Watauga County, NC - Allie Belle Adams Cole

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Allie Belle Adams Cole
November 26, 1903 ~ May 9, 1970

On November 26, 1903, Allie Belle Adams was born in Silverstone, 
Watauga County, NC. She was the first child born to the union of George 
Willett Adams and Elizabeth "Bessie" Eggers Adams. Her parents had been 
married in Johnson City, TN on October 11, 1901.

This was the second marriage for Willett who had married Alice Norris 
on November 15, 1896. There were several children born from his 
marriage to Alice. First there was Alford Adams who married Polly 
Barnes. They had no children. I remember Uncle Alford had a woodwork 
shop and made furniture. He and Aunt Polly had a house just above 421 
going out of Boone toward Tennessee. On a clear day you could see the 
profile of Grandfather Mountain from their porch. The second child from 
this first marriage was George Adams. George married Maude Davis and 
they had three children, George Butler, Edith and Edna Louise. The 
third and last child born to Willett and Alice was a girl named Ivor. 
Ivor married Carl Reece and they moved to Colorado around 1916. Ivor 
was killed in a car wreck out there and I think eventually Carl and 
their two sons may have come back east. They may have spent some time 
in California as well. After being widowed, Willett married Bessie. At 
the time that Willett and Bessie married she was about three months 
along with her first child. This is Ethel, who was born after Willett 
and Bessie were married. I believe Ethel's father was Willard Stansberry. 
Ethel married Worth Graham of Todd and they had two children.

George Willett Adams was the first child of Abner Smith Adams and Mary 
Isabelle Combs. Allie Belle was named after Willett's mother. Abner 
Smith Adams and Mary Isabelle Combs Adams, are buried in the small 
cemetery of Mt. View Independent Methodist Church on Barlow Road, 
Sutherland, Ashe County, NC. This is near Creston.

Willett's brothers and sisters were first, Allie Elizabeth, who married 
Samuel Alexander Norris. (They had Thaddeus Troy, Velma Grace, Hubert 
and Marguerite Isabelle.) Then there was Alverta Adams who married John 
Barlow. Alverta was severely burned on her hands as a small child and 
still managed to finish college and raise a large family while teaching 
school. There is an article in the Ashe County Heritage book about John 
and Alverta Barlow and their family. Alfred Lee Adams was next. He 
married Hattie Lewis and they had a large family. John Dolphus was last 
and as an adult I believe he lived in Asheville.

Bessie was the daughter of Jehiel Smith Eggers and his second wife, 
Elizabeth Bryan. Jehiel Eggers is supposed to have named Zionsville, 
NC. He had a store and was also a Judge in Mabel, NC. He served as a 
lieutenant of Company E, 37th North Carolina regiment of the 
Confederate Army during the Civil War and, (According to "The Heritage 
of Watauga County, NC, Vol. 1" Page # 176, Article # 237), was on Lee's 
staff. This article also tells us about him and his first wife and 
children from that first marriage.

The first child born to Willett and Bessie after Belle was Charlie who 
married Lula Van Dyke. They had two children. Agnes was next and she 
married Frank Scott and Albert Tulick. She had three children. I am not 
sure about those details. Dwight was next and he married Hazel Moretz. 
They never had children. Russell married Ruby Hendrix. They have three 
children. Glenwood was a son who died at birth. Ray married Lola and 
they had children. Ulas married Margaret and they had two sons. Smith 
was the youngest and married Mamie. I'm not sure how many children they 
have.

Sometime before 1910 Willett moved his family to south Florida. They 
traveled by covered wagon. They were down there for the 1910 US census. 
Dwight was born in 1912 and they were back in Watauga for his birth. 
They took the train from Florida when they left there.

Later the Willett Adams family moved to the Riddles Fork section of 
Meat Camp. At one time they lived on the hill across from where the 
Hopewell Church Road intersects with NC Hwy. 194 North.

Willett Adams died on August 29, 1927. It is my understanding that he 
died as a result of injuries received when attacked by the KKK. I have 
heard a couple of reasons why he became a target for them. I have only 
what some folks in the neighborhood have told me. One is that he was 
not a very good provider for his family and maybe took a little too 
much to drink occasionally. The other is that he became upset when Ivor 
joined a Baptist church and beat, or whipped her. At any rate, for some 
reason or another he is supposed to have received an attack from the 
KKK about two years before his death. I have yet to find any 
information about there being KKK activity in that area at that time. 
Willett and Alice Norris Adams are buried in the cemetery of Hopewell 
Methodist Church. Bessie lived until June 1955 and is buried in the 
Rainbow Cemetery in Johnson City, TN.

