Yancey County, North Carolina

Yancey County was established in 1833 from Buncombe and Burke Counties. It was named for Bartlett YANCEY, speaker, orator, educator and friend of Henry CLAY.  Bartlett YANCEY and Henry Clay served in the US Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, (1813-1817).  Henry Clay, a  statesman from Kentucky,  who is famous as a congressional leader and presidential candidate was to run unsuccessfully for the President of the United States several times. As the journals will show, in Congress, the speaker (Mr. Clay) often supplied his own place by the substitution of Mr. Yancey, see Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians by Wheeler, John H. (John Hill), 1806-1882. 

The county seat, Burnsville, was named for Captain Otway BURNS, who  was serving in the NC legislature and  at the cost of his political career, cast the tie breaking vote to permit  new western counties to be formed and the establishment of Yancey County. He became a good friend of Bartlett Yancey who was also in the NC Senate at the time. Bartlett Yancey  and Otway Burns rode horse back over the mountains and viewed the beautiful area that was to become Yancey County. Bartlett pointed out to Captain Otway how the citizens were required to travel the great distances to the court house in Morganton.  John "Yellow Jacket" Bailey also was very instrumental in the formation of  Yancey County by his unrelenting campaigning for the new counties to be formed on trips to Raleigh. He found friends in Bartlett Yancey and Captain Otway Burns. He later gave the land for the town of Burnsville and ask that it be named Burnsville in honor of Captain Otway Burns.