From The Pilot To The Buffalo
The Indians called it Jomeokee meaning pilot or guide. In August 1854 Lt. James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart used it as just that, a guide, piloting his trip around piedmont North Carolina and Virginia visiting friends and relatives. One night he found himself camping on Pilot Mountain. Just out of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, Stuart was soon to head west to Texas to join the cavalry of the United States and seven years of service mainly in the 1st U. S. Cavalry stationed in Kansas. Later that night a storm filled with thunder and lightning woke the young officer, who would become our region’s most important historical figure as commander of Robert E. Lee’s cavalry in the War Between the States. Stuart thought of himself as a romantic wrote down a poem dedicated to one of his six sisters entitled “The Dream of Youth.” While the dreams of a young man are nice to read about what can they do for us today? History can be a force for economic growth in our region. Today from the overlook at the “Little Pinnacle” you can see our entire region including the Buffalo Mountain resting on top of the Blue Ridge plateau. The Buffalo is famous due to another young man from Ararat, Virginia, just like “Jeb” Stuart. The Reverend Bob Childress spent half his life at the foot of the Blue Ridge before he moved on top to preach and build the six rock churches made famous in The Man Who Moved a Mountain by Richard Davids. From the Buffalo to the Pilot is the region whose history I write about. I was born in Mount Airy and grew up in Ararat, Virginia. Many people have come from Patrick County to North Carolina. Richard Joshua Reynolds left Virginia to go to Winston to start a tobacco business and he came to Mount Airy to get a wife, Katharine Smith. The Ararat River itself flows from Bell Spur Church in Patrick County down a mountain named after a groundhog to meet the Yadkin River at Siloam. A railroad, The Mount Airy and Eastern, “The Dinky” ran from the banks of the Ararat to the banks of the Dan River in Patrick County’s Kibler Valley. The Native-Americans who named Pilot Mountain or the raptors that migrate to it each year did not see the state line as a barrier and we should not either. We have much common history and we should think regionally in promoting each other. There is plenty of room for Jeb Stuart to walk the same streets as the Siamese Twins and the fictional Barnie Fife. While the focus is often on the Andy Griffith show as a way to bring tourists to the area if you look just across the street from the statue of Andy and Opie is one for George Stoneman’s Raid at the end of the Civil War that came through Mount Airy on April 2, 1865, a week before Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. These were the first Yankees to visit the “Granite City,” but judging from the tour buses on Main Street not the last. So, with this article on our region’s history along the model of Ruth Minick started years ago I am reminded of another connection between Surry County and Patrick County. In the 1920s Carl Griffith crossed the state line into Patrick County to marry Geneva Nunn. Their marriage license is in the Patrick County Courthouse. You probably heard of their son.
