Season Two And The Mission

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. Picture a morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's early spring 1812. The air still is that cold at that elevation, the kind of cold that just lives in the hollows and along the creek banks long after the calendar says winter is over. The rhododendron is coming in. The chestnut trees are enormous, older than memory, casting shadows across the trail. Somewhere in the woods near Flat Rock, North Carolina, a very old man is walking alone. He has a shovel. He knows where he's going, or at least he thinks he does. He has made this trip before, or he tried to. The path through the trees, the sound of the water getting louder as he gets closer, the particular bend in the creek where things look different at night than they do during the day. He's 93 years old. His legs remember being much younger, but his mind is still sharp enough to be stubborn. He doesn't make it. When the search party finds him that April morning in 1812, he is face down in Pheasant Branch, a small mountain stream, cold and clear, running between two hills on the edge of his land. The shovel is beside him. There is no sign of struggle, no footprints that don't belong. The working theory is that he tripped crossing the water, hit his head on a rock, and drowned, unconscious, alone in less than a foot of water. His name is Abraham Kuykdendall, and he has just become a legend. The thing about legends is that they replace the man. Within weeks of his death, people in Flat Rock begin to tell stories. A figure is seen among the trees at night, frantically digging in one place and then another, disappearing before anyone can get close. Lights moving through the woods where no lights should be. A one-horse wagon on the road near Pheasant Branch, with an old man sitting on the seat and a large black iron pot beside him, vanishing into the dark before anyone can reach it. The most powerful man in the history of what is now Henderson County, North Carolina. A man who owned thousands of acres of land, who commanded militias, who helped build a county from nothing, who lived through 93 years of colonial America and revolution and frontier wilderness is remembered primarily as a ghost story. His grave marker isn't even where he's buried. Nobody knows where he's buried. And somewhere under a large bent white oak near a mountain stream in the Blue Ridge, there is, according to the legend, an iron washpot full of gold and silver coins that has never been found. I want to tell you how that happened, but more than that, I want to tell you who Abraham Kuykdendall actually was, because I think the ghost story is the least interesting thing about him. Abraham Kuykdendall was born in October 1719 in Orange County, New York. October 1719, three years before the future George Washington, 57 years before the Declaration of Independence. The American Revolution isn't even really a grievance yet. The colonies are still very much British, but Abraham is very much Dutch. He's baptized in October in the Dutch Reformed Church in Deer Park, New York. It's a small settlement in the Hudson River Valley near what is now Port Jervis. It's right on the border of New York and New Jersey. His family has been in America for a few generations by this point, part of the Dutch wave that settled New Amsterdam and then just kept pushing up into that Hudson River Valley in the mid and late 1600s. His parents are Cornelius Kuykdendall and Martja Westvall. Though I'll be honest with you, genealogists have argued about this for decades. Because you see, there were two Kuykdendall brothers who married two Westvall sisters, and there's this tangle of intermarriages that makes the family tree look more like a family wreath. That's what my mom calls it. What we know for certain is that Abraham was born and baptized and raised, all in that area that is now Orange County, New York. But from the time he could make his own decisions, he rarely stayed in one place for very long. Growing up when and where he did, he learned what the frontier teaches you: that you figure things out for yourself, that you don't wait for someone else to solve your problems, that the land rewards the bold and punishes the hesitant. In 1743, he marries Elizabeth Fiddler in Kingston, New York. He's 23 years old. She's about 15. That is not unusual for the time, though it is a little bit jarring to say that out loud in our time. They'll be married for more than 50 years. They'll have at least 13 children together. They will move across Virginia into what is now West Virginia, down through the Carolinas, out to what is now Tennessee, and then back to Carolinas again. Their life together is not settled. It's a life of constant motion, reinvention, constant arrival to somewhere new. But Abraham is not just a man who moved around. He is a man who led as he did so. In 1747, when he's 28 years old, Spain is attacking North Carolina's port towns and shipping lanes. And there is something called the Spanish Alarm. It's this period of military threat along the Carolina coast. And Abraham is listed as a corporal in Captain Samuel Corbyn's militia. He's 28 years old, and already he's the kind of man they put on a list to call on when there's trouble. By 1770, he's a captain. He's appointed to command the Tryon County Militia. That's Western North Carolina, the frontier edge of the colonies. And by 1775, as the revolution is beginning to catch fire, he's appointed again as a captain. By 1776, he's the captain of the safety committee in old Tryon County. These are the people who are organizing resistance to the British at a local level. These are the people who are deciding in real time what a revolution looks like in the local communities. He's in his 