About a mile on toward Todd there was the farm of Alvin Joshua and Emma 
Leantha McGuire Cole. They were married September 16, 1900. Their 
first child was Thomas who was born August 06, 1901. He died as a young 
child on July 08, 1902. He is buried at Hopewell Methodist church 
beside his parents and a sister who died young also. Other children of 
Alvin and Emma Cole were twins, Stanley David and Stanford Jonathan who 
were born October 09, 1903. There was also Lloyd Benjamin and Nannie 
Blanch. Stanley David married Edith Castle and they had several 
children. They made their home in Pennsylvania. Lloyd married Hilda 
Thompson and they had two children. They made their home in Virginia. 
Blanch married Beach Keller and they had two daughters. They made their 
home near Asheville, NC.

Stanford Cole and Belle Adams were married on April 01, 1923 in Watauga 
County. According to Watauga County marriage records, they were married 
by Caleb Winebarger from Meat Camp.

At the time when Stanford and Belle's first child was born, they lived 
in a little house near that of Alvin and Emma. Both those houses are 
now gone, but the valley where they were is still pretty much the same. 
It is up the little road that went to the right just before Conley and 
Virginia Church's house. I believe that land is now owned by the Moretz 
family.

At some time Stanford and Belle lived on the other side of Boone. Their 
first child was Gladys Juanita, who married Charles Worley Miller, who 
was a son of Joseph Harrison Miller and Ada Catherine Winebarger. (It 
was Ada Catherine's father, Caleb, who had performed the marriage for 
Stanford and Bell.) The second child of Stanford and Belle was a boy 
and he married and they had four children. The third child of Stanford 
and Belle was Geneva Bina who died at six months. After the death of 
the baby Stanford and Belle moved back to the Riddles Fork community. 

At that time they bought land and started building a home. It started 
out as a two-room house in 1930, but eventually, over the years it 
became a four-bedroom house with living room, dining room, kitchen and 
bath. Over the years Stanford and Belle worked hard to raise their 
family and care for them properly. They had several acres of land and 
the days were hard, grubbing to create gardens and fields. Times got 
hard during the thirties and Stanford traveled away from home looking 
for work and sending money back home for his family. I'm not sure just 
what the time frame is, but at some point the family went to Virginia 
and Massachusetts for a period of time. Also, as her children were 
growing up, Belle became a midwife. She delivered many babies in the 
Riddles Fork community. I mean one day to go to the court house in 
Boone and see if I can get some idea just how many. I remember she had 
a sack with supplies when I was little.

As time went on and the children grew up, Stanford and Belle did what 
they could to try and give their children a good start in life. Both 
the children married around the time WWII started and they began their 
own families. Always, Stanford and Belle had a farm and still Stanford 
would work away. At one time he worked with Floyd S. Pike on what was 
the first crew of that company. Now you see the bright yellow trucks 
all across the southeast as they do electrical power line work. After 
the war was over things were beginning to settle down.  Stanford and 
Belle were able to build a new house. The old house became the place 
where Juanita and Charles would raise their family of seven children.

At some point, Stanford developed a problem with his heart. Finally, on 
Father's Day, June 17, 1951 he passed away. He left behind a grieving 
wife and two grown children, along with eight grandchildren. Three more 
grandchildren would follow in years to come.

As Belle had to struggle on her own with meeting bills and keeping 
things going, she decided to open a small store and gas station. There 
had been a store on up the road that was run by Garfield Phillips, but 
it had closed. Belle knew the community would welcome having a store 
nearby. The new house she and Stanford had built was closer to the 
highway than the old house had been. She began her store by having 
shelves put up in her living room. That was the store for a while.
 
Finally she made enough to where she could afford to pay the Phillips 
66 company $500 to build her a store building. It was made from 
concrete blocks and I think was 16 X 16 feet square. There was a front 
door with a window on either side and a back door on the corner toward 
the house. I can still remember just where the items were kept. It is 
amazing how much she had to offer in that small space! Charles fixed 
her a door bell on the front of the store that would ring in the house 
and let her know when she had a customer. Even though she had the 
store, she still continued with the farm. She had a cow named Susie and 
would have fresh milk to make butter and cottage cheese, and would 
still have milk to put in the big milk cans for the milk truck to pick 
up during the week.

