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Presidents Day was celebrated Monday, which originated in 1879 to honor George Washington’s birthday of Feb. 22. The federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday in February in 1971, when it was changed to Presidents Day to include Abraham Lincoln and all other notable U.S. leaders.
Cherokee County has a connection to that.
Abram Enloe’s name is displayed prominently on a tombstone at Harshaw Chapel cemetery in downtown Murphy, where he was buried in 1840. That name may not mean anything to you – unless you know the legend of Lincoln being the illegitimate son of Enloe, a prominent pioneer farmer who owned slaves and land in the early 1800s in western North Carolina. He also allegedly had a bond servant named Nancy Hanks, who was sent to Kentucky while pregnant and later married a man named Tom Lincoln. You know the rest.
While nps.gov disagrees with that local history, it’s still been fun for historians and residents to debate over the last century and a half. And it’s one more thing – whether true or not – to celebrate in a rather interesting bit of Cherokee County folklore.
– Publisher David Brown