Long before white settlers ever found their way into that section, pass ways and travel lanes of the Indians wound through its valleys and around the mountains, - the old Willow Trail of traditions, the Trading Path leading across by Cherryfields to Table Rock, and the Estatoe route. Over these passes by which the Cherokees and others before them had made their way to the little town of Kanastee, near where Brevard is now located, - with their bypaths, - was laid the first beaten track for the road which venerable Bishop Asbury traveled. Over them, from French Broad Valley, he has passed the headwaters of Little River and its sister, Saluda, through the gap in the mountain to “ancient father Douthat’s’ in Greenville County, South Carolina, just after 1800. Did the group of emigrants from the Savannah River know they were coming into the newly opened frontier of North Carolina? It was several years after the first of them arrived before the century-old dispute between North and South Carolina over location of the boundary line was settled. Even when that had been accomplished, the sister state of Georgia still could not be reconciled that Caesar’s Head lay outside her bounds, which she contended should rightly extend almost to the south of “Ben Davidson’s mill creek”, only a few miles from Crab Tree Creek! Remote as that section may seem to us of today, the settlement on Little River remained, until after the organization of Henderson County in 1838, within the centre of population in its area. When, in the generations that have passed since, the hardships of their pioneer years can be forgotten, the little community where these ancestors settled now appears as a group of families who brought here a mode of living, standards of education and such manner of life as existed in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. Several families among them were owners of slaves, and all acquired large boundaries of land. Through much of it was tillable and in cultivation, the surrounding forests abounded with its native game and the streams furnished abundant fishing. At the time the contingent from Edgefield arrived on Little River, they found already living there Robert Franklin Hamilton, an Irishman from Charleston, and William Merrill, whose family were among those who had come from the Jersey Settlement of Rowan County to Cane Creek some time before 1790, as well as Samuel King, a Revolutionary patriot who had moved here from Rutherford County. Merrill had a blacksmith shop on his plantation and also built the first community grist mill erected in this section. The Barnetts, father and sons, reared and trained in the old Boat Yard at Hamburg, were noted for their fine cabinet work and furniture making, - many examples of which are still to be found, well preserved and in splendid condition. The old secretary-table, with its stout money drawer, made for his own use by John Barnett, Sr., is still in use. Specimens of penmanship, on brittle stained paper, and faded ink, and the wording and spelling of ancient documents prove that most of the citizens who lived in the Crab Tree Creek community, and the children reared there has education far beyond the average of their time. Levi Anderson and his sons, who also came from Edgefield followed the profession of teaching, and that there were other tutors in the community is shown by old receipts for sums paid for “Schooling”. In 1827, Charles Barnett, (a son of John, Sr) executed a deed to E. Hightower and William Orr, trustees, for land whereon should be erected a school house and meeting house to be used by Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterians alike. The first record of lands bought by John Barnett, Sr., is on November 12, 1816, when he and Samuel King obtained 300 acres on Little River from Charles Lain. On January 27, 1821, he purchased 200 acres on Blythe Creek, east side of Little River, with the house and outhouses from Thomas Crumley, a deed witnessed by Robert Hamilton. It was only a year or two later that Loveday, a daughter of this neighbor Hamilton, married David Barnett, son of John, Sr.