William Deavor House
William Deaver was the son of James Deaver and Mary Miller (daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth Miller). It is for him that the Deavor house, the oldest standing structure in Transylvania County, which stands near the entrance to Pisgah National Forest, off NC Highway 280, was named. The Deavor House is the oldest standing frame house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, according to the N.C. Division of Archives and History. Archaeological digs have uncovered evidence of occupation of the site from around 4000 B.C. William, a prominent farmer of what was then Buncombe County had holdings totaling by 1862, 5117 acres, second in Transylvania County only to George Vanderbilt. He purchased the house on February 6, 1830 from Benjamin Allison for $1200 and enlarged it to twelve rooms with over two thousand square feet. He was killed at the age of seventy on the front porch one evening by a band of Northern sympathizers (bushwackers) who were searching for his son, Capt. Deavor. According to his daughters, William Deaver went to Kentucky to collect rents on property owned there, stopping in Tennessee where he frequently visited David Crockett.
The central chimney of the house was first attributed to a Pennsylvania architectural influence, and its tiered porches on the front indicated a Charleston influence. However, during reconstruction of the house it was found that there were at leat three phases of construction. Allison's house consisted of a large room with two small bedrooms on each floor. Deaver added the northern large rooms on both floors as his family grew. The central fireplace only now provided a source of "central heat". Evidence of a fire that occured around 1830 was discovered, possibly the impetus that led Allison to sell the house to Deaver.
"Sentiment for the Union continued to live in Henderson County, as well as other parts of Western North Carolina through the most heated clashes of the war, and many from here were in sympathy with the move taken by the men of Asheville toward asking for peace and restoration to the Union. Such conflict of afilliation between the peoples of this small county led to scenes of violence; those who wished to avoid service with either military force sought for themselves hiding places in the most remote sections, and there subsisted by robbing and ravishing the territory about them.
A portion of Henderson County had been cut off by 1861, when Marcus Erwin of Buncombe County was in the senate and Joseph P. Jordan from here was in the lower house, and together with a piece from Macon, went to form Transylvania County. Before its organization could be completed, the confusion of war arose to create in that area a certain type of lawlessness. The southern part of the new county, and the more mountainous section of Henderson adjoining it became the rendezvous for hordes of renegades, outliers, and bushwackers, whose depradations were notorious.
A band of these robbers visited the home of Capt. James Deaver near the Transylvania county line near the end of the war. The officer was not home when these unwelcome callers arrived, and his father, Uncle Billy Deaver, opened the door. Without waiting to learn whether this was the Confederate officer who had incurred their enmity by his pursuit of robbers and deserters, they shot the old gentleman down on his own doorstep." from the Story of Henderson County, p. 127
James P. Deavor IV
