By: Jacqualine K Mitchell

Jacqualine K Mitchell — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:03:43 +0000

Elisha was my grandfather, many greats in there, and I’m proud to say so! I’m just learning about him and quite amazed at all his accomplishments and he was a family man, apparently, and loved his wife! What a Man!!!

By: Lew Powell

Lew Powell — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:27:00 +0000

Pride surely went before Mitchell’s fall.

By: John Blythe

John Blythe — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:31:07 +0000

I need to set the record straight. After consulting Thomas Silver’s book Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America, I now have a better sense of the argument between Clingman and Mitchell. They were disputing who had first identified the mountain we now know as Mount Mitchell as the tallest peak. Clingman claimed that Mitchell had identified a different mountain as the tallest – one that is today known as Clingman’s Peak (you read it right. It says Clingman). The confusion was likely due to locals use of “Mount Mitchell” to describe any number of peaks. And one of the peaks to which they assigned that name was the one that is today known as Clingman’s Peak (are you still with me?). To further confuse (and inflame) the situation, the mountain we know today as Mount Mitchell was called Clingman’s Peak in some contemporary scientific reporting. No doubt Mitchell was concerned that Clingman, who was once a student of his at UNC, would get credit for identifying the tallest peak. And, consequently, Mitchell set out in 1857 to prove that the mountain named for Clingman was the same mountain that he identified in 1844 and by right should be named for him. Is there a moral to the story? Could it be that pride will get you every time?

Comments on: The Short Lived Monument to Elisha Mitchell

By: Jacqualine K Mitchell

By: Lew Powell

By: John Blythe