Daniel Haston Family Association

17 – Ballenberg Open-Air Museum

17 - Ballenberg Open-Air Museum

On Wednesday, July 21, 2023, our Hiestand-Haston heritage tour group will visit the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum.

Ballenberg is an open-air museum in Switzerland that displays traditional buildings and architecture from all over the country. Located near Brienz in the municipality of Hofstetten bei Brienz, Canton of Bern, Ballenberg has over 100 original buildings that have been transported from their original sites. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.

In addition to the main attraction of the buildings themselves, some of the industrial and crafting buildings still operate to give demonstrations of traditional rural crafts, techniques, and cheesemaking. There is also a sizable number of farmyard animals on the grounds.

Founded in 1978, the museum features buildings from all over the country and has structures from almost all of the cantons. The buildings are set in surroundings appropriate to their type (farm buildings surrounded by small fields etc.) with pathways snaking across the 660,000 square metres (164 acre) site. Most buildings allow the visitor to walk around the rooms, each recreated from the time period of the building or brought over wholesale when the building was transplanted. -Wikipedia

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16 – Lucerne and the Wooden Chapel Bridge

16 - Wooden Chapel Bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland

And Shopping in this Beautiful City!

In the afternoon of June 20, 2023, our Hiestand-Haston heritage tour group will visit the Swiss city of Lucerne. Not only will we see and stroll across this historic bridge, but there will also be time for shopping in Lucerne.

The Kapellbrücke (literally, Chapel Bridge) is a covered wooden footbridge spanning the river Reuss diagonally in the city of Lucerne in central Switzerland. Named after the nearby St. Peter’s Chapel, the bridge is unique in containing a number of interior paintings dating back to the 17th century, although many of them were destroyed along with a larger part of the centuries-old bridge in a 1993 fire. Subsequently restored, the Kapellbrücke is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe as well as the world’s oldest surviving truss bridge. It serves as the city’s symbol and as one of Switzerland’s main tourist attractions.

Part of the bridge complex is the octagonal 34.5 m (113 ft) tall (from the ground) Wasserturm, which translates to “water tower,” in the sense of ‘tower standing in the water.’ The tower pre-dated the bridge by about 30 years. Over the centuries, the tower has been used as a prison, torture chamber, and later a municipal archive as well as a local treasury. Today, the tower is closed to the public, although it houses a local artillery association and a tourist gift shop.

The bridge itself was originally built c.1365 as part of Lucerne’s fortifications. It linked the old town on the right bank of the Reuss to the new town on the left bank, securing the town from attack from the south (i.e. from the lake). The bridge was initially over 270 metres (890 ft) long, although numerous shortenings over the years and river bank replenishments mean the bridge now totals only 204.7 metres (672 ft) long. It is the oldest surviving truss bridge in the world, consisting of strutted and triangulated trusses of moderate span, supported on piled trestles; as such, it is probably an evolution of the strutted bridge.

The Kapellbrücke almost burned down on 18 August 1993, destroying two-thirds of its interior paintings. Shortly thereafter, the Kapellbrücke was reconstructed and again opened to the public on 14 April 1994 for a total of CHF 3.4 million. –Wikipedia

Beautiful Lucerne

Walking Across the Chapel Bridge

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– June 14-27, 2023 – Hiestand/Haston European Heritage Tour – Terms and Conditions

2023 Hiestand-Haston Europe Tour Price and Other Details

June 14-27, 2023 - Switzerland and Rhineland Germany

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30 – Daniel Haston Family Moves Across the Cumberland Plateau

30 - Our Hastons Moved West of the Cumberland Mountain

Through the Tellico Treaties of October 25 and 27, 1805, Cherokee chiefs ceded to the United States a large area of Middle Tennessee. On April 24, 1806, the October 1805 treaties were officially proclaimed by the President of the United States. Much of Middle Tennessee, including then-future White County, was legally opened for white pioneers. White County historian Monroe Seals noted: “After the Treaty of Tellico the country settled up rapidly.”[i]

[i] Monroe Seals, History of White County. (1935; reprinted, Salem, MA: Higginson Book Company, n.d.), 6.

The 1805 cession of land from the Cherokees is indicated by the yellow (57) section of the above map. The Cherokee surrendered their claims “from the Kentucky line on the north to [the future towns of] Manchester and Altamont on the south, from the Tennessee River on the east to the neighborhood of Livingston, Cookeville, Smithville, and Woodbury on the west.”[i] The ceded territory included the future locations of Sparta, Spencer, McMinnville, and Crossville.

[i] Hamer, 243-244.

