CityView Magazine

Family Ties The history of our city is the history of the Broadfoots – it’s a story of perseverance By Allison Williams Above | Andrew Broadfoot Above | Charles Broadfoot III Above | (L-R) Frances Broadfoot, Meg Broadfoot, Kate Huske Broadfoot C harles Broadfoot first fought the City of Fayetteville, and when that didn’t work, he took his case all the way to the state Supreme Court. No, he would not pay city officials the dollar they demanded for his wan- dering cow. And he won. Is it any wonder that the name Broadfoot would become something of legend? It already was. The name, with its many different spellings, dates back to the invasion of Britain by Nordic Vi- kings. King William’s English census of 1066 shows five Bradfoot families hold- ing land in Yorkshire. Charlemagne was the son of Pepin “The Short” King of France and his wife Bertha Broadfoot. The beautiful Marion Bradfut was the wife of Sir William Wallace, Scottish hero and liberator. But fast forward from the times of kings and conquerors and cross an ocean to another time and 62 | Food & Wine • 2008 place. When the Broadfoots first set foot in America, it was Fayetteville, N.C., where they landed. Here, they would serve as soldiers, lawyers, business leaders and genera- tions of faithful members at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Kate Huske Broad- foot faithfully taught Latin in Cumber- land County schools for 45 years and four months. They include a clerk of Cumberland County Superior Court and perhaps the most colorful of them all, Col. Charles Wetmore Broadfoot, Civil War commander, state legislator, University of North Carolina trustee and the man who fought City Hall over a cow. Always tenacious and resilient, yes, but sometimes it’s the quieter, less pub- lic stories, the ones not written down but etched into memory that tell the true story of their character. There is the family matriarch who raised five children on her own. And the crew of cousins who grew up rolling in and out of each other’s houses, back when Fay- etteville was a small town. Many of the Broadfoots have since left Fayetteville for far-flung parts, but something al- ways seems to pull them back home. Charles “Kip” Broadfoot thought about leaving, too, but then he drove past the Cross Creek Cemetery down- town. The way the sunlight filtered through the trees reminded him of a memory from childhood. Then he saw something he had not noticed before – a large grave marker with the name Broadfoot. “If I leave,” he said recently, remembering that day, “I’ll never du- plicate anywhere else what I have right here.” It was right here where the Broadfoots first got a glimpse of life in America. Andrew and Hetty Mumford Broad- foot left their home in Kircudbright- shire, Scotland in the late 1700s. It was around the same time that five other Broadfoot families immigrated to On- tario, Canada. They would wind up

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