Historic Documents Find a New Home at UNC Asheville;
Papers, Maps Trace Early History of Land Speculation in Western North Carolina

Historic documents that were locked in a Hendersonville safe for decades have found a new home at UNC Asheville. Thanks to a discovery by Hendersonville resident Gene Robbins and a donation from father and son history buffs, some 800 documents related to land ownership in Western North Carolina in the early 1800s are now part of Ramsey Library's Special Collections. The $125,000 donation from Joe Kimmel, of Asheville, and his son Steven, a UNCA senior physics major, is allowing UNCA to purchase the collection and digitize it for public access on Ramsey Library's Web site.

The documents help shed light on the acquisition and sale of the "Speculation Lands," some 400,000 acres in Western North Carolina that were bought for resale by native Philadelphian Tench Coxe in 1795-96. Tench Coxe, whose grandson Franklin Coxe built the original Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, was one of many wealthy and politically powerful land speculators operating after the Revolutionary War. The Speculation Lands make up most of today's Rutherford County, as well as portions of Buncombe, Henderson and Polk counties, said Helen Wykle, who directs Ramsey Library's Special Collections.

"This is a rich collection," Wykle said. "It fills a gap in our knowledge of land distribution in the early years of the 19th century."

The discovery of the documents came as a great delight to Gene Robbins, a retired college administrator who has a special interest in U.S. history. When Robbins bought his 1920s home in Hendersonville three years ago, he could see the house had been built around a 1,000-pound, steel-and-concrete safe. But the safe, locked tight, had no combination and the previous owner had no idea what it contained. So a year after moving in, Robbins got four men to move the safe and he hacked his way through its back.

Inside were stacks of documents dating to the early 1800s that represent more than 60 years of work by the Justice family of Hendersonville, who were land surveyors and agents for the Speculation Lands. The cache of papers includes maps, land surveys and survey notes, deeds, ledgers, and letters of correspondence with foreign investors. Among the signatures in the collection are those of Tench Coxe; Samuel Ashe, who was governor of North Carolina in 1795-98; Pierre Estienne DuPonceau, who fought with Washington at Valley Forge; and Smith Thompson, the U.S. Supreme Court judge who presided in the Amistad Case.

"Because this is such a comprehensive set of records it will give us good insight into who owned the land, how it was acquired and how it was distributed. These are important questions," said Dan Pierce, a Southern history expert and UNCA professor. "Among historians of early America there is an important and hotly debated set of questions about how people got land, who controlled the land and what that means. And among Appalachian historians there's been a recent debate about land ownership. There's a notion, which helped to build beliefs about Appalachian heritage, that everybody owned their own land, but in recent years that notion has been challenged. These records will help us take a closer look."

UNCA students will be able to use these documents for their undergraduate research projects and will be joined by historians studying land acquisition, gold mining, and international banking practices, Wykle said. UNCA students majoring in Multimedia Arts and Sciences are helping to digitize the collection and build the Web site, which will be designed as a research and educational tool.

For more information about the Speculation Land Company collection, call Ramsey Library Special Collections at 828/251-6645.

Note to Media: The Speculation Lands Collection at UNCA will be unveiled at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, in Ramsey Library's Blowers Gallery, located on the library's main floor. Those attending will include historians, student researchers, Helen Wykle, Gene Robbins, and others. You are welcome to attend and bring a photographer.

Media Contacts:

• Merianne Epstein, UNCA Public Information Director, 828/251-6676 or 828/257-5501 (pager)