
Went
home to heal,
then left to fight again.
Tide
turned with
October’s leaves.
On to
Pleasant
Gardens,
In
battles along
Catawba’s waters,
Red
with blood of
patriots and royalists alike,
He
tasted victory,
reward for hero’s dreams.
From
private to captain
Without
benefit of
military training,
He
employed
instincts, pride, love for freedom,
Marks
of
independent men.
Again
the call to far horizons
Beyond
familiar
Wilkes:
He
wound through
mountains, forests, valleys
To
claim in 1784
his 20,000 acres
In
north
To
Nancy Curtis he
pledged his troth,
She
the daughter
of a Revolutionary soldier,
He a
veteran of
that freedom war.
To
their acreage
they went, hopes high.
They
tamed the
land, cleared for a house,
The
best their
money and expertise could build,
A
mansion with the
flair and lines of architect Presnell.
John
Henry joined
to quell Indian uprisings,
Bring
those proud
and noble natives to subjection,
Helped
drive them
from the Tugaloo and Estanollee.
Had he
no thoughts
for justice,
For
peace to those
whose lands were taken,
Those
who wanted
only to be kindred
With
the woods,
the soil, the sky and running waters?
Or did
he thinks
his wounds at Guilford Courthouse
Gave
him
unquestioned right,
A
heritage to go
where adventure beckoned,
Claim
as his own the
valleys, hills and streams?
What
thoughts propelled our ancestor?
We can
but guess
In
this place on
Eastanollee Creek
He
built a
plantation, a mill,
Became
a founding
father in a church and started schools.
Long
life was his,
and children, too,
Rose
up to call
him blessed.
At age
ninety-six
he died,
Injured
in a fall
from steps
At his
Eastanollee
Stonecypher Mill.
Today,
beneath this grove of trees
We
gather to pay
tribute to his life and deeds,
Lay
claim to his
kinship and his fame.
Brass
music by seventh
and eighth generation descendants
Sounds
the strains
of “America the Beautiful”
And
“Mine Eyes
Have Seen the Glory.”
Words
of adulation
flow in afternoon assembly.
Beside
the grave
rose petals ripple in a fleeting breeze.
Thoughts
unfold as
blossoms, separate and confined
In
some vast sea
of years and deeds,
Converge
on a gray
soapstone monument,
A
patriot and a
name.
Updated August 31,
2009
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