North Carolina Excavations — Joara

Jeannette Holland Austin
1 min readApr 19, 2022

Joara Excavations As settlers migrated across the mountain of North Carolina, certain families also expanded into border counties of Kentucky and Virginia. A popular county of such transitions was Burke. This region boasts one of the largest Indian mounds at Joara, being 12-acres near Morganton, making it the center of the largest Native American settlement dating from about 1000 A. D.

The region suffered from attacks by other tribes until it was taken over by the survivors of larger tribes.

These survivors abandoned the area at some historical point, leaving it open to European settlers who came some two hundred years later. As the English, Scotch-Irish and German immigrants poured into this country during the mid 18th century, they found their way the western mountains.

Because of this discovery, genealogists often find this county was a stopping point for their ancestors.

Jeannette Holland Austin

Author of 100+ genealogy books. Owner of 8 genealogy websites available by subscription. https://georgiapioneers.com/subscribe/subscribe.html