My Adema Cousins - Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Recently while sojourning in the warmth of a February Florida, my wife, Barb, and I stopped and visited my cousins, the Bob Ademas.  You may recall I wrote of the Ademas, my 2nd cousin, through the George W. (1844-1928) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940) line; these two persons are great grandparents of both Bob Adema and myself.

Below, Bob and Gayle Adema in Brandenton.  The photographer in the mirror is yours truly.

This time in what is becoming a twice annual meeting, we met Bob and Gayle's daughter and son-in-law, Vicki Adema McIntyre and her husband, Todd McIntyre.  Below, Vicki, Todd and Barbara Holliman.

Vicki for many years was with the Ringing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, in charge of ordering feed for the many animals, and especially the elephants.  With the closing of the circus, she is now taking some time off before her next adventure.  Todd is writing a book on chemicals we may not know we are ingesting or inhaling in our 21st Century lives.

Below, Bob holds a picture of his mother, Vicki's grandmother, Gladys Osborne Adema (1913-2003) who lived in Damascus, Virginia.  Gladys met and married Bob's father, Howard Adema (1909-1984), who was working in the 1930s for the Civilian Conservation Corp in Virginia, but whose hometown was Buffalo, New York.

During our meeting this year, I remembered discovering a photograph of Gladys when she visited my Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), a grand daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.  Louise and Gladys were first cousins.  Below, Louise, right and Gladys at Louise's home at Scenic Point, Louisville, Tennessee, April 2, 1978.  Ft. Loudon Lake (the Tennessee River) is in the background.

So, I close this remembrance with a picture taken in Damascus, Virginia in 1938, almost 40 years earlier, in which both Gladys and Louise were present.  Left to right are Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (the writer's mother, 1923-2015), Louise, Gladys and Doris Osborne Akers (1912-1986). Two sets of sisters, both first cousins visiting the home of Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright.

More Photographs from my Sister's Attic, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

Ah, the things one finds when an attic is explored.  Recently, my sister, Becky Holliman Payne of Tennessee, went through her boxes of memorabilia received from her mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick and Louise Stansbery Sherwood.  I long ago thought what could be found, had been found.  As I have shared in the last two postings, I was wrong!

Below is a photograph many of us have seen, and of which several of us distant cousins have copies.  I have believed this shows my great grandparents, George Washington and Frances (Frankie) Wilson Osborne around the time of their wedding in January 1867.  Frankie was a young bride, (1851-1940) a daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Sutherland, Ashe County, North Carolina.  G.W. was older, (1847-1927) born to parents  G.W. (1803-1882) and  Mary Baldwin Osborne (1803-1899), also of Ashe County.  It was around this date that G.W. was ordained a Southern Methodist pastor at Sutherland Methodist Church in Ashe County.  

Below is the original tin type, the first time I have seen it.  It shows G.W. holding what appears to be a Bible.  But the date is not 1867; we now know it was 1874 due to the fact, one of their children, Pearl Osborne Wright (1890-1980) wrote on the back of the framed tin type. 

 

As she dated this frame in 1940 (see picture below), my Great Aunt Pearl probably inherited this when Frankie died in November of that year.  In time the photograph passed to my Aunt Louise Sherwood, then to my Mother, and finally to my sister.

 

  

Note the instructions Pearl (Mrs. Dave Wright), pictured below ca 1940,  at her Damascus, Virginia home, gave the photographer to 'spruce up' the tin type.

 

Also, below found in the attic this picture taken ca 1933 of Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), who kept the memorabilia in her home in Knoxville, Tennessee until her death.  Her husband was Vance R. Sherwood, Sr. (1910-1990).

 

Two sisters who were quite close all their lives were Louise (left below) and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, right below (b 1923), this writer's mother.  This precious photograph of the two sisters at play, which I had never seen before,  may have been made in 1927.  They lived with their parents, Charles S. and Mayme Osborne Stansbery in Bristol, Tennessee, where their grandparents, G.W. and Frankie Osborne also resided from the late 1910s to their deaths.

So, to paraphrase a popular television credit card commercial, 'What's in your attic?"

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com. Or visit the Holliman-Long Ancestry.com site and www.bholliman.com virtual archive.

