In 1799, the Joseph Batson family moved to Greenville County South Carolina and settled in Travelers Rest, along the Reedy River. They prospered there for many years and many descendants remain in the area. Nonetheless, population growth reduced the availability of affordable land and pressured the more adventuresome members of successive generations to seek their opportunities elsewhere where inexpensive and available land existed. Joseph’s son William Asbury was one such person.At the end of the American civil war, forty-eight year old William Asbury Batson moved from Greenville County South Carolina to the Lake Ticoa area of Connestee Falls, North Carolina with his wife Letty [Lance] and at least six of his nine children. One of his sons, Bayles, died in battle as a Confederate soldier near the end of the war. William lived out his life at Connestee as a farmer, Turnpike supervisor and was active in the community, serving quite often as a juror at county court in Brevard.
William’s second born son, Edward Earle Batson, settled near his father on the western slope of the valley formed by Batson Creek, in the vicinity of Connestee’s current Inoli Circle. Edward was active in the East Fork Baptist Church, and was an industrious farmer – the bottom of Lake Ticoa was a plateau that contained the Batson family cornfield. Jim Bob Tinsley recounts an interesting tale concerning Edward Earle Batson on page 116 of his book “The Land of Waterfalls”.
Edward’s life ended tragically. In 1906, at age 58, a head injury suffered in a farm accident sent him to the State Hospital for the insane in Morganton, NC, where he remained until his death in 1919. While Edward was an inmate at Morganton, Edward’s wife Sarah, along with several of her children, joined her oil-prosperous son, William Oscar Batson, near Los Angeles, California, where she lived until her death in 1923.