130 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
back home again. These visits to the great world 
were confined, of course, to those who had been able 
to profit by the advantages of the situation in the 
mountains, where Hfe was yet primitive and most 
men poor. 
But Ashevllle was moving on, and in 1835, we are 
told. Dr. Samuel Dickson established there the first 
young ladles' seminary, so admirable an Institution 
that there came to It not only the girls of the region, 
but also many from the low country. This school 
was held In the first brick building In Ashevllle, 
described as a handsome colonial residence on South 
Main Street. 
Both the Newton Academy and the Young Ladles' 
Seminary were established and taught by Presby- 
terian ministers, and the first church was Presby- 
terian, a large and comfortable brick building, we 
are told, having been built on a beautiful site pre- 
sented by James Patton and Samuel Chunn, where 
the Presbyterian church now stands. The Metho- 
dists began In a wooden school-house on the site 
of the present Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
Episcopalians made a small beginning, but in 1849 
were able to build their church on land given them 
by James W. Patton, where the present church now 
stands. 
The Baptists had the hardest time of all at first, 
but the unflagging efforts of the Rev. Thomas 
Stradley, an Englishman who for many years was 
almost the sole representative of the Baptists in this 
region, were finally crowned with success, and he got 