 

Some Families of Damscus, Virginia, Part XVIII

A Damascus (Virginia) Story, Part III
by Pearl Osborne Wright


This is the third and last installment of memories by my Great Aunt Pearl Osborne Wright (1890-1980) of her life in Damascus, Virginia.  In 1911, she married Dave Wright and joined him in Damascus, leaving her parents, G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne, in Afton, Tennessee. - Glenn N. Holliman


"Our first home was a small upstairs apartment in the telephone office building. Dave continued to work for the Damascus Light and Power Company.  Later we bought and moved into the house owned by Ollie Weaver.

The Damascus Light and Power Company was bought by the Appalachian Power Company, and Dave became manager of the Damascus branch.  We bought and moved into the house presently owned by Harold 'Joe' Lamb.

Dave was always interested in anything involving electricity.  He operated the moving picture machines for years.  When radio came into being, he built a miniature house containing a speaker and hung it on a wire over the street in front of our house.  Music could be heard on the street in the lower end of town."

Above, Pearl Osborne and David Wright take their ease, ca. 1950, in front of their home by the junction of the two rivers in Damascus, Virginia.


"At the death of my sister-in-law her three children came to live with Dave and me.  The two girls, Doris (Mrs. E. F. Akers) and Gladys (Mrs. Howard Adama), lived with us until they married and moved into their own homes.  Their brother, Bascom, entered the navy, when he became of age.

Due to illness, Dave retired from the power company in late 1951.  We built more rooms to his radio  equipment. Later Hazel and Wayne McConnell lived there until they built their own home below Damascus in 1965.  When Dave passed away (1962), I sold the big house and moved into the small one. It is my home today."

Above David Wright, one of the persons who day after day keep our communities going, at his retirement party, Christmas 1951.  Below, his wife of fifty years, celebrated her 80th birthday in 1970, the year she wrote these reflections on life in a small valley town nestled in a beautiful part of the Appalachian Mountains. 

Thanks for reading the 18 articles on Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright.  My thanks to cousins Bob and Rob Adema and Phyllis Akers Mink for sharing of family photographs.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part XVII

A Damascus (Virginia) Story, Part II
by Pearl Osborne Wright


We continue the memories of my Great Aunt Pearl Osborne Wright concerning her youth and marriage to David Wright in 1911. - Glenn N. Holliman

"The depression (the country experienced a severe economic turn down in 1907) and news of the rapidly developing town of Damascus reached us.  In 1908, my family left Blountville, Tennessee and came to Damascus.  My father, G. W. Osborne, bought and operated a mercantile store near the center of town.  He also bought a big white house near the store and mother, Frances Wilson Osborne, rented rooms to some of the many people moving into town.  (The lumber business was booming in the early 1900s.) Damascus had really grown since our first trip in 1897."

Above, Pearl Osborne Wright in white on the right, newly wed, with an unknown friend in Damascus, Virginia in the 1910s.


"There were several stores, a bank, two churches and numerous lovely houses between the two rivers.  Before there had been only three houses and a store.  By 1910, the first train came to Damascus.  The main street was a wide smoothly scraped road with board side walks on each side.  The Damascus Light and Power Company supplied the town with electricity.  R. Dave Wright, who would later be my husband, was an employee of this company."

Right, an unidentified baby on a new sidewalk in Damascus, Virginia ca. 1910.

"After living in Damascus for two years, my parents moved again.  This time to Afton, Tennessee (near Greenville).  There my father owned and operated a larger store.  In 1911, Dave Wright came to Afton to ask me to be his wife.  We were married in Greenville, Tennessee and came back to Damascus to live."

Below, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright  with friends brave the Backbone Rock ca. 1910. Note their fashionable climbing outfits - young men in hats, ties and white shirts, and the ladies in long dresses and stylish blouses.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part XV

The Retirement of Dave Wright
by Glenn N. Holliman

Over many articles I have been posting information on Damascus, Virginia and the life of my Great Uncle and Aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright.  The couple lived in the small mountain town until time ran out for Dave in 1962 and Pearl in 1980.  Childless, they generously raised two nieces and a nephew who came to live with them in 1923 when Pearl's sister-in-law died.  For two generations, Dave kept the lights on literally in town first as the manager of the Damascus Light and Power Company and later Appalachian Power.

Right, Pearl and Dave Wright.  The unidentified child may be a great niece.

Dave on the far right at a civic function.  The men shaking hands are not identified.  

Nor are those below.  Perhaps these photos, ca. 1950, will strike a memory with someone in Damascus, Virginia. By 1950,a niece's husband, E.F. Akers, ran the Beaver Chemical Company.

