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He was a hero in local folklore around Lexington, N.C., many the tale told of his amazing strength.
A hulking blacksmith called Big Henry, he weighed 400 pounds and had a special oversize chair built to hold him.
Witnesses said he picked up a rock (photo at the local museum there) that weighed nearly half a ton, placing it in the foundation for one of his barns.
Folk stories that are repeated with glee over and over often have humor in them, and Big Henry starred in one of those.
His log blacksmith shop had open windows and a door, inside a big anvil where he fashioned plow points and made stuff of hammered iron. You can see similar activity at John C. Campbell Folk School.
Challenge for blacksmith
One day, a clever little man, short in size but devious, came to the shop with a challenge.
“Big Henry, listen to me,” he said. “You and I are going to pick up your blacksmith shop off the ground. Here’s how we’re going to do it.”
There was a long hardwood pole lying on the ground in the shop yard, probably destined to be made into a wagon tongue. They placed it in one of the windows – half extending into the darkened shop, half protruding into the open yard.
“You stand out in the yard and pick up on that end,” the small shyster said. “I will be inside picking up on that end, and together we’ll lift the shop.”
When the little man inside yelled to start, then Big Henry came up with his end of the pole – and the side of the shop came up off the ground.
And the little man came running out, shouting and cheering.
For he hadn’t lifted at all. He had merely placed his end of the pole on top of the big anvil, and the giant’s strength did the rest.
Civil War massacre
During the latter years of the Civil War, a Yankee patrol fully equipped, uniformed and fully armed, rode into the countryside where Big Henry and his neighbors resided.
Not long thereafter, folks noticed there were five new graves lying side by side in an open field there by the public road.
So when I sat down some 20 years ago to write my novel Coosa Flyer, the lost federal soldiers and the legendary strong man were facts woven into the fiction. Now you know.
But you didn’t know that I went to the little country high school with one of Big Henry’s descendants
Dealing with a bully
Big Henry died about 20 years after the war, in the mid-1880s, with lots of descendants.
One of them was several years older than me but still coming to school. He was very strong and bullied several of us repeatedly. Strong as an ox and about as dumb as one, but we didn’t say that to his face.
Teacher was out of the room, I went to the pencil sharpener, and Charles Henry came up behind me and painfully flipped my ear in front of the class.
Showing his utter contempt, he turned and walked away. I hit him in the lower back with my fist as hard as I could. He laughed and walked back to his seat. Absent the next five days, he never bothered me again.
“Don’t never hit me in the kidney again,” he told me. “I been peeing blood for near a week.”
The next year he turned 21, and they told him not to come back to school anymore.
Wally Avett first wrote for the Cherokee Scout as editor in 1969. His books are available as signed copies at the Scout office in Murphy. Call him at 837-5531 or email wallyavett@gmail.com.