50s when the Revolutionary War begins. He's in his 60s when it ends. Most men his age are just watching. Abraham is still serving. When Trion County gets dissolved, then Rutherford County is created in 1779. Abraham is selected as one of the commissioners to choose the site and supervise the construction of the courthouse and the prison and the stocks for the newly formed county. He's also appointed Justice of the Peace. He doesn't just participate in the building of this new nation. He's literally deciding where to put the courthouse. And then when the war is over, and most men his age are looking for somewhere to settle down and rest, Abraham moves again. He and his brother Peter take their families to Washington County, North Carolina, which is actually now Tennessee. Peter dies there in 1783, leaving a will that names Abraham as his executor. So Abraham settles the estate, gathers his children and his brother's younger children, and brings them all back to North Carolina. He is now in his late 60s and he's just getting started. In the 1780s, Abraham arrives in what is now Henderson County, North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Mountains, what probably feels like the western edge of everything. He's awarded 600 acres by the state of North Carolina as compensation for his service in the revolution. 600 acres of mountain land dense with chestnut and oak and rhododendron crossed by cold streams sitting along the old state road that drovers use to move their livestock down from the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina and Tennessee to the coastal markets of South Carolina and Georgia. He looks at this spot of land and he sees opportunity. Within a few years, Abraham owns more than 2,000 acres. Most of the land is now in the village of Flat Rock. He builds a tavern, the largest inn in the area, built of logs, which was unusually grand for the frontier. He builds stables and corrals large enough to house the livestock of the drovers that are passing through. He builds a grist mill and a sawmill. He builds a distillery and he serves, by all accounts, excellent whiskey. He gives land for a church, the Mud Creek Baptist Church, built in 1804, still a functioning congregation today. He is in his 70s when he builds all of this. He is doing it from scratch in the mountains with no banks, no infrastructure, no guarantee that any of it will last. He has 13 children now scattered across the frontier. He has a wife who has followed him across half a continent. He has survived a colonial childhood, a revolution, and the death of his brother. He has buried people he loved. He has started over more times than most people start once. By every measure that mattered in his world, land, power, influence, posterity, Abraham had won. So why, after more than 25 years of empire building in this place, why does he end up face down in a creek? Here's where the story gets complicated. Abraham has a policy at his tavern: payment in gold or silver coins only. No paper, no credit, no promises. You pay in metal or you don't stay. That's not unusual for the time. Paper currency was unreliable, banks were scarce and often very far away. And a man on the frontier learned quickly that the only money you could trust was the money that you could control. But Abraham takes it a little bit further than most. He accumulates over the years a significant fortune in coins, and he keeps it in his house under his own roof. His first wife, Elizabeth, dies sometime between 1800 and 1804. They had been married for more than 50 years. Her gravesite is not known. Abraham is 80-something years old. He's a widower in the mountains with a fortune and coin and no bank to put it in. And then in January of 1805, at the age of 85, he remarries. Her name is Bathsheba Barrett Oxford. She's a widow. She's approximately 63 years old, about 20 years younger than him. Although legend is going to later dramatically exaggerate, describing her as young and beautiful and extravagant. The historical record is a little different. What the legend agrees on is this: Bathsheba liked nice things, fine clothes, jewelry. Those peddlers who traveled the old state road learned quickly that she was a very good customer. And Abraham, who had spent his entire life being the one who decided everything, who controlled everything, who trusted no one with anything important, he did not like this. Legend has not been kind to Bathsheba. She's cast as a spendthrift wife, and the reason Abraham hid his gold, she is a villain in a story that probably doesn't actually have a villain. The truth is probably a lot more nuanced, probably a lot more human. Abraham was a man who never shared control of anything, not the militia or the land or the money. And whether Bathsheba was extravagant or simply living in a way that made him nervous, we don't know. What we do know is what he did. One night, the legend says it was dark. He used a pine torch to light the way. He went to his strongbox, he transferred his coins into a large black iron wash pot. And then he woke up his two enslaved men. Now, I need to stop here for a moment because this is the part of the story that treasure hunters and ghost story enthusiasts tend to move past quickly. And I don't want to do that. We do not know these men's names. The historical record, which preserved Abraham's birth date and his baptism record, and his land deeds and his militia appointments and his marriages and the names of his children did not preserve the names of these two men. They were enslaved. They were property in the eyes of the law and the record keepers of 1812 in Buncombe County, North Carolina. In the inventory of Abraham's estate after his death, they were simply referred to as two Negro men, unnamed. Now, I'm not going to