Shelby Shopper Shelby NC
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Page 10 - shelby shopper & info - 704/484-1047 www.shelbyinfo.com Thursday, January 12-January 18, 2023 Cherryville New Year's Shooters start year off with a blast Scenes from Cherryville's 2023 New Year's Shooters (Photos by Michelle Leonhardt) Cherryville New Year's Shooters, Inc. held their an- nual event on Monday, Janu- ary 2, starting at Blacks Grill at midnight and concluding at Rudisill Football Stadium on E. First Street in Cher- ryville at 6:30 p.m. In the interim, they made 49 stops to perform the New Year's ritual. The history of the Cher- ryville New Year's Shoot- ers goes back thousands of years, according to their website. The "Chant" and producing loud noise is a ritual that has been in ex- istence since the 1300's. Celebrating the "New Year" on January 1 can be linked back to the Romans in 45 BC during the reign of Julius Caesar. The act of celebrat- ing the New Year goes back at least 4,000 years to the ancient Egyptians and Baby- lonians. The pioneer immigrants that settled in the Cherryville NC area can be linked back to the area of the Rhine River in Germany. In that area of the world many Old-World customs were formed from the Bohemian, German, Scottish, Irish, and English. In the 1750's German Im- migrants settled in the Indian Creek and Howard's Creek area north of the current Cherryville. Along with the German immigrants were the Scotch-Irish, Swiss, Dutch and French. It is believed that the actual tradition is a cultural mix of all these immi- grants. The last 250 years of the tradition parallels the his- tory of the Cherryville area. Land grants from the King of England began in the mid 1700's for the area known as Anson and later Tryon County. The area along the Indian Creek began to grow from a few pioneer families to many. Names which ap- pear on early land grants and records include Black, Wise, Stroup, Beam, Horse (Huss), Houser, Baker, Whitesides, Homesley, Sullivan, Roberts, Eaker, Carpenter, Brown, Anthony, Havner (Heafner), Reynolds, and Cyzer (Kiser). Today the Cherryville New Year's Shooters group consists of 450 members and travels to approximately 50 locations in the Cher- ryville area. The group starts at Midnight on January 1st of each year and shoots for 18 straight hours ending at the Rudisill Football Stadium in Cherryville. Because they don't shoot on Sundays, this year's event was moved to January 2. Some of the families and homes are the same ances- tors of 250 years ago. Shoot- ing still takes place along the Indian Creek, Howard's Creek, and Bethpage area as it did some 250 years ago. Many of today's shooters are of the same bloodline as the early pioneer shooters.