Assuming Daniel was born in about 1750, the first 33 years (or so) of his life were spent in Virginia and the next 21 years (or so) were spent in Western North Carolina/East Tennessee. He lived out the remainder of his life (22 years or so) near the confluence of Cane Creek and the Caney Fork River in what became White County, Tennessee, nearly 40 years before it became a part of northern Van Buren County.

Exactly when Daniel moved to White County is not known. My best guess is that he left Knox County sometime between the spring of 1803 and mid-1804. I have theorized that Daniel may have made a land-hunting trip across the Cumberland Plateau sometime between October 1798 and January 1800. That is also a guess, but there is enough evidence to give it some degree of credibility.

In September 1788, the steep and rugged Avery Trace (also called the North Carolina Road) was opened, it began at the Clinch River and entered the Cumberland Mountain from the east through Emory Gap (near the present town of Harriman, Tennessee). The Trace was originally nothing more than a horse path, but was widened to accommodate wagons in 1795. It crossed the Cumberland Plateau and began to descend the western slope at Standing Stone (now Monterey), then continued on to Nashville by way of Fort Blount, Dixon Springs and Winchester’s Station (now site of Gallatin).

But a better, wider, and more direct road—a wagon road from the beginning—to Nashville was opened fourteen years later, September 1802.* This newer road, which took a slightly more southernly route, was constructed under the leadership of William Walton, and became known as the Walton Road or Cumberland Road/Turnpike. It was about 15 feet wide on flat land and 12 feet wide through the mountains. On the east, it started at Southwest Point, south of Kingston, climbed up Kimbrough’s Gap, crossed the plateau through Crab Orchard, ran about four miles north of the future site of Crossville (originally Lambeth’s Crossroads), and on to Standing Stone.[i] On the west side of the Cumberland Plateau, Walton Road passed through the sites that became Cookeville, Baxter, Carthage, Gallatin, before ending in Nashville.[ii] It ran westward about 20 miles north of where Sparta was located four years later.

*This Walton Road was completed in 1801 or 1802, but was authorized in 1794 and construction began on it in 1795, beginning in Carthage, Tennessee (where William Walton lived) and working eastward.

[i] W. Calvin Dickinson, Cumberland County. (Cookeville, TN: Tennessee Technological University, 1992), 6.

[ii] John Dawson Boniol, Jr., “The Walton Road,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XXX, no. 4 (Winter, 1971): 403-407.

If Daniel scouted for land in Middle Tennessee in 1799 or 1800, he would probably have crossed the Cumberland Mountain on the Avery Trace. But when he moved to his new homesite on the Caney Fork River in 1803 or 1804, he and his family and their friends would have undoubtedly travelled the Walton Road.

The branch off of the Walton Road that turned south to Sparta was not constructed until about 1822. So Daniel’s clan probably followed the Indian Chickamauga Path, from the Walton Road as it passed through White Plains (near now what is Algood in Putnam County) down into White County to the Caney Fork River. Somewhere along the way, the Chickamauga Path branched in two directions.

The Western Branch of the Chickamauga Path/Trail ran south through Beersheba Springs, Coalmont, Tracy City, west of Jasper to the “Lower Towns” of Chickamauga Indians. The Eastern Branch ran southeast through Hickory Valley and Big Bottom, up the Cumberland Mountain, crossed Bee Creek, and on to Pikeville and probably to the Cherokee “Upper Towns,” as well as the Chattanooga-Chickamauga area.

The Eastern Branch of the Chickamauga Path crossed the Caney Fork River at Butts Ford, only about 1.7 miles upriver from the mouth of Cane Creek near the Haston’s Big Spring where Daniel and other “Big Springs” families settled.

How did Daniel Haston locate the land he and others claimed on or near the Big Spring Branch? We can only guess. But possibly he followed one branch of the Chickamauga Path to the Caney Fork River, then searched up or down the river until he discovered Cane Creek and the Big Spring Branch. Or, possibly he had met Thomas Dillon in Knoxville who directed him to the Cane Creek of the Caney Fork River site. Dillon had acquired a patent (based on Certificate #313) for 5,000 acres that included many 100s of acres in the general area where Daniel Haston settled.

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14 – Were Our Ancient Swiss Hiestands Spiritist-Pagans?

14 - Were our Ancient Swiss Hiestands Spiritist-Pagans?

Although I can’t say for sure, it is probable, that our Medieval ancestors were pagans who lived in a high-mountain area of what is now the northern edge of Canton Zug, Switzerland. Our June 2023 Hiestand-Haston tour group will visit this area.

The (Swiss) hills were alive with the sounds of witchcraft and black magic!

