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  • Writer's pictureDallas Reese

Glory! Glory! Glory! The story of Grandmother Norton

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; your Protector will not slumber.…Psalms 121:1-2

My Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton was a fiercely strong independent woman born on the 31st day of January 1788 in Ninety Six District (Pickens) South Carolina, where her parents William Nicholson and wife, Martha Richardson Nicholson, were some of the first European settlers in the 1700s. She was tough as nails and sharp as a tack. Her Great-Grandson(and my 2nd cousin) Thomas Picklesimer said as much. Thomas was born in 1907 and lived to be 100 and relayed many tales of our Norton family passed down from his mother Effie Alley Picklesimer (a granddaughter of Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton.) and his Grandmother Sarah Whiteside Norton Alley(daughter of Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton. Thomas Picklesimer was a major source of information on our Norton ancestors. His memory remained sharp until his death in 2007.

I find it interesting that Mary was named Bathsheba, because the life of the Biblical Bathsheba bore no resemblance to that of Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton.

If you're not familiar with the story of Bathsheba from the Bible, here's a refresher. In the 11th chapter of 2nd Samuel, the prophet Samuel told us the story of Bathsheba(wife of the soldier Uriah)

While innocently bathing one day, Bathsheba was revealed in all her glory to a passerby who just happened to be David, who in the future would become a very rich man and the King of Israel. David immediately lusted after Bathsheba. His obsession became so great he was willing to go to any length to have her. And have her he did. He impregnated her, while Bathsheba's husband Uriah was away at war. David then had Bathsheba's husband Uriah sent to the front lines so Uriah would be killed. After Uriah's death in battle David married Bathsheba and she had the baby, a boy, they named Solomon, who became the future King of Israel. Bathsheba was without fault, for she had done nothing wrong except display the beauty God had given her.

I don't know how Mary Bathsheba Nicholson's parents came to give her this name, but suffice to say it didn't fit Mary or her lifestyle. Mary was not dainty, nor did she possess great beauty or wealth like Bathsheba had. But Mary possessed great strength, resourcefulness, simplicity, thriftiness and more than a bushel of common sense and an understanding of how to survive in even the harshest conditions life could afford. She was as strong as nails, both mentally and physically.

Mary had a simple, hardscrabble existence carved by life in the Blue Ridge backwoods of upper South Carolina and southwestern North Carolina.

Mary Bathsheba Nicholson was married at the age of 16 on January 10, 1805 to Barak Pickeral Norton in Pickens District, South Carolina. Her relationship with her husband Barak Norton was born of love and friendship and they remained together until his death in 1869. This venerable woman raised seven sons and five daughters. For a little over two decades the family worked, lived and prayed together in the Tamassee section of South Carolina. But wanderlust took hold. Probably from the view Mary & Barak got each morning of Wildcat Cliffs and the great Whiteside Mountain 8 miles north in the distance, and just across the state line in North Carolina.

So the family packed up and left South Carolina in 1827 & came to the wild backwoods of North Carolina beneath the foot of Whiteside Mountain. (now Whiteside Cove, Jackson County NC) They were the first non-native settlers in the Cashiers area. The Cherokee Indians helped them learn the area. Mary's husband Barak worked the fields grew crops, and furiously panned for gold in the area where the Main St of Cashiers North Carolina is. He never found gold but had plenty of land to farm. The State of NC granted them 640 acres of the land beneath Whiteside which is now the Norton community named so for Mary and Barak who were the first settlers there. North Carolina also granted Barak and Mary 50 acres covering what is now the downtown section of Cashiers, NC.

Mary and Barak suffered many trials and tribulations in their life, as did most Western North Carolina Mountain families in the early days of our country. Life was rough hewn and more about survival and comforts were much fewer. Three of her sons, Confederate soldiers all, were killed in battle, two of them came home after the conflict was ended, but the youngest of her sons, Edward "Ned" Norton was brutally murdered by Kirk's gang of outlaws, at his own home in Whiteside Cove and in the presence of his wife and children. This happened on May 1st 1865, almost a full month after the Civil War had ended. In the Southern Appalachian Mountains, no character was more loved or despised than Union officer George W. Kirk. He led a group of deserters on numerous raids between Tennessee and North Carolina in the 1860s. He kept up the brutality even after the war ended and he almost ended the life of Mary's son Rodric and Mary's daughter Sarah Whiteside Alley's husband Colonel John Alley. Luckily they escaped with their lives.

John Preston Arthur, a lawyer turned writer in Asheville NC, retired from the law to Asheville NC in about 1898 and not long thereafter began work and continued to labor for ten years researching and writing an expansive History of Western North Carolina. He interviewed many citizens across Jackson and Macon counties NC and in this volume said, “It was the women who were the true heroines of this section. The hardships and constant toil to which they were generally subjected were blighting and exacting in the extreme. Another writer and historian, Edgar Stillwell who was employed by the Cullowhee NC Dept. of History in the early 1900s added, “. . . at last, tired and worn out with the long day’s duties, [they fell] on the bed for a well-earned night’s repose, which was often broken by the cries of a sick baby or the return of some male member of the family late in the night. Thus these mountain women served from day to day; thus they labored without honor, often with little reward, and always unselfishly. Heroines indeed they were.”

Writer John Preston Arthur also noted in his "History of Western North Carolina, “It is a well authenticated fact that Mrs. Mary Norton, then living in Cashier’s Valley, was awakened one night while her husband Barak was away from home, by hearing a great commotion and the squealing of hogs at the hog-pen nearby. Her children were small and there was no ‘man pusson’ about the place. The night was cold and she had no time to clothe herself, but, rushing from the cabin in her night dress and with bare feet, she snatched an axe from the wood-pile and hastening to the hog-pen, saw a large black bear in the act of killing one of her pet ‘fattening hogs.’ She did not hesitate an instant, but went on and aiming a well directed blow at Bruin’s cranium, split it from ears to chin and so had bear meat for breakfast instead of furnishing pork for the daring marauder.” Thus Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton felled a bear with just an ax as David slew Goliath with a stone. Now that is a strong woman. This story was also authenticated by her Great Grandson Thomas Picklesimer.


Photo: My son Ben Reese at Norton Cemetery in Norton NC in Jackson County NC in the summer of 2018. Immediately to my son's right are the graves of Barak and Mary Norton's son Rodric and his wife Druscilla Burrell Norton. Over behind and to the right is the grave for Mary Bathsheba Norton and her husband Barak Pickeral Norton.



Norton Cemetery-Whiteside Cove, NC--there is one descrepancy with records-the marker says Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton was born June 31, 1788 but all other available records say her birth was January 31, 1788.

Mary's husband Barak died in 1869 at the age of 92 but Mary lived on till March 28, 1883. She never required the services of a doctor until she was 94 years old. She possessed remarkable strength and physical immunity for that day and age. Some people attributed that to her living in the mountains and that hardscrabble existence she and Barak carved out together. Mary died two months after her 95th birthday and is buried in the Norton family cemetery in Norton, NC. Mary Norton died near the place she lived nearly 56 years of her long life.

Her final words when she passed away were, "Glory, Glory, Glory"


Here's the obituary for Mary Bathsheba Nicholson Norton from the April 5th, 1883 edition of the Highlands NC newspaper, The Blue Ridge Enterprise.


My direct line to Grandmother Norton runs thru my paternal grandmother, Myrtle Cora Henderson Reese. Myrtle's father was Deck Henderson. Deck's mother was Octavia Norton Henderson. Octavia's parents were Rodric and Druscilla Norton. And Rodric's parents were Mary Bathsheba and Barak Pickeral Norton.

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