The FORGOTTEN HISTORY of MOSES YOUNG

The Young Cove is off Cane Creek, about five miles north of Bakersville. Cane Creek is a tributary of the North Toe River and flows west to a conflux near Loafers Glory. The cove is bounded by what the early European settlers named Rattlesnake Ridge and the Lightwood Mountains and is only about two and a half miles long, consisting of some 2,000 acres.

To the outside world, it is of little significance. The folks that lived in the cove were hard-working but never of any great prestige or wealth beyond comparison. Only a handful of North Carolina historians may associate the Young Cove with Ed Wilson's farm near Sandy Branch. In winter 1964, over 4,000 Native American artifacts, including arrowheads, tools fashioned from animal bones, and a burial mound, were unearthed by the Wilsons and later a team of anthropologists from UNC-Chapel Hill. However, for one family, it holds memories of a different sort.

The FORGOTTEN HISTORY of MOSES YOUNG and HIS DESCENDANTS recounts monumental moments that shaped not only North Carolina and Tennessee but the United States as a whole, as it builds up to our family's tenancy of the Young Cove area, which has endured for nearly 250 years. Moses and his wife Jemima likely saw Cane Creek as a place to create a new life after most if not all of their immediate family had either died out or moved west after the Revolutionary War.

This genealogy is the culmination of fifteen years of research on the Young family. Hundreds of names of living descendants are recounted, along with oral traditions, newspaper articles, and photographs.