Even then, though, the cool mountain country of western North Carolina was known by Peidmont farmers and lowland planters from South Carolina as a good place for summer homes; and those who could afford it were already traveling to Asheville and Flat Rock and areas north and west, to ease the heart of lowland summers. Others, less well off, were coming to find permanent homes, for the mild winters, distinctive seasons and beautiful scenery made the area a desirable place to live then, just as they do now.
With the war still raging, it is not likely that many people made such a move at this particular time, but some did. According to a tale know by Brevard old timers, at lest one father and his daughter came looking for a home in the mountains. And if the story still told of what a number of people saw on dark, rainy days on Connestee Mountain is anyways true, the girl is still looking. She's still looking; a big, strapping young woman with fiery red hair streaming down her back from under her sunbonnet; searching for the home she and her father had come to find when they were brutally murdered more than a hundred years ago.
I had this story from Mrs. Charles Ashworth of Brevard, a charming elderly lady who heard it from her Uncle John Southern and an Aunt Elmira and Uncle Jud who saw the "Sunbonnet Girl" as the Apparition of Connestee Mountain came to be called.
Connestee Mountain in this reference, is the area at the top of the gap by Connestee Falls. I don't believe it's generally referred to this way today. The road is the descent from the gap to Island Ford Road a few miles south of Brevard. The descent was called Mill Hill at one time because there was a grist mill at Connestee Falls. The road now, of course, is U.S. Highway 276.
It seems that sometimes during the war years, there was a bunch of draft evaders and deserters who had a hideout near the road at the foot of the hill somewhere just below Dunn's Rock. These were a lawless bunch of hoodlums, the kind called 'Outliers' and 'Bushwackers' by the local people. They hung out at hideaways in the thinly populated country, boozing it up and fighting among themselves when they weren't murdering and robbing the women and children and old me who were all that were left after the younger men had gone off to war.
One rainy day a man and his daughter came through the gap on foot. Where they were from or why they had left, nobody knows, but the had a little money and were coming to Brevard looking for a place to buy and make their home. As ill luck would have it, they were caught at nightfall at the foot of Connestee Mountain and sought shelter at the Outlier's hideout. They were brutally murdered and their money taken.
The daughter, is is said, was a strapping young woman with fiery red hair. She was wearing a sunbonnet, but her long, red hair hung out behind, over her shoulders and down her back. It was a few years after the war that the strange tales about seeing the "Sunbonnet Girl" began.
Brevard people, in those days, bought most of their manufactured necessities in Greenville, South Carolina. For although Brevard was built around the intersectino of the Asheville-Cherryfield turnpike and the road leading southwest to Jones Gap and South Carolina, with perhaps equal traveling distances to Asheville and Greenville, they seemd to prefer Greenville. They made the long trip by wagon across the Connestee Falls gap and down the mountain, much the same as Highway 276 runs now. They took butter in casks, chestnuts, cured hams and local produce and traded for manufactured staples, plows, and tools and other necessities of the frontier homes.
Returning from such trips people began to report seeing a lone, red-haired woman wearing a sunbonner and walking along the road, seeming to be intent on where she was going. She appeared and disappeared, they said, never speaking to anyone.
One day Mrs. Ashworth's Great Aunt Elmira and Uncle Jud were returning home from Greenville in a covered wagon. It was a rainy and dreary day. Aunt Elmira happened to look behind and saw a red-haired woman walking in the rain and mud behind them. She wore a sunbonnet and her long, red hair hung out behind. Elmira told her husband: "Jud, stop and let that poor woman ride."
Aunt Elmira had never heard of the Sunbonnet Girl, of Connestee Mountain, but Uncle Jud had. He kept on driving, giving the team a flick of the reins to speed them up. Elmira told Jud again: "Stop and let that woman ride," but Jud just kept on driving.
Then Elmira looked back once more and saw the woman was gone, seeming to ahve disappeared from a clear space in the middle of the road behind them! Aunt Elmira was mystified. Uncle Jud told his wife what it was she had seen while urging the team on toward Brevard.
After this story had gone the rounds, Uncle John Southern made the boast that if he ever saw the Sunbonnet Girl, he'd speak to her. For, it was maintained, if you spoke to a ghost in the name of God, it would be compelled to answer you. Apparently Uncle John was highly curious to hear what this apparition would say.
He got his chance. Uncle John was returnig from a quick trip to Greenville on horseback one dreary day, when he heard a noise behind him on the road down Mill Hill. It was a loud rattling and rumbling like a runaway team, he said, so he pulled his horse well off to the side of the road to get out of the way. But no runaway team and wagon appeared. Instead, all he saw was a red-haired woman in a sunbonnet walking down the road. She came by him, he said later, close enough to touch. She looked neither right nor left, seemingly intent on getting to the foot of the mountain, as if she knew exactly where she was going and was intent on getting there.
Recounting the story later (and possibly with some embellishment) Uncle John said his hair stood on end. He said he had chills up his back that moved him to put his mettlesome horse to a gallop, headed for Brevard. His vow to speak to the apparition in the name of God was evidently forgotten for he never mentioned what the Sunbonnet Girl had to say' nor did he ever have any explanation for the rattling and rumbling noise he'd heard.
Tales of the apparition of the spector continued for years, according to Mrs. Ashworth. Since 60 years later a man who lived on Connestee Mountain, who had never heard the old ghost story, was walking down the road one rainy day with a friend when he happened to look back.
"Look yonder, Bill," he said, "what is that woman in a sunbonnet doing walking donw the road in the rain?"
His friend looked back, but saw no one.
The Sunbonnet Girl had gone on her invisible way, still looking, I guess, for the home she and her father had been searching for when they were brutally murdered.
A large tract of land at the top of Mill Hill and extending south and westward toward the French Broad East Fork, is now a recreational-residential development known as Connestee Falls. There are at this writing approaching 200 homes there with many more to be built on lots already sold. I should like to offer a word of wisdom to the residents of this area as they go down Mill Hill (U.S. Highway 276) to Brevard. It they should, on a rainy, dreary day, see a young woman walking along the highway; a big, strapping young woman with fiery red hair escaping down her back from a sunbonnet, they should not stop. Or, stopping, they should speak to her in the name of God and ask her to go on to wherever she belongs. Otherwise she might, the area now being settled with homes, just decide to move into theirs!
If you enjoyed this story by Cal Carpenter, check out his new book, a novel entitled Take the Wings of the Morning
This novel is available through the publisher, Trafford Publishing or locally at Highlands Book Store in Brevard.