Genealogy of Brasstown, North Carolina

Compiled in 1935

Mr. and Mrs. John C. Campbell toured the Appalachian area in the 1910's looking for a site for a folk school based on the Danish folkehojskole (folk school). Dr. Campbell was a graduate of Williams College and Andover Theological Seminary. He had experience with being principal of a school in Joppa, Alabama and in Tennessee. He had also served as president of Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. Olive Dame Campbell had taught in high school. After his death in 1919, Olive and her friend, Marguerite Butler, continued the search and with the assistance of the Brasstown community (Clay and Cherokee Counties in Western North Carolina), John C. Campbell Folk School was formed there in 1925. (To learn more about this school, click http://www.folkschool.org .)

 

In 1935, under Mrs. Campbell's direction, interviews of the Brasstown residents yielded a genealogy of the area on sheets of paper 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches. This was probably a class project, because records show that she taught genealogy at the folk school. These families were described very precisely using a combination of diagrams and descendants' charts. There are 286 pages of these notes. See example to left. Click here for expanded view.

 

Next, the data of the 3 most populous surnames was typed on a wide-carriage typewriter, using the same format, onto sheets of paper that are 14 inches wide and 15 inches high. Pages were then taped together side by side and folded accordion-style. One family, the Greens, has 64 pages. This set is 896 inches wide when opened. The other two families were Brendle and Clayton. This image shows the halfsheets on top of the larger pages.

In 1984, information about the three families listed above was typed, outline-style (for an example, see OUTLINE) by a few members of a local genealogical society, and it was printed in their newsletter of Summer 1985, Volume II, Number III..

The Southwestern Genealogical Society Quarterly was published from Winter 1984 (Volume I, Number I) through Fall 1994 (Volume XI, Number IV). Each of these 44 issues has a surname index at the back. A compilation of all these surname indexes was created in 1997, plus the tables of contents. For a list of the articles, see SWGS . Copies of the issues are in the public libraries in Murphy, Hayesville, Andrews, and Robbinsville, and in the Family History Center in nearby Peachtree, NC.

Genealogy has been taught at Campbell Folk School through the years.  Currently, classes have been offered since 1995.  Students appreciate the diligent work of previous researchers in preserving the family history of Brasstown.  For a list of genealogy and other classes, see http://www.folkschool.org .

 

 

Other family history data was also transcribed.

Click CEMETERY to read the 1935 listing of some tombstones in Green Cove Cemetery in Clay County and Brasstown Baptist Church Cemetery in Cherokee County.

Click BIBLE to read the data from the Green Family Bible in possession of Jane Sales about 1937.

In August 2000, the local Genealogy Study Group toured the History Center at Campbell, a museum that showcases the school's development since 1925. It was a treat to view these old genealogical records. Several members were interested in keying in the data so that it could be shared on the Internet. Mary McClure Nichols typed the 3 families from the journal and 2 families from copies of the small pages. Marie Benge Craig Roth typed the remainder of the data, using the small sheets.

The gedcom files of these 2,234 persons are located at World Connect, http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=campbellgen
Summary of Major Surnames	Number of Persons	Number of Marriages
Brendle	154	48
Carringer	318	99
Clayton	151	45
Green	502	142
Greene/Arrant	107	37
Scroggs	78	24
Misc.	924	336
TOTALS	2,234	731

 

No editing was used on this data. The information has few dates and few places. No further genealogical information is available at Campbell Folk School. It is hoped that researchers will be able to add ancestors to their research.

Web site designed by Marie Benge Craig Roth, March 2002. Revised by Marie in August 2009.