After retirement in 1952, Dave repaired radios from his home.  He died in 1962.  Pearl would live another 18 years, passing away in 1980.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part XIV

The Larger Family of Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright
by Glenn N. Holliman

In 1938, two cousins and an aunt from Bristol, Tennessee visited Doris Osborne Akers (1913-1980) and Gladys Osborne Adema (1914-1998) at the home of Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright (1890-1980) in Damascus, Virginia.  The two cousins were my Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006) and my mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Their mother, my grandmother, Mayme Osborne Stansbery (1896-1943) was with them.

Posed in front of the Wright Inn (their home) in Damsacus in the late 1930s is from left to right Doris, Louise, Mayme, Geraldine and Gladys.

In 1938, America was still emerging from the Great Depression, Hitler was grabbing Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia, and in Damascus, the Civilian Conservation Corp was about to close down its forest restoration projects.  The United States was entering a debate on whether a huge arms build up was necessary to counter the growing militarism of Japan and Germany.  The world stood at the cusp of violent change and war.

In 2011, numerous America wars later, the only survivor of the group photo, Geraldine, returned with her son, Glenn N. Holliman (yours truly b 1946) and one of the sons of Gladys, Bob Adema, on the left. We stood in front of the old Wright Inn, now owned by others.  Yes, just as in 1938, the country was emerging from a Great Recession, but fortunately today our Asian wars are winding down, not up.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part XII

by Glenn  N.  Holliman

This is the twelth in a series of stories with photographs of my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

Part of this series can be found in Ancestry.com under the names of those in the articles.

We continue with a number of photographs of unidentified Damascus citizens and sites from the 1910s forward.  We invite anyone who might know these persons to correspond with us at glennhistory@gmail.com.

The fisherman on the rock above may be Dave Wright. This jolly chap with the derby may be Ward Wright, Dave Wright's brother.

Above, Pearl Osborne Wright may be the center figure; others unknown.  Below, men share a cigarette by the train tressel in Damascus.

.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part IX

By Glenn N. Holliman


This is the ninth in a series of stories with photographs of  my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

One will find information on persons recorded here at Ancestry.com in the Gallery sections.

In Baltimore, Maryland in 1922, a young mother (right) named Dora Kruger Osborne died suddenly and unexpectedly.  She left her husband, Bascomb Osborne, a native of Ashe County, North Carolina and brother of Pearl Osborne Wright, with three young children.  Bascomb, devastated by the loss his wife, was not able to care appropriately for the son and two daughters.  Pearl and Dave Wright generously took them in and raised them as their own in Damascus, Virginia.

The oldest, Bascomb K. Osborne, born 1910, joined the U.S. Navy as an enlisted man in 1927, and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander by the time of retirement in the early 1950s.

The oldest daughter was Doris Osborne (1913-1980)
seen here on the right standing in front of the new high school which was finished in the late 1920s.  Doris would meet and marry a new chemist in town who eventually ran the Beaver Works, a chemical dye company.

Below is Elmer F. Akers, who courted Doris Osborne, won her hand, and together they raised a family in Damascus.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part VII

by Glenn N. Holliman


This is the seventh in a series of stories with photographs of  my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

Please check the names of Dave Wright, Pearl Osborne and Bob Adema on Ancestry.com for additional stories.

In previous posts, I have written of Dave Wright as the indispensable man, perhaps not unusual for small towns in rural American a century ago.  He played in the town band, ran the movie projector at the local theatre, helped his wife check guests into the Damascus Inn and kept the town electric generators going.


 Below, front row on the far left, Dave took some time to enjoy friendships.  The friends, all formally dressed, seem to be in front of some type of gazebo.  Did Damascus have a town bandstand?

Dave also provided the town taxi service beginning in 1912.  One of the first persons to whom he gave a ride was his mother-in-law, my great grandmother Frances Wilson Osborne of Afton, Tennessee at the time.  In her diary, she wrote that her first automobile ride was provided by Dave Wright up and down the Glade Valley Road.

Right, Dave and his wife, Pearl Osborne Wright, stand in front of what may be the town taxi.  The cow does not seem impressed.


Of course, being a mechanic came in handy for Dave.  Here he changes a tire, a common occurrence a century ago.

Dave Wright seemed to have considerable advice on how to change the tire.  Punctures were common on unpaved roads.
                                                        .

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part V

by Glenn N. Holliman


This is the fifth in a series of stories with photographs of my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

Some of these stories may be found under Pearl Osborne's name in Ancestry.com.