Many centuries before Julie Andrews and the 1965 “The Sound of Music” movie, the mountains of Switzerland were alive with very different sounds–the sounds of sorceries and incantations.

In ancient Rome a person living in a rural area or village was called paganus. When Christianity became generally accepted in the towns and cities of the empire, paganus (English, pagan) was used to refer to a villager who continued to worship the old gods. “Old gods” paganism was common throughout Europe even after Christianity was introduced and spread. As Christianity began to take root in Switzerland in the 4^th century and following, pagans retreated to the highlands to avoid the control of the State and the influence of the Church.

We know that our earliest known Hiestands originated from near the village of Hutten, just below a highland area known as Gottschalkenberg. This broad crescent-shaped, soft-topped mountain south of Wädenswil and Richterswil was a center of ancient paganism at an elevation of 3,816 feet.

Although you may read that Gottschalkenberg literally means “God’s servant,” schalk conveys the idea of some kind of foolery, so it translates to something like, “The mountain of God’s joke”[i] or “The mountain of God’s fools,”[ii] probably referring to the foolish pagans who lived there.

[i] Nicole Billeter, email to Wayne Haston, June 15, 2021.

[ii] Ross Baughman, email to Wayne Haston, April 8, 2021.

Gottschalkenberg within the northern boundary of Canton Zug, overlooking Lake Zürich and the mountain side down to the lake’s south shore.

From some of the early inhabitants of Finstersee, a village near Gottschalkenberg, a myth emerged to try to explain the origin of Gottschalkenberg. It’s just one of many magical myths from the Gottschalkenberg area.

In misty, long-agos, the first humans to settle Finstersee (just 4.7 km above Hutten) cleared the land, planted their gardens and baked their first bread. Their lives proved so good that soon a crop of children crowded the only spots big enough and flat enough for play. One from among them drew the lott, and was obliged to petition the gods for more land.

“Then clear more land! Cut the trees and dry out the swamps,” came back the only answer they got.

This advice solved their needs for a while, but when it could no longer, another envoy went out looking for the king of the devils, ready to make a deal with him.

He was glad to hear their pleas and promised to fulfill their wishes. He sent a whole troop of little devils to the top of Gottschalkenberg, where they tunneled inside it, and with their shoulders, lifted up. The settlers of Finstersee hugged each other, drank themselves silly and danced with delight, for by stretching new hillsides into the land, more acres belonged to them now and could be put to work. The people swore their thanks and fidelity to the devil, but only learned later how much harder the work would be in every way for every day of the rest of their lives.^[i]

[i] J. Ross Baughman, The Chains Rejoined, 18-19.

In time, some of these pagans probably came into contact with Christians and were converted to Christianity. They came down from the highlands to the south shore of Lake Zürich, four and a half miles as an eagle flies. They purchased hereditary rights to farm land, from the Catholic Knights of St. John, and worked in the old Wädenswil Castle and began to settle around the castle in Wädenswil and Richterswil.

Our June 2023 Hiestand-Haston Tour Group Will Visit Beautiful Gottschalkenberg

Gottschalkenberg overlooks Lake Zurich, from the south. The bunkers you see in the video were built there to protect Switzerland from enemy aircraft during World War II. Amazingly, Switzerland was able to maintain its neutrality during the war and avoid bombardments by Nazi Germany and its allies.

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July 22-23, 2022 Daniel Haston Family Heritage Days

Gathering for All Haston Families - July 22-23, 2022

The First ALL Daniel Haston Family Get-Together in 200+ Years!

The Schedule

Important: Keep in mind that we will be on Central Time, so adjust your watches & thinking.

Friday Evening, July 22, 2022 (6:00-8:30 pm CENTRAL Time)

Fun & informal get-acquainted activities, with “potluck desserts,” which in Tennessee means to bring some kind of dessert (homemade or bought) to share with others in the group.

Plus, most of the interest centers will be available (Wayne’s book signing, old family photos, photo scanning, photography studio, family heirlooms, military veterans’ photos and heirlooms, etc.).

Saturday, July 23, 2022 (9:00 am - 8:30 pm CENTRAL Time)

9:00 a.m. – coffee, orange juice, milk (&, etc.) & doughnuts, etc.