I remember her telling me that if you don't have half your work done by 
10 a.m. you wouldn't get it done. I have found that to be fairly 
accurate over the years. Although she worked hard with her garden and 
chores, she always found time and resources for planting a few rows of 
flowers every year. Sometimes she would cut a big armful of gladiolas 
and take them to someone in the neighborhood, or maybe make a big spray 
for a funeral. She didn't drive, but would walk along the road, often 
with some of us grandchildren trailing along in front of her. She would 
make us stop and stand off to the edge whenever a car would come by. 
She had us walk ahead of her so she could make sure we were safely off 
the road.

As the years went by and we grandchildren were growing up we became 
aware that Grandmother was someone highly thought of in the 
neighborhood. It was clear that she was an upright person and was very 
conscious of how she treated others and that she thought it was 
important to treat others by the golden rule, just like you'd like to 
be treated. She was a lot of fun, but we knew better than to disobey 
her. I remember once when she took us up the road to Ranzy Woodring's 
for a molasses boiling. That was fun for us children. The night seemed 
eery with just the light from the fire. We really enjoyed it when they 
handed out paddles made of wood and allowed us to scrape the bottom of 
the trough after the molasses was poured out.

Grandmother was a stable part in the life of her grandchildren as time 
went on and sometimes Juanita wasn't able to properly care for the 
children. She saw to it that we caught the school bus and that we had 
meals and things we needed.

When Juanita was six, Belle got a treadle Singer sewing machine. She 
used it to make clothes for her family and later for her grandchildren. 
As time went on she taught me to use it and she left it to me and I 
used it for making my daughter's clothes until she was about twelve 
years old. I still have it and will pass it on down to my daughter.

I don't remember the year, but I remember once that Grandmother's store 
was used as a polling place and people came in and voted. Of course, 
that day we weren't allowed to hang around the store as much as usual.

One thing I remember about Saturday afternoons was that all the fellows 
in the neighborhood would come to Grandmother's house to watch the 
wrestling on TV. Not many people in the community had TVs at that time. 
They would line up on the daybed she had in the livingroom for extra 
seating and then some would sit in some of the ladder back chairs she 
had around. It was more interesting to watch them all get excited as 
they "pulled" for their favorite wrestler than it was to watch the 
wrestling!

I remember that Conley and Virginia Church used to come pick us 
children up and take us to Sunday School at Hopewell Methodist Church. 
Sometimes Grandmother would tell us to tell the preacher to stop by and 
see her. When he did, she would have a big box of groceries to give 
him. Sometimes she would also fill his car with gasoline.

In the wintertime when there wasn't so much to do outside, Grandmother 
would make quilts. She had four hooks fastened in the livingroom 
ceiling. From those hooks she would use a light rope and hang her quilt 
frame. When she was finished for the day she would wind the rope around 
the ends of the quilt frame and raise the whole thing above head level 
so we could walk around the room. Sometimes Mattie Norris would come up 
and spend the day with Grandmother and while Grandmother quilted, 
Mattie would make tatted lace. She would use the back of a ladder back 
chair to wrap the finished lace on to hold it neat for her.

Since Grandmother had the store she couldn't leave home much, so folks 
would come see her. She came from a large family and there was always 
somebody coming by.

Eventually Belle married again. She married Henry Greene who was a 
widower from over on the Chestnut Grove Road. They weren't married too 
long when he passed away. After a few more years of running the store 
and being alone, she married Walter Davis who was also a widower. After 
a while they stopped keeping the store. Her oldest grandchild was now 
grown and had children of her own, so Belle and Walter moved down to 
Walter's house about a mile back toward Boone. Charlotte and her 
children moved into the house by the store while Charlotte's husband 
was in Viet Nam. When he returned home, they continued living there for 
a while. This house was later sold to Bob and Earlene Woodring.

Meanwhile, Walter's house caught on fire and completely burned. 
Thankfully Walter and Belle were spared, but they lost everything in 
the house. They built a small house by the curve near Charlie Tugman's 
house. This was Belle's last home. She developed diabetes and finally 
she died the day before Mother's Day, May 09, 1970. That was just eight 
days before my daughter was born. I always hated that Grandmother never 
got to see her because she was such a good baby and I know she would 
have appreciated that about her.

When Belle died, Riddles Fork lost a fine citizen. She cared for her 
family and she cared for her neighbors. She was her "brothers" keeper. 
She would do all she could to help those she knew needed help. She had 
a deep faith and I'll always remember her singing hymns to herself as 
she worked.

Stanford and Belle are buried at Hopewell Methodist Church. Alvin and 
Emma Cole are also buried there near Alvin's parents, Lorenzo Dow and 
Martha A. Miller Cole. Joe and Ada Winebarger Miller and Charles W. and 
Juanita Cole Miller are all buried there as well.

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