Huntingdon For H -
A bit Of history -
The first settlements in Carroll County were made at McLemoresville and Buena Vista about the year 1820. The first settlers in the vicinity of Huntingdon were Samuel Ingram, John Crockett, James H. Gee, Wm. A. Thompson, Thomas Ross, John Gwin, Robert Murray and others. As the organization of the county took place almost immediately after the first settlements were made, every person hereinafter named in connection with the organization of the county and courts were early settlers. Large tracts of the most valuable lands of the county were entered by the location of North Carolina military land warrants, and owned by non‐residents. Mimucan Hunt & Co. held such warrants for twenty tracts of land, each containing 5,000 acres. These lands were all located west of the Tennessee River and largely in Carroll County. The Indians left the county about the time the settlers appeared. But the unbroken forest was then infested with bears, wolves, panthers, deer, wildcats, the smaller wild animals, and snakes. It is said that the reputation this country then had in North Carolina, was “fifty bushels of frogs to the acre, and snakes enough to fence the land.” The wild animals destroyed many of the domestic animals of the early settlers, but they were hunted and subdued until all of the more destructive ones have become extinct. The first courthouse, built in 1822, was a small log cabin, without a floor, erected where the present one now stands, and Nathan Nesbit, chairman of the court of pleas and quarter sessions, blazed his way through the forest from his residence, five miles east of Huntingdon, to the county seat, carrying with him his cross‐cut saw, with which he sawed the door out of the new court house, and entered therein and opened the first court held at Huntingdon, December 9, 1822. At this term the jurors of the court brought their provisions with them and camped out. The town of Huntingdon was surveyed and platted by James H. Gee, under the supervision of the commissioners appointed to lay out the town.
At the December term, 1823, the name of the county seat, which up to that time had been called Huntsville, was changed to Huntingdon. They were anxious to retain the first syllable, and thereupon James H. Gee, who was a musician as well as a surveyor, and who was fond of the old tune Huntingdon, suggested that name and it was adopted. There were 117 lots and the public square in the original plat of the town.
