"Edgar A. Howard" wrote: > > <<The question is, did the Watauga Settlements really have maple syrup > to mix with their corn? I'm sure there are maple trees in TN, but I've > never heard of the syrup being used by the pioneers.>> > > I learned this a few months ago. Cane did not come to SW VA > until about the War to Enslave the Southern Citizentry. Before that it > was sugar maple. Note the place names with sugar in it. Sugar > Hollow, Sugar Grove, etc. John Preston Arthur's "A History of Watauga County" cites a man named Ollis hiding out during the Revolutionary War and, "as did Samuel Hix", "ekeing out his simple fare with maple syrup and sugar from the maple trees which had made this section their home...and give its name to Sugar Mountain." Also, not far to the south in Mecklenburg Co., NC, several of my STARNES ancestors settled in the 1760s and evidently cultivated cane along Cane Creek. It would not be surprising to find that some, albeit modest, amount of sugar cane cultivation had made its way to SW VA well before the War to Defend the Southern Plantation Owners' Practice of Enslaving Blacks and Stealing Land from Native People and Poor White Farmers. At least six of my STARNES ancestors fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain against the British and American loyalists. Because so many American loyalists joined with the British, I think it is fair to view this as a preliminary bout in the Less Than Civil Wars of the Less Than United States of America. The irony in my family, as I suspect in most of yours, is that the descendants of these "unified" (STARNES) ancestors wound up killing each other in the 1860s. Recent events and inflammatory rhetoric suggests that we have learned the lessons of history rather poorly. Charles Ed Starnes