According to historian Louise Hall, Dave's father, P.W. Wright constructed a large home in 1898 along Beaver Creek.  The home became a boarding house, an inn if you will, for the travelling lumber and rail road men who frequented Damascus during the boom years from 1901 to 1926.  Being so close to mountain-fed rivers, the large, rumbustious creeks occasionally overflowed.  During a disastrous flood in 1901, water ran through the first floor, stranding guests on the second floor.

As time passed, Dave and Pearl took over running the inn.  For a while in the 1910s, they may have been assisted by another great uncle of mine, Toby Osborne, one of five sons of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne, natives of Ashe County, North Carolina.

Left, the Damascus Inn in the 1910s. Notice the picket fence and unpaved street.  The persons on the right and left are believed to be Pearl Osborne and Dave Wright.  The tall gentleman in the middle is unidentified.

The Damascus Inn would serve as the back drop for several generations of family photos, some of which will appear later in this series.  Below the house from a 1910s photograph taken on the bank of Beaver Creek near the town bridge.

 Today the Damascus Inn, the home first of P.W. Wright and later one of his sons, Dave Wright, is a private  home.  In the fall of 2011, a political sign had replaced one from a century earlier that had read 'Damascus Inn'.   The "Inn", a piece of local history, appears well-preserved by the current owners.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part IV

by Glenn N. Holliman

This is the fourth in a series of articles on Damascus, Virginia and how one family, my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright, lived and contributed to the well-being of the community in the first half of the 20th Century.
  
In 1901 the Virginia-Carolina Railroad reached Damascus from Abington, Virginia.  Timber began being removed from the thick forests surrounding the cove and covering the high mountains that surrounded the isolated village.  In 1906, the Laurel Line opened to the south connecting Damascus to Mountain City,Tennessee.

Historian Louise Hall describes the Laurel Railway as a narrow gauge operation that often carried young people into the forests for picnics and then picked them up to bring them home.  Below are some photos illustrating Ms. Hall's information.

The names of the persons on this small track car are not known, but one assumes Dave Wright in on the far right and probably his young wife, Pearl Osborne Wright, is sitting in front of him.  If relatives recognize unidentified persons in this and other photographs, please email the writer at Glennhistory@gmail.com. 

As ever we are indebted for the photographs to my second cousin, Phyllis Ackers Mink, whose mother, Doris Osborne Ackers, grew up in Damascus from 1923 until her marriage to Elmer "Flea" Ackers in the 1930s.  Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright may be the couple (right picture) on the far right side of the person in the dark jacket.  The man in the dark coat may be Dave's brother, Ward Wright, who also lived in Damascus.


Railroads served Damascus until 1926 when operations ceased as the timber had been harvested.  Economically the trains could not survive with out the trees.  Later many of the privately owned forests were purchased by the U.S. Government and have become national forests.  This is another story, one of the Civilian Conservation Corps locating a camp near Damascus during the New Deal.  The CCC location would impact the lives of the Wrights and Osborne siblings.  

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part III

by Glenn N. Holliman

This is the third of a series of stories with photographs of  Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.

Robert David Wright was a descendant of the 18th Century family that founded this village which snuggles between two mountain ranges.  According to historian Louise F. Hall, there were hopes in the late 19th Century to develop an iron industry, but the deposits were only on the surface and not commercially viable.  Lumber companies did discover the timber and by the middle 1920s had decimated the surrounding forests.

This picture was probably made around 1912 of Dave Wright at the Backbone, a ridge line on southwest of town.  The rail road in the early 1900s blasted a tunnel through the ridge.  The dramatic escarpment of a solid jagged rock formation became a popular recreation point for young people.

Above, Dave and his young wife, Pearl Osborne Wright, operate a foot driven rail car, probably enjoying a day out at the Backbone.


In September 2011, my second cousin, Bob Adema and other family members, visited Damascus and the Backbone, now as a century later, a National Forest Recreational Park.

Bob Adema's mother, Gladys Osborne Adema, was raised by Pearl and Dave Wright in Damascus after her mother died in 1923.  The Wrights never had children of their own, but raised Gladys, her sister Doris and her brother Bascomb Osborne at their home in Damascus.  The Wrights are the great uncle and aunt of both Bob Adema and this writer.

More on the Backbone and early photographs of Damascus in the next posting....

