Freydeck suddenly appeared west of the Blue Ridge (in current day Ashe County) on several English and French maps of North America published in 1755, including the monumental map by John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distances… By the end of the 18th Century, Freydeck was gone. What is the origin of this extinct North Carolina place name?
The origin of Freydeck in North Carolina was only two years before it appeared on the most important North American map of the 18th century. Between November 2, 1752, and January 13, 1753, North Carolina surveyor William Churton traveled the back country of North Carolina with Bishop August
Gottlieb Spangenberg and several other members of the Unitas Fratrum. Their purpose was to locate and survey an appropriate 100,000 acre tract of land the Moravians were going to purchase from John Carteret, the Earl of Granville. Bishop Spangenberg’s diary provides wonderful details about their adventure. At the conclusion, he offers names for each of the 11 tracts that had been
surveyed.[[Fries, A. L. (Adelaide Lisetta). Records of the Moravians in North Carolina. (Volume 1: 1752-1771) Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Print. Co. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000683956;skin=2021;sz=25;q1=freydeck;start=1;sort=seq;page=search;seq=73;num=61]]
I have been thinking that it would be a good thing if the Deeds which we will
take from My Lord Granville should contain a name for each tract. I will suggest
what seems to me an appropriate name for each, and then leave it to you.
…The eighth is across the Blue Mountains, on New River. It is very lonesome, not
one man lives there; it is truly a Freydeck (translated elsewhere as “secluded
corner”)
Other named tracts included Grunen, Merkfield, Schonthal, Richmont, Loesch
Creek, Monfort, Oli, Forkland, New Hope, and finally, of course, Wachau.
Bishop Spangenberg returned to England in 1753 to complete the transaction
with the Earl of Granville. The information from his surveys was obviously
shared with John Mitchell and perhaps other map makers since “Freydeck”
appeared on several maps in 1755. It occasionally appeared on maps
throughout the remainder of the 18th Century, but had essentially vanished by
the end of the century. Curiously, it was mentioned in a 1791 British
periodical, The Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical Chronicle, Vol. LXI,
August, 1791, p766:
A letter, dated the 17th of June, lately received by a gentleman in town from
Freydeck, in North Carolina (about 120 miles N.E. from Cherokee), states, that
Colonel Bowles, with his Indian companions, had arrived at Cherokee…
This secluded corner was transformed into Ashe County via an act of the General Assembly in 1799. That same year, the Assembly authorized a $100 purchase of fifty acres to erect the county seat of Jefferson. On the Price-Strother map of 1808 (manuscript completed approximately 1799-1800), the only indication of settlement in present day Ashe County is “A. Smith” on the New River a few miles NE of the eventual location of Jefferson. The Price-Strother map in the North Carolina Collection at UNC has a manuscript addition “CH” (Court House) correctly locating the Seat of Ashe County near the head of Naked Creek.[[Available on line: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/520]]
With a plethora of Christmas tree farms and mountain vacation homes, this corner of North Carolina is no longer a “Freydeck.”
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