Town courted American tycoon with a name change

Around the time that Erwin became a town, a short-lived effort took place to convince George Washington Vanderbilt II to locate his massive mansion, now known as Biltmore Estate, in the mountains of Unicoi County. Unicoi County Clerk and Master Teresa Simerly has evidence of the campaign in the very first minute book maintained by her office. "Minute books record court orders, or the minutes of the court," she explained. Simerly pointed out that the very first minute made into Chancery Court for Unicoi County is dated 1876 and lists Vanderbilt, not Erwin, as the county seat. "The first several orders are listed for Vanderbilt," she said. Simerly shared that the story, as she has heard it, is that town officials briefly made the change to name the town Vanderbilt to attract the attention of the well-known tycoon who had made a fortune through various enterprises, including railroads and steamboats. "I don't know when they gave up and figured it wasn't going to work," she said. "But they had hoped to lure him in, and naming the town for him was the bait." With a laugh, she added, "Apparently he didn't nibble." As a public relations stunt, the effort produced no results and Vanderbilt built his 250-room mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, not Vanderbilt, Tennessee. The residence ranks as the largest privately owned home in the United States. Its builder didn't have use of the residence for all that long. Construction began in 1889 and Vanderbilt opened the home on Christmas Eve of 1895, inviting friends and family to celebrate with him. He died March 6, 1914, but his legacy has shaped the region in many ways. After his death, his widow sold about 86,000 acres of the Biltmore property to the U.S. Forest Service at $5 an acre, fulfilling her husband's wishes to create the core of Pisgah National Forest. Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and her husband John Cecil opened the Biltmore Estate to the public on March 15, 1930, to increase tourism in Asheville and help preserve the estate during the Great Depression. The opening included tours of the 250-room house. As a tourist attraction, Biltmore Estate draws in an estimated 1.4 million guests each year. Simerly has been known to share with new courthouse staff the story of when Erwin was known as Vanderbilt and shows them the first entry in the first minute book. She added that many have never heard the story. She is in her 28th year as Clerk and Master for the county. These days, the minute books are computerized. The early ones, such as minute book one, are bound books. The way they were bound means individual pages cannot be removed and scanned, which has prevented digitizing all of them. Even when Erwin shelved the name Vanderbilt, the saga of the town's name didn't end. Many historians point out that the town should rightly be called Ervin. "I heard years ago that they sent off to get a post office address, but the authorities read the name as Erwin, not Ervin." She also referenced Goodspeed's History of Unicoi County, published in 1897. According to this source, the town changed its name from Vanderbilt to Ervin to honor D.J.N. Ervin, a resident who donated land for establishing the town. The state legislature made the name Ervin official in 1879, but the mistake on the part of the U.S. Post Office stuck. As a result, the town has been called Erwin ever since. Regardless, not many towns can lay claim to having had three different names in the course of their history.