Maybe it was the historically significant but unlucky whistle that Elias Powell brought home from the battlefield, noted a few weeks back in the pages of Focus. Or perhaps as the son of a pro-British American Revolution loyalist, George Powell felt he lived under some kind of dark cloud. After all, his father had been on the wrong side of the war for independence. Either way, George had reason to be cautious.
Before his father’s death in 1832, George had grown into his own adulthood, started a family, built a log cabin in the Powelltown section of what would become Lenoir and lent his support to the founding of Lower Creek Baptist Church.
But prior to 1820 the cabin burned down. Family lore attributed the cause of the blaze to a witch. Your read that right, a witch. Apparently, an evil-spirited apparition lived in the home right along with the rest of the family. While they got in and out of their abode everyday without a problem, the witch could not leave. So what did he/she/it do? The spirit burned down the cabin to escape, or so the story goes.
In retaliation or more likely respecting the power of the witch, George rebuilt (in Little Pigs fashion) by constructing his next house of brick. More than that though, he made sure that in the attic wall, next to the upper part of the chimney a hole was crafted to allow the ‘party from another dimension’ to escape. The witch passage took the shape of a key hole…