ASHEVILLE 123 
and only trappers and hunters ventured into this 
hazardous region, then swarming with game. 
The little group of log houses, at first called Mor- 
ristown, later, by the desire of the people, was 
named Asheville, in honor of Samuel Ashe, the well- 
loved governor of the state, and one of a family of 
gentlemen and heroes who loyally defended their 
adopted country against British rule, there being 
no less than five officers serving at one time from this 
family during the Revolutionary War. The origin 
of the name of the town explains the indignation 
felt by the people when careless strangers spell the 
first syllable without the letter e. 
The stories of the early settlement of the South 
are as thrilling as stories of settlement in any part 
of the New World; there was the same reckless 
bravery, the same opposition to oppression, the same 
spirit of adventure, the same encounters with Indi- 
ans, the same defiance of hardship and overcoming 
of difficulties, that afforded such stirring material 
to early writers in the North. 
The little hamlet up in the mountain wilderness 
that thus honored the name of Ashe consisted at 
first of less than a dozen log cabins, but those cabins 
had been put there by the kind of men who see a city 
when they look at a forest, and who regard an obsta- 
cle, including hostile Indians, as a happy chance to 
do something. Since they were made of the stuff 
that takes an axe and goes confidently into the woods 
to hew out a nation, they were also prophets, as wit- 
ness the case of Zebulon Baird, a zealous promoter of 
