David Barnett owned several tracts of land on Little River. On February 26, 1828, he bought from his brother-in-law, John Hamilton, 200 acres of land, with the cabin, orchard and old tub mill,- the deed witnessed by Abraham and John Kuykendall. The old tub mill, mentioned in this deed, was the earliest type of water operated contrivance for grinding corn that was used by the first white settlers in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The few examples still in existence are being carefully preserved, - most of these have been found and are to be seen in the Smokey Mountain park area. David Barnett and Loveday, his wife on April 19, 1832, only a short time before her death, conveyed their property on Little River to her brother, William Hamilton, and others. In this instrument, Loveday also relinquished any claim which she might have had to the dower right of Ann Hamilton, her step-mother, in lands of Robert F. Hamilton, deceased. John Barnett, Sr., and his wife, in their later life, returned to Edgefield District, where they were buried, in graves which have been lost to sight. The time at which they left North Carolina can not be fixed with certainty. In 1830, when Charles Barnett conveyed some of his property in an instrument witnessed by John Merrill and his brother, John Barnett, this latter signed as “Jr”, which tends to prove that the father was living here at that time. After the death of Loveday Hamilton Barnett, in 1833, her children were cared for by relatives of the two families. One daughter, Elizabeth, (who married John Rickman) was seven years old at the time. She lived until 1911, and often related to her children and grand children stories of the time she spent with her grandparents, John Barnett, Sr., and his wife. She pointed out location of the tavern, (near where Woodfields now stands) where she stayed with them, while they were its proprietors. This old tavern, at the time the first Low Country people came to Flat Rock, about 1824, was kept by William Brittain, Later a family named Summey lived there, and for years, Joseph Barnett and his wife, Permelia Sentell, (daughter of William Sentell and wife, Betty Stevens) kept the place. They were succeeded by their son, Perry Barnett, and it was during his time, in the closing years of the War Between the States, that roving bands of soldiers invaded his home. In their raid, the ruffians overturned a bed where his children were sleeping, and broke up other furniture. After the death of his wife, Loveday, David Barnett moved to a site near the present Mud Creek Church where he engaged in cabinet work, furniture making and wagon building for several years. He spent the closing years of his life manager of a farm which Henderson County maintained as a County Home, not far from location of the present one on the Haywood Road. The second wife of David Barnett was Mary Merrill, a daughter of William and Elizabeth Ashworth Merrill, who had come to the famous Crab Tree Creek section from Fairview. (For further data on the family of William Merrill, see THE MERRILL FAMILY, by Dr. William Ernest Merrill). David Barnett, with both his wives and other members of the family are buried in the old graveyard at Mud Creek Church, near Hendersonville. This historic old church, organized in 1806, stood on the bank of the old State road leading from the Low Country, through upper South Carolina, to Asheville and on to Tennessee. Traces of the old highway are still to be seen there.