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part II

by Glenn N. Holliman

In my last post, I began a series on a small village, a little over 1,000 persons in 2010, nestled between two mountain ranges, the Iron and Holston, and joined at the edge of the downtown by two small rivers, the Laurel and the Beaver. Damascus, Washington County, Virginia lies next to the upper East Tennessee border and welcomes trekkers from both the Virginia Creeper and Appalachian trails. It remains an eclectic community of B and Bs, cafes, bike shops and a good local library.  In the winter, the sunshine sometimes has difficulty reaching the United Methodist Church, so deep is this recessed cove at the south edge of town. 

What interests me is that my great aunt and uncle and several second cousins spent their lives, whole or in part, contributing to this community, assisting its economic base and leading its renaissance after the collapse of the iron and timber industry in the early 1900s.

Guiding in this process is "A History of Damascus, 1793-1950", well-written by the late local historian of Damascus, Louise Fortune Hall. My historical tidbits are from her excellent work (below). I purchased my copy last autumn at the library.
                                                                  
Louise Hall relates that in 1785 a father and son, Jacob and John Wright, a Revoluntionary War veteran, settled along what is now Glade Spring Road, now a state highway that leads northwest to I-81.  A descendant of these Wrights, David Wright, my great uncle and his brother, Ward, were born in Damascus in the late 1800s.  Dave married by great aunt Pearl Osborne Wright in 1911.  Pearl had lived in Damascus from 1908 to 1910 when her paarents (my great grandparents), George Washington and Frances Wilson Osborne ran a general store and boarding house.

Below is a photograph from approximately 1910 showing the Osborne boarding house and store on what is now main street Damascus.  G.W. and Frankie Osborne are surrounded by some of their children. The tall woman in the centre is Pearl O. Wright and next to her is my grandmother, Mayme T. Osborne Stansbery.  This picture has been in the possession of Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, my mother.

When my wanderlust great grandfather, G.W. Osborne, still looking for his elusive forture, moved the family to Afton, Tennessee in 1910, Dave Wright followed and asked the hand of Pearl in marriage.  From 1911 until his death in 1962, Damascus was their home.

The Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part I

On the Road to Damascus
by Glenn N. Holliman

Let's begin with a Google map of Western North Carolina, upper East Tennessee and a portion of Southwest Virginia.  By the late 1700s most of my mother's ancestors had made their way from Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake colonies to the uplands and valleys of the Appalachians found on this map. They were the Osbornes, Greers, Wilsons, Boones, Browns, Wilcoxsons, Taylors, McCrays, Bayless and others.

The red dot in the bottom center is the approximate location of the Civil War farm of my great great grandparents, Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson, in Sutherland, near Creston, Ashe County, North Carolina.  The blue dot underlined in red is Damascus, Virginia, and in the center left underlined is Bristol, Tennessee the birthplace of my mother.  Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, my mother,and I are descendants of all the above families.

 On her father's side, Charles S. Stansbery, Sr., mother descended from a family that landed in the Maryland colony in the late 1600s, made their way thought through the Piedmont areas of Virginia and the Carolinas, before offspring settled by the 1850s in the Knox and Greene counties of East Tennessee.

For a period of time, this Southern Appalachian area was America's frontier.  The Cherokee and Shawnee lost their hunting grounds by the late 1700s and eventually most of their homeland as the tide of European and African Americans kept pushing westward.  Many of the offspring of my families moved into Tennessee and Kentucky and within a generation across the Missisippi and eventually to the Rockies and beyond.  Daniel Boone, my 6th great uncle, founded Kentucky but eventually would die in Missouri.

Of course, not all children and grandchildren of the named families above moved west.  Many made the Appalachian mountains, coves and river bottom land their homes.  To this day, one will find my distant cousins living in Ashe and Watauga counties in North Carolina, Knox, Greene, Sullivan and Washington counties in Tennessee and Grayson and other counties in Virginia.

In this series of posts, I am exploring the lives of ancestors who remained in the Appalachian highlands, in particular a great aunt and uncle, Pearl Osborne Wright and her husband, Dave.  They made an impact on the small community of Damascus, Virginia, in the first half of the 20th Century and left an archive of photographs that capture their lives and the fashions of their time.

Above David and Pearl Osborne Wright in Damascus, Virginia early 1900s with their puppies.  Many of the photographs to be posted are courtesy of my second cousin, Phyliss Akers Mink, a great niece of the Wright.


My Great Aunt Pearl was not the first of my ancestors to travel through Damascus, Virginia.  That honor belongs to Daniel Boone, a 6th great uncle of mine.  A few miles south of Damascus, in Laurel Blooming, Tennessee is a monument (pictured below) to his explorations.  He traversed what is now the upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia valleys and river bottoms, before forcing the Cumberland Gap.