He built a house in this gap.
by Lisa Y. Henderson
Footnote 41. Ambrose Gap is a few miles southwest [of Cut Laurel gap], and is so called because a free negro of that name built a house across the State line in this gap, and when he died his grave was dug half in Tennessee and half in North Carolina, according to local tradition.
From John Preston Arthur, Western North Carolina: A History, 1730-1913 (1914).