The driver of a All Terrain Vehicle was flown for medical treatment after an accident on Cold Spring Mountain Sunday.
The man was driving to the annual Decoration Day held each July at the gravesite of three North Carolina men who were killed there during the Civil War.
The man’s four-wheeler overturned just before 10:30 AM near the overlook, near the top of the mountain. He received serious facial injuries in the accident, but a rider on the four-wheeler with him was uninjured.
EMS and the Forest Service were on stand-by at the event, and were able to respond in a utility vehicle to the injured man to stabilize him while Highlands Air Rescue was called to the scene. Low clouds on top of the mountain prevented Highlands from landing there, and the man had to be brought down the mountain by volunteers from the Greeneville Emergency & Rescue Squad and other personnel.
A second accident involving another four-wheeler happened along the road at nearly the same time as the more serious accident. The driver of that four-wheeler only suffered minor lacerations that did not require medical response.
Decoration Day at the graves is held on the last Sunday of each July. It takes place at the graves of David and William Shelton and Millard Haire. Maynard Scott Shelton, a descendant of David Shelton, wrote this account in his book “A Family’s Civil War Struggles: Stories of My Ancestors of Shelton Laurel, North Carolina.”
David and William were both Union soldiers from the mountain community of Shelton Laurel in Madison County, North Carolina. Both men enlisted in the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (U.S.) in September 1863, but deserted from their unit and returned home within a few months. Early in the morning on July 19, 1864, a force of Confederates from the 64th North Carolina Infantry ambushed the Sheltons, Haire, and eleven others while they resided in a cabin on Big Butt Mountain. Millard Haire, a 13-year-old Shelton relative, was killed in the first Rebel volley while he stood outside the cabin. Maynard Shelton further describes the incident:
The sleeping men in the shack woke up suddenly, ran out to see what the shooting was all about, and were met by a deadly hail of gunfire. David Shelton Jr. and William Shelton were killed and several of the soldiers were wounded, including Ephraim Hensley. Two older civilians, Isaac Shelton Sr. (William Shelton’s father and David, Jr.’s older brother), and Hampton Burgess, Sr. tried to escape by running away but the ensuing Rebels caught up with them about a fourth of a mile out the trail (now the Appalachian Trail) and shot them dead.
Three of the men escaped unharmed, and Ephraim Hensley hid in a Laurel thicket motionless and watched the whole ordeal. He was shot in the lower back, but survived the wound and lived until 1916. The source of this story mainly comes from his eyewitness account.
In total, five men were killed and six were wounded in the attack. Five of the wounded men were captured and taken to Warm Springs, NC (now Hot Springs). William Shelton, David Shelton Jr., and Millard Haire were laid to rest in their current location by relatives. The bodies of Hampton Bridges Sr. and Isaac Shelton Sr. were supposedly buried in an unmarked grave several hundred yards to the north.
