Historic Burke Foundation Inc

The place name “Quaker Meadows” was given to the area by Joseph McDowell (1715-1771). He received two Crown Patents in 1849 and 1780. The acreage in the earlier grant contained a large meadow. Joseph named the area Quaker Meadows after the name of his home in Frederick County, Virginia. On this property, Joseph’s sons, Revolutionary War leaders Charles and Joseph, gathered the Overmountain Men on September 30, 1780. These patriot soldiers from Virginia, current day Tennessee, and Wilkes and Surry Counties in North Carolina, met under a giant oak tree now known as the Council Oak and laid plans leading to the defeat of the loyalists under British Major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain, a turning point of the Revolutionary War in the South. The house at Quaker Meadows was built in 1812 by Captain Charles McDowell, Jr. in anticipation of his marriage the following year to his cousin, Anna McDowell of Pleasant Gardens. By1850, Charles and Anna had created a thriving estate of over 1500 acres including 52 enslaved people. Here they reared their six children and three orphaned relatives, including Harriet Epsy, future wife of two time North Carolina Governor (1862-65) and (1877-79) Zebulon Baird Vance. The house was a center of social activity in antebellum Burke County. Both Charles and Anna died in 1859. Their only surviving son, Colonel James Charles McDowell, was killed in action during the Civil War.