Echoes of Eden in Western North Carolina: The Johnstone Settlement, 1852-1864

In the 1850s, a group of affluent rice planters left coastal South Carolina to establish a permanent settlement in the mountains of western North Carolina. Led by Francis Withers Johnstone, members of the Rutledge, Hume, Gadsden, Ewbank, and Hanckel families acquired thousands of acres along the French Broad River Valley. This settlement, while part of a greater westward movement, was unique because it was shaped less by the search for status and wealth than by social and environmental pressures--family disputes, a collapsing rice culture, and recurring yellow fever epidemics exacerbated by Charleston's climate.

Relocating with large numbers of enslaved people, the settlers sought to maintain the social and economic structures they had known in the east. The community they created, later known as the Johnstone Settlement, was short-lived, and its history gradually faded from public record. This work represents the first cohesive effort to recover and examine the origins, development, and dissolution of the Johnstone Settlement.