EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone has a story — some more well-known than others. Across Western North Carolina, so much history is buried below the surface. Six feet under. With this series, we introduce you to some of the people who have left marks big and small on this special place we call home.
Nicholas Washington Woodfin (1810-1875), senator, lawyer, farmer and Buncombe County’s largest slave owner at the advent of the American Civil, and for whom the town of Woodfin is named, is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville.
—–
Nicholas Washinton (N.W.) Woodfin was born on Jan. 29, 1810, near Mills River in what is now Henderson County. N.W. was the fourth child born to John and Mary Woodfin, who owned a prosperous farm in what was then Buncombe County. He was one of 12 siblings in the Woodfin household.
Even with the relative wealth his family enjoyed, N.W. was unable to receive an education beyond a few years at the country school because of the remoteness of their home.
In his early adulthood, N.W. sought the guidance of attorneys Michael Frances and David Lowry Swain for training in law. At 21, Woodfin was admitted to the North Carolina State Bar. Swain became the 26th governor of North Carolina a year later.
After passing the bar exam, Woodfin moved to Asheville, where he began practicing law. After a decade of lawyering, the 32-year-old Woodfin was offered a judgeship, which he supposedly turned down because he preferred to represent the people.
On June 16, 1840, Woodfin married Eliza Grace McDowell at her home, the historic Quaker Meadows, near Morganton. Eliza was the daughter of Capt. Charles McDowell, a Revolutionary War veteran.
According to Samuel A’Court Ashe in the Biographical History of North Carolina Vol. II released in 1910, Eliza “was a lady of great saintliness and beauty of character, and always an inspiration to her husband.” Through her, Ashe writes, Woodfin “thus became connected with a large and influential family, embracing some of the most prominent of his associates.”
Woodfin and McDowell had three daughters: Anna, Lillie and Mira.
Mira McDowell Wood, Eliza’s sister, married N.W.’s younger brother John. Like his elder brother, John also became a lawyer. His practice trained two noteworthy figures from Buncombe County: Augustus Summerfield Merrimon and Gov. Zebulon Baird Vance.
John Woodfin was killed in the Warm Springs skirmish during the Civil War in Hot Springs. His calvary regiment was set to repel a squadron led by Union Col. George W. Kirk, who ordered raids across Western North Carolina.
The Woodfin’s property sat to the north of the University of North Carolina Asheville’s campus and reached up into what is now downtown Asheville. A relief on the sidewalk outside the Asheville Masonic Temple demarcates the approximate location of the Woodfin home.
As a farmer and lawyer, Woodfin amassed a large fortune. He is noted for starting the practices of rearing cattle, growing grass for retail and raising sorghum in Buncombe County. Among other business endeavors, Woodfin opened a successful cheese factory after the Civil War.
Woodfin’s financial success came in no small part from the work of those he enslaved. It is said he owned the most slaves in Buncombe County at the time of the 1860 Census with 122 people enslaved to him. He was the second largest slave owner in Western North Carolina at the time.
Elected in 1844, Woodfin represented Buncombe County in the N.C. State Senate for a decade between 1844-54. As many of the men in the state were at the time, Woodfin was a registered Whig. As a senator, he focused on policies regarding public education, agriculture and industrialization, all subjects which kept him occupied in his personal life, as well.
The Buncombe senator served for several years on the Committee on the Judiciary. A firm proponent of transportation, Woodfin notably backed the development of railroads and turnpikes in the state to open commerce opportunities.
As were most other Whigs in the state at the time, Woodfin was staunchly opposed to secession, seeing President Abraham Lincoln more favorably than most of the rest of the South. It was not until Lincoln ordered North Carolinians to muster up and put down the rebellion on April 15, 1861, that the Whigs in North Carolina, including Woodfin, turned on the president.
Lincoln’s proclamation came only three days after the skirmish at Fort Sumter, which began the Civil War. Calling for 75,000 troops from across the Union to suppress the rebellion, the president lost the support of North Carolinians who were unwilling to fight their fellow Southerners.
As the Buncombe County delegate to the May 20, 1861, convention in Raleigh, Woodfin voted to secede from the United States of America. The vote passed unanimously. The Tar Heel State officially seceded the following day.
Physically prevented from joining the warfront, Woodfin oversaw the operation of the North Carolina Salt Works on the beaches outside Wilmington. Salt was a fleeting, yet necessary commodity to keep the war machine running. Woodfin received no compensation for his service.
Woodfin seems to have had a significant interest in the South winning the war, with much of his wealth tied up in the slaves he owned. In the 1860 census, his entire estate, which included the people he enslaved, was valued at $165,000. Just a decade later after the war, the total value of his estate had plummeted to $36,000.
Woodfin actively participated in the Reconstruction after the war. Tasked with investigating fraud in the Western North Carolina Railroad company, Woodfin apparently took the role so seriously that he chased the company’s president to London to hold him accountable.
Taking up the mantle of his late brother John, Woodfin trained young men in law without any expectation of compensation. His generosity was rewarded with praise from North Carolina’s first Superintendent of Public Instruction, Charles H. Wiley.
N.W. Woodfin died on May 23, 1875, in Asheville at age 65. He succumbed to an unspecified severe illness that only lasted a few days. He was buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery.
Of the aftermath of Woodfin’s death, Samuel A’Court Ashe wrote, “Rev. Dr. Buxton, in a sermon preached after his death, said of Mr. Woodfin: ‘He was himself thoroughly aware, like all earnest men usually are, of his own infirmities of character; but he judged himself and lived in constant repentance and the fear of God.’”
Eliza remained by her husband’s side until his death. She survived her husband for less than a year.
Woodfin’s legacy is complicated. The Asheville Watchdog reported during the 2020 public cry for the city of Asheville to rename or remove monuments and streets that honored former slave owners. Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said, “I am absolutely in favor of renaming these streets… This is one of many things that can be done to further the dismantling of institutionalized racism.” Woodfin Street, on which the Asheville YMCA resides, has not been renamed at the time of writing.
In a post on its Facebook account, the town of Woodfin, with roughly 8,000 residents, wrote, “Nicholas Woodfin’s actions were, at times, wildly at odds with the standards of our own,” denouncing his owning of slaves and vote to secede from the Union.
The town’s comments on Woodfin’s legacy end appreciatively. “The Town of Woodfin is proud to bear the name of Nicholas Washington Woodfin, and we have tried to enshrine the fundamental concept of his philosophy into our system of governance, namely ‘A rising tide lifts all ships.’”