Davis Slave Cemetery

Near the intersection of old U.S. 25 South and Bob’s Creek Road another group of old field stones was discovered in the mid-1990s.
George Jones with the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Cemetery Survey team went to investigate.
“A lady called about them,” Jones said. “The stones were in a wooded area near the end of her front yard near the road.”
After research, Jones determined the field stones were placed at the burial sites of slaves who belonged to the John Davis family, who owned the land.
Most of the Davis slaves are not buried in the historic Davis Cemetery, Jones said.
As the Sons of Confederate Veterans and community members were cleaning the Davis Family Cemetery in 2005, a search was made for the unidentified slave cemetery.
No trace could be found. The front yard of the home had grass sewn to Bob’s Creek Road and the woods at the front are gone. The Department of Transportation had widened Bob’s Creek Road since the field stones were discovered.
The only remnant of the graveyard was the ground cover, periwinkle, which was commonly used in old cemeteries in the 1800s.

 Kingdom of the Happy Land

A two-mile walk was also made in 2005 into the property owned by the Bell family in Tuxedo.
The Kingdom of the Happy Land, a settlement of newly freed slaves from Mississippi, lived on the property in the late 1800s.
No sign of graves could be found.
The property owner said the land had been logged at least twice since the last of the people living in the “Kingdom” left in the early 1900s.
The newly freed slaves arrived in the county between 1867 and 1868. The families began moving North from Mississippi after the Civil War. It appears that others joined the group along the route. They entered the county from South Carolina on the old Buncombe Turnpike road.
At the top of the “winding stairs” they stopped at the Oakland estate in the Green River community. They were offered work by the Davis family and settled on land owned by the Davis family between Green River and Mountain Page.
They called their community the “Kingdom of the Happy Land.” They later bought 180 acres from the John Davis family.
One of the leaders of this group was Robert Montgomery. Some members of this group were the Williams family and John Markley, a famous blacksmith in the county. Most of this group later moved to Hendersonville and East Flat Rock.