stop looking for their names, but that's where we're at right now. What we know is this Abraham blindfolded both of them. He made them carry the heavy iron pot through the dark woods, crisscrossing through trees until they were completely disoriented. He removed their blindfolds. He had them dig a hole beneath a large bent white oak near a mountain stream. They buried the pot, then he blindfolded them again for the return trip. And then he told them, on threat of death, never to speak of what they had done. Think about what he asked of them. Not just the labor of carrying a heavy pot through the dark woods, not just the fear of being blindfolded and led through the wilderness in the middle of the night. He asked them to carry his secret and to protect his wealth and to risk their lives for his peace of mind. And here's what I find both heartbreaking and kind of remarkable. After Abraham died face down in Pheasant Branch, those two men told everything they knew. They told the family. They described the walk through the woods as best as they could remember it. They said that the pot was buried near a large bent white oak near a mountain stream. They gave every detail they had. They were not loyal to Abraham and his secret. They were loyal to the family. They tried to give back what Abraham had hidden. They just didn't know enough. Abraham had made sure of that. He had trusted them with the labor and threatened their lives with the consequence. But he hadn't trusted them with the actual information. He had kept the most important part, exactly where they were, which oak tree, exactly which stream. He kept that all to himself. That's kind of the story inside the treasure story that nobody ever talks about. A man who trusted no one, certainly not the men who carried his fortune through the woods. Okay, back to the legend. So sometime after burying the pot, the stories vary on how long. Abraham decides he needs some of his coins for a business transaction. He takes a shovel, he goes into the woods alone. He does not tell anyone where he is going. He doesn't come back. One version of the story says he was found quickly, and another one says the search took a little longer. What all the versions agree on is the image of this old man face down in the water with a shovel next to him. The most likely explanation is that he tripped, crossing Pheasant Branch, struck his head, and drowned. His sons came. They asked the two enslaved men what they could tell them. And those men told everything. Search parties went out immediately. They looked along the banks of Pheasant Branch. They looked under white oak trees. How many of those were there? They looked for a large bent oak near a stream. They never found it. To this day, they haven't found it. Treasure hunters still search the area around Flat Rock. One set of searchers were part of an archaeological dig sponsored by a university, and there's an entire study written up about it. But I'm not convinced that they were on an archaeological dig so much as they were looking for that treasure. And who can blame them? It's estimated that large pot of coins would be worth around $8 million today. More if there are rare coins in that stash. And it's still out there. Abraham Kuykdendall died on April 1st, 1812. He was buried somewhere near his home on his land in Flat Rock. The family cut down large chestnut trees, those enormous old trees that once dominated the Appalachians. They split the trunks in half and they lined and covered his grave with them to keep the wild animals away from the body. Nobody marked the grave in any other way that survived. There's now a monument to him at Mud Creek Baptist Church Cemetery. It's a fine monument, well decorated, placed there in 2000 by the Abraham Kirkendall chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Along with descendants in the Kirkendall family, they wanted to mark that spot. That DAR chapter was named for him. His legacy is honored. But the monument is not where he's buried because nobody knows where he's buried. This man who spent his entire life deciding exactly where everything went, right? The courthouse, the church, the coins, his family ended up in an unmarked grave in an unknown location. And almost immediately the ghost stories began. People traveling at night near Pheasant Branch reported seeing a bent old figure moving through the trees, digging frantically in one spot and then another, and then disappearing before anyone can reach him. A traveler on horseback described pulling alongside a one-horse wagon on the road near the creek with an old man driving in a large black iron pot on the seat beside him, and then watching the whole thing just vanish. A local historian named Louise Howe Bailey, who owned a home near the site of Abraham's death, said she would sit on her porch on certain nights watching for the mysterious lantern lights in the woods. Abraham Kuykdendall survived the Spanish Alarm, the American Revolution, the Frontier, the loss of his brother, the death of his first wife, and 93 years of a life that would have broken most of us in the first decade. And what he is remembered for primarily is a pot of gold that nobody can find and a ghost that won't stop looking for it. He got exactly what he was afraid of, just not in the way he expected. He didn't lose his fortune to a thief. He didn't lose it to Bathsheba's spending. He lost it to himself, to the same quality that had made him extraordinary, the absolute unshakable conviction that he was the only person who could be trusted with what mattered most. He became a legend instead of a man with stories. I found Abraham in my family tree on a Sunday night. Because you know that's when I do my best research. Sunday nights on FaceTime with my dad, the two of us, working