MYTH!
Early in 1812, John Clark Edwards sent a letter to the editor of the Raleigh Star newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina claiming that the December 16, 1811 earthquake had caused a volcano to erupt near the North Carolina/Tennessee border. He described in great detail the eruption of this huge (by his account) volcano. The newspaper did not verify Edwards story. After printing the description of the new volcano, numerous other newspapers across the country picked up the story.In the pre-Internet age, it was fairly easy for a fictitious story like this to spread. However, the lack of additional eyewitness accounts of a volcano with an immense eruption of lava that “ran down the mountain in a stream of liquid fire for more than three quarters of a mile” should have been a good indication that maybe this story was more fiction than fact.