-By John Armor
I was asked to write a brief history of the Church of the Incarnation, in Highlands. North Carolina, for a local magazine. The piece was intended to be about the building itself, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and was built in 1896. But you cannot research the history of a church without also researching the history of the people who brought that church into being.
Of the dozen people who formed the congregation for this church, one was Sarah Whiteside Norton. She was the first non-native American child born in the Highlands area, the daughter of Barak Norton, who moved to Whiteside Cove in 1825. The town of Highlands itself, did not exist until its land was purchased and mapped by Kelsey & Hutchinson in 1879. But that’s another story.
The priest for the tiny Episcopal community in Highlands was the Rec. Deal. On a starting salary of $100 he traveled on horseback and on foot among four widely separated communities, holding the first service in Highlands in 1879. Shortly after, there was a meeting in the home of the Postmaster, David Norton, to petition the Bishop to create a mission in that area. That was the first step toward creating a church, David Norton was the grandson of Barak Norton.
One of the signers of that petition, Tudor Tucker Hall, donated the property for the church to come. Located at 5th Street and Main, its value was $100. It is a sign of the times that no property on Main Street can be purchased today for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars.
David Norton’s daughter Meta, a widow, married Tudor Tucker Hall, They had five children, most of whom were active in the Church over the years. Their grandson, Overton (Tony) Chambers and his wife, Isabel, have served in many positions for the Church over the decades,
The have three children who are active in the Church today. They are grown and married, and the seventh generation in this family are now serving as acolytes, today.
So, that makes seven generations of this one family who have been involved with one church community, in this small corner of the Blue Ridge. When you see all the names, written in the back of a family Bible in a copper point hand, at least for the older entries, it may not seem like a lot. But it is when you reflect on the history they have lived through.
Barak Norton came to this area to settle on a farm and raise his family a generation before the Civil War. Yet, some of the young boys in their white robes who serve as acolytes today, are directly connected to him.
There is another family whose connections to Incarnation extend many generations. Frank Hill moved to Horse Cove shortly before the Church was built. He married the daughter of Dr. Frost, who had moved from New York and joined the Church, Although Frank Hill remained a Methodist, he worked as a carpenter on Incarnation. It is said his name is carved on one of the beams of the Church.
His daughter joined the Church and was an active, lay leader. His great grandson, Luther Turner, is a leader of the Church today, Luther also encouraged the author of this article both to join the Church, and to take part in other civic organizations.
Or, consider this. The United States, whose birthday we celebrate this week, is only 12 generations old. That is using Thomas Jefferson’s definition of a generation as 19 years. People married, started families, and entered professions several years younger in his day, than in ours. But make that our average of 22 years and it is still a dozen generations from then to now.
A year after Incarnation was consecrated, it had “11 families, 25 baptized.” Due largely to the tireless efforts of generations of the families who built the Church, today it has hundreds of families, and nearly a thousand baptized. As the Bible says, if you plant good seeds in fertile soil,, they will grow. So they have, at Incarnation.
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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