Friday, Nov. 30, 1810. “What an awful day,” Francis Asbury, circuit rider bishop of early Methodism in America, tells in his journal of finally arriving about 9 p.m. at Father Jacob Shook’s home, in what is now Clyde. He and three companions had come down over the mountains from Tennessee. They had been lost in the woods and confronted with numerous crossings of streams.
After careful study of Asbury’s journeys, scholars tell us that he traveled 235,000 miles on horseback in his ministry on the American frontier. He wore out nine horses.
What an awesome day more than 200 years later, Dec. 10, 2011, when the Shook House was given to the Haywood County Historical and Genealogical Society. Dr. Joseph Hall of Washington, D.C., a descendant of Jacob Shook, had purchased the property about 10 ...