Mulberry Fields Meeting House
Go to the back-right side of the museum along Broad Street, at the corner with North Street (which runs behind the building).
Long before the Revolutionary War, this area was named Mulberry Fields by Native Americans. During the war a wooden community building, the Mulberry Fields Meeting House, stood on or near the current museum site.[1] (Though built by Baptists, by this time it was just a community building.[2]) In 1778, when Wilkes County was formed by the state legislature, this village was designated for the court house. Until one was built after the war, the meeting house served the purpose, despite it’s poor condition: a lawyer described it as an uncomfortable, “‘‘open log house.’”[3] The county was much larger then, stretching north to Virginia and west all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains.
A Hanging Tree
Look at the picnic table nearest North Street, between two trees. In the 1770s a large black oak tree stood on that spot.
In the fall of 1779, two Loyalists (“Tories”) raided the home of a Patriot farmer and stole his horses. Patriot militia (part-time soldiers) captured them and brought them to the Wilkes County jail somewhere nearby. Horse-theft was a hanging offense, but generally a trial was involved. Col. Benjamin Cleveland of the Wilkes County Militia skipped that formality. He had the Tories hung from the tree here.
Cleveland was captured in retaliation two years later, April of 1781. But he was rescued at the Wolf’s Den near Boone and three of his captors were brought back to this spot. Despite the apparent conflict of interest, Cleveland presided over their court