Mary Ann Naillon. Also known as: Mary Ann Daughty,, Mary Ann Caldwell, Mary Ann Woody

• Birth: 27 May 1817 in Madison County, NC
• Death: 18 February 1891 in Cataloochee, Haywood County, NC
• Parents: Patrick Naillon b: 1769 in County Cork, Catherine Naillon
• Married: Levi Belese Caldwell; 13 children. Jonathan Huff Woody.

Notes

Life on the Appalachian frontier was dangerous in a number of ways. While the early residents of Cataloochee were on friendly terms with the Cherokee, renegade Cherokee bands occasionally stole livestock.[2] Wild animals such as bears and panthers often stalked the pioneers. Hattie Caldwell Davis wrote of an incident in the 1830s involving her great-grandmother, Mary Ann Caldwell, and Allie Bennett, both home alone one night cooking dinner while panthers roamed the valley:

...the panthers smelled the fresh pork cooking and they were hungry. They jumped on top of the log cabins scratching and tearing at the shingles. They were scratching and tearing at the chimney trying to tear away enough rocks to get down into the house. Each woman stayed in her own house and kept a big roaring fire in the fireplace to keep the panthers out.[12]

"You will see that some of the Woodys and Caldwells got inter-related by the fact that that Jonathan H. Woody, a widower with several children married the widow of Levi Caldwell, Mary Ann, and they had several children. Some of the children inter-married. For example, Uncle Harrison Caldwell married Susan Woody. They lived on Big Cataloochee' near Uncle Hiram Caldwell. I visited them as a child a number of times ... " (2)

Sources

1. 12. Hattie Caldwell Davis, Cataloochee Valley: Vanished Settlements of the Great Smoky Mountains (Alexander, N.C.: Worldcomm, 1997), 28.
2. http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/WOODY-SURNAME/2005-06/1118673431 Jonathan Huff Woody -1985 Letter]
3. http://www.smokykin.com/tng/getperson.php?personID=I328238&tree=Smokykin