through our ancestry DNA matches while my mom eavesdrops from the next room. It's my favorite time of the week. I was following a line that I hadn't looked at carefully before, a branch that had always been kind of vague in my tree, names that didn't, you know, didn't have any story or context. And there he was. Abraham Kuykdendall, born 1719, died in 1812, Flat Rock, North Carolina. That's what I knew. My six times great-grandfather on my mom's, mom's, mom's mom's side. And once I noticed him, I couldn't stop myself because over the next weeks and months, I started pulling records. The militia lists, the land deeds. There are a lot of land deeds because this man bought and sold probably six to ten thousand acres through his life. The church records, the census. And then I found the legend the iron pot, the blindfolded enslaved men, the creek. And I sat with it for a really long time. But when it came time to tell a story about North Carolina, I immediately thought of Abraham and how he spent 93 years building this remarkable life. He crossed the frontier, right? He fought in a revolution. He raised 13 children. He built a tavern and a mill and a church and a community out of nothing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And the people who came after him, including me, some eight generations later, if we know him at all, know him primarily as a ghost story. Not because he wasn't extraordinary. He was, but because he kept the most important things to himself. Sure, the gold, but also the stories. What did it feel like to be a corporal at 28 during the Spanish alarm? What did he and Elizabeth talk about on those long moves through the frontier? What did he think about when he walked those 2,000 acres in Flat Rock and looked at what he'd built? What was he afraid of? What did he hope for? Those things, if he ever shared them, didn't survive. And that is frustrating and sad. And honestly, it's the reason I do the work I do. Not the professional work, though that too, but the real work, the work of finding the people who came before us and asking what they have to tell us about who we are now. I spend my days helping people find their families. And the thing I hear more than almost anything else, the thing that breaks my heart a little every single time I hear it is this. My mother died before I could ask her. My grandmother's gone, and I never got her stories. I didn't know I needed to ask until it was too late. I hear that. That void, that that void that opens up when someone leaves before they share their stories. Abraham Kuykdendall had 13 children and 2,000 acres and a pot of gold. He kept the gold so safe that nobody could find it, not even him. And eight generations later, here I am trying to find the man behind the legend. The gold isn't what was lost. The man was lost. His stories, his life. There's a creek in Flat Rock, North Carolina called Pheasant Branch. It runs between two hills, cold and clear the way mountain streams do. And in the spring, the rhododendron comes in along the banks. The chestnut trees are long gone. There was a blight that took them in the early 20th century. This terrible ecological loss, those enormous trees that once covered the Appalachian forests, but the creek is still there. And somewhere nearby, if the legend is true, there is an iron washpot full of coins that nobody has found in more than 200 years. And people still look for it. I understand that impulse. There is something irresistible about buried treasure, the idea that something valuable is just beneath the surface, waiting for the right person to find it. But I keep thinking about those two men who carried that pot through the dark woods, the men whose names we don't know yet, who were blindfolded and threatened and asked to carry a secret on pain of death. Those men, the moment Abraham was gone, who tried to give that secret back, they told everything they knew. They wanted the family to find what had been hidden. They understood something Abraham never did. The things you protect by hiding them, you usually end up losing them. The gold is in the ground, the man is a ghost story, his grave is unmarked, and the stories that could have made him real to the people who came after him, those are the things that are really lost. His great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter found him on a Sunday night. And I kept digging for a couple of years to learn more about him, pulling records, following threads. And I'm telling his story now, more than 200 years after he drowned in that creek, because that is the only way it survives. Your family has buried gold too, not in iron pots under oak trees, but that would be cool. But in unspoken stories, in memories that feel ordinary to you and would feel extraordinary to the people who came after you. In answers to questions your grandchildren haven't even thought to ask yet, if you have them. You haven't run out of time. Abraham did. He went into the woods alone with a shovel and he didn't come back. And the most important things he carried, the real things, the ones that can't be measured in coins, went with him. You can make a different choice. Share what you know. Tell the stories that feel maybe too small or too ordinary or too complicated. Write them down, record them. Sit across from your mother or your grandmother or your aunt and ask the questions you've been meaning to ask. Don't wait until you have it all figured out. Don't wait until the family tree is finished to print it out and hang it on your wall as a conversation piece. Don't wait until the research is complete to share the stories. The time is now. Because the difference between a legacy and a ghost story is whether you share it or bury it. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.