Nina Simone was born on February 21, 1933, in this 660-foot square home in Tryon, North Carolina. Named Eunice Waymon, she lived here with her parents and eight siblings until 1937. This home is mere feet away from St. Luke’s CME Church, where her mother was a pastor, and she began to play the piano for the church by the age of four.
In 2017, artists Adam Pendleton, Rashid John, Ellen Gallagher, and Julie Mehretu bought the home for $95,000. This prevented the potential demolition of this historic home. The artists worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and other groups to help restore the home. Plans include adding a living space with modern amenities for a potential artist-in-residence program.
The congregation of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church began in 1886 in a log church near Tryon as a place for Black residents to worship. It didn’t officially become the Good Shepherd Mission until 1908.
Before the mission’s founding, the church existed in a Sunday school begun by Mabel True Plaisted, the second wife of Maine’s governor and member of the local white Episcopal Church, Holy Cross, to educate local Black schoolchildren. The school became a local gathering place for the Black community, much to the chagrin of the white community members. The town forced Plaisted to close the school because they did not want the school so close to Holy Cross.
In the following year, the Tyron Industrial Colored School was opened on Markham Road, an area that was approximately a mile from town along winding roads. The church used the school for services. By 1908, the building became an official missionary chapel of the Episcopal Missionary District of Asheville.
The building was used until the 1950s, when it was decided that the old building needed to be replaced. The church found an abandoned church, St. Andrews Chapel, on a nearby plantation was built in the early 1900s for the servants and tenant farmers of the plantation to use. The church was dismantled and moved to its current location. The building is still in use today.
While the church was started for the Black community members of Tryon, it became integrated in the sixties and is now fully integrated.
Nina Simone grew up in Tryon. Her parents and a few of her siblings are buried in the Good Shepherd Cemetery.
Higdon Hotel was built in 1878 by Harriet Dodson. By 1883, the place was purchased by the Higdon family. The Higdons expanded it to host the railroad bosses who were overseeing the building of the railroad through Reliance.
Once the railroad was done, it became a resort hotel for people vacationing in the area. When the railroad no longer was the main method of transportation, the hotel went out of business.
In the 1970s, the hotel was purchased by seven friends who worked to stabilize the building with the hopes of reopening it again. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to complete the work.
1914 image of the hotelNotice the gingerbread detailsApril 27, 1929 ad in the Knoxville Sunday Journal
The Hiwassee Union Missionary Baptist Church evolved over the years to now serve as the Hiwassee Meeting Hall. Built in 1899 along the banks of the Hiwassee River, the church served the community as a church at first and then as a fraternal lodge and schoolhouse. The porch was enclosed to add more space to the facility. Notice the seams along the sides. Today, the building can be rented for events.
Overlooking the Ocoee River in Benton, Tennessee are the graves of Nanyehi (known more by her colonized name of Nancy Ward), her son Five Killer, and her brother Longfellow. Nanyehi was known as a Beloved Woman of the Cherokee because of her bravery in a battle and for how she kept her tribe safe during the American Revolutionary War.
By the age of 17, Nanyehi was married to Tsu-la and had two children. She fought alongside her husband against the Creek Nation. When he died during the war, she took his gun and helped in the battle.
In the late 1750s, she married a man named Bryan Ward from South Carolina. Ward was married to another woman in South Carolina. Ward and Nanyehi had one daughter. Ward eventually moved back to South Carolina to be with his other wife and children.
Nanyehi stayed in the area and ran an inn until her death.
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