9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. – Visit the interest centers and mingle

11:00 a.m – 12:30 p.m. – Group meeting for adults & teens

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Fun but family history related group-time for children

12:30 – 2:00 p.m. – Catered lunch (covered by registration fee)

2:00 – 6:00 p.m. – Historic Haston Sites Tour

6:00 – 8:00 p.m. – Left-overs “supper” (as we call it in Tennessee), interest centers, and informal debriefings about the tour sites

8:00 p.m. – Clean up the facilities (need lots of help with this)

Directions from Highway 111 to Hickory Valley Baptist Church

Additional Information

Some Lodging Options and Recreation Sites

Some Lodging Options and Recreational Sites For the July 22-23, 2022 Heritage of Daniel Haston Days Week Lodging and Recreation Reservations for lodging at these recreational sites tend to fill up EARLY, plan well ahead if possible. Fall Creek Falls State Park Fall Creek Falls State Park is one of Tennesseeâ€™s largest and most visited state parks. The park encompasses more than 29,800 acres sprawled across the eastern top of the rugged Cumberland Plateau. Laced with cascades, gorges, waterfalls, streams and lush stands of virgin hardwood timber, the park beckons those who enjoy nature at her finest. Fall Creek Falls,

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15 – The “Black Madonna” in the Einsiedeln Monastery

15 - Einsiedeln Abbey, Home of the Swiss "Black Madonna"

Tuesday, June 20, 2023, our Hiestand-Haston tour group will visit the largest church in Switzerland–the famous Einsiedeln Abbey.

150,000 to 200,000 Roman Catholic pilgrims visit each year

The abbey is dedicated to Our Lady of the Hermits, the title being derived from the circumstances of its foundation, for the first inhabitant of the region was Saint Meinrad, a hermit. It has been a major resting point on the Way of St. James for centuries.

Meinrad was educated under his kinsmen, Abbots Hatto and Erlebald, at the abbey school at Reichenau, an island on Lake Constance, where he became a monk and was ordained a priest. After some years at Reichenau, and at a dependent priory on Lake Zurich, he embraced a heremitical life and established his hermitage on the slopes of mount Etzel. He died on January 21, 861, at the hands of two robbers who thought that the hermit had some precious treasures, but during the next 80 years, the place was never without one or more hermits emulating Meinrad’s example. One of them, named Eberhard, previously Provost of Strassburg, in 934 erected a monastery and church there, of which he became first abbot.

The church is alleged to have been miraculously consecrated, so the legend runs, in 948, by Christ himself assisted by the Four Evangelists, St. Peter, and St. Gregory the Great. This event was investigated and confirmed by Pope Leo VIII and subsequently ratified by many of his successors, the last ratification being by Pope Pius VI in 1793, who confirmed the acts of all his predecessors.

During the Middle Ages, Einsiedeln became a popular place of pilgrimage for people from southern Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace. Meinrad’s cell became the shrine of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. Over the years dust and the smoke of candles, oil lamps, and incense darkened the image. In 1803 the hands and face were painted black. Wikipedia.

Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli stayed in Einsiedeln for two years, during which time he focused on church activities and personal studies, including Greek and Hebrew. Many of his reformation ideas began to germinate during those years prior to his move to Zürich to become the people’s priest of the Grossmünster church there.

History of the Einsiedoln Abbey (3:29)

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July 26, 2024 – Tour of Daniel Haston Family Historic Sites

2024 Daniel Haston Family Historic Sites Tour

Friday Morning, Load the Bus at 9:00 a.m., July 26, 2024

At Hickory Valley Baptist Church

To see the highlighted route on a printed copy,
print in color or print in grayscale then highlight the route manually.

Click on the (right side) arrow to sequence through the sites on the tour.

01 - Big Fork Historic Cemetery, Inc.

02 - Daniel Haston & Other Haston Graves

04 - William Carroll Haston, Sr. Family Cemetery.

06 - Road sign to the Thomas Jefferson Haston Century Farm.

06 - Thomas Jefferson Haston Century Farm

07 - Montgomery Greenville Haston Century Farm

09 - David Haston was the original owner of the two lots

10 - Entrance to the Town Cemetery of Spencer, TN

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Some Lodging Options and Recreation Sites

Some Lodging Options and Recreational Sites

For the July 22-23, 2022 Heritage of Daniel Haston Days Week

Lodging and Recreation

Reservations for lodging at these recreational sites tend to fill up EARLY, plan well ahead if possible.

Fall Creek Falls State Park

Fall Creek Falls State Park is one of Tennessee’s largest and most visited state parks. The park encompasses more than 29,800 acres sprawled across the eastern top of the rugged Cumberland Plateau. Laced with cascades, gorges, waterfalls, streams and lush stands of virgin hardwood timber, the park beckons those who enjoy nature at her finest. Fall Creek Falls, at 256 feet, is one of the highest waterfalls in the eastern United States. Other waterfalls within the park include Piney Falls, Cane Creek Falls, and Cane Creek Cascades. Best for sight-seeing.