Cutliff Harmon

Cutliff Harman was born in 1748 in Rowan Co., N.C. and died in 1838. His father, George Hermann (Harman) came with his six brothers to Pennsylvania from their native home near the Danube River in Germany. George then traveled into Maryland where he met and married Cutliff's mother, Mary Margaret Wiley. Together they journeyed down the Shenandoah Valley and finally into North Carolina where they settled in Rowan County. Cutliff first married Suzan Fouts. Suzan was born in 1751 in Rowan County and died July 18, 1817. She was the daughter of Theobald David Pfautz (Fouts) and Catrina Spangle and was of Swiss ancestry. The Harman and Fout families had been friends and neighbors for many years in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, settling in the same counties. After Cutliff and Suzan's marriage, Cutliff was employed by Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman, and a Col. Robertson to help trans-port goods from Yadkin Valley, N.C. to Sycamore Shoals near Elizabethton, Tennessee and from the mountains of western North Carolina to the State of Franklin (now eastern Tennessee). Col. Robertson was also involved in the purchase of several counties from the Cherokee Indians. On one particular trip, Cutliff passed through Wilkes Co., (later Ashe Co. and now Watauga Co.), N. C. He liked the area so well that he decided to move there, and he bought 522 acres of land from James Gwyn for 300 pounds. The land had been granted to James Gwyn for 50 shillings for every one hundred acres, and the original land grant was signed by Samuel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina on May 18, 1789. This land, (later known as the Harmon and John Mast lands), was transferred to Cutliff on Aug. 6, 1791. The country was then a territory to the Ohio River and was called the Washington. Cutliff went back to Rowan County and brought his wile and six children to what is now Cove Creek in Sugar Grove, N.C. While Cutliff built their new home, he and his family took shelter beneath a huge rock at the mouth of Phillips Branch known as "Shupe's Rockhouse," getting its name from a Shupe family that once lived under it. Ac-cording to an old newspaper clipping, the rockhouse was a beautiful and lovely chamber midway in the face of a cliff 100 feet high. The shelter was entered by a descending stairway of three natural stone steps, and Cove Creek ran west almost to the base of the cliff and then turned directly south. This rockhouse has since been called the "Harmon Rockhouse," and the first white child born in the area was supposedly born there. Cutliff's new neighbors were Benjamin Ward, Sr., a Revolutionary War veteran living on Watauga River, and Samuel Hix, a Tory seeking refuge in the Hix Settlement in Valle Crucis, N.C. Down through the generations, the descendants of these men have inter-married time and time again. Either Cutliff Harman or Samuel Hix was the first person to bring the "Jack Tales" to this area, learning them from the early pioneers of America with whom they had become acquainted, and perhaps adding their own German touches. Cutliff's second wife was Elizabeth Parker, widow of Christian Parker, whom he married in 1825. They had no children. Cutliff died at the age of ninety, and he and his wives are buried in the old Harmon Family cemetery on Cove Creek in Sugar Grove next to the land where their home once stood. https://www.fieldgenealogy.com/g0/p3.htm