It’s been a while, and I’ve got a lot to share! First, though, I want to thank the Hamblen County Genealogical Society for inviting to me to speak this month and share what’s going on at Hayslope. I had a blast meeting folks and answering questions!
And next, I’d like to welcome our newest board member, Chris Hurley. Chris works for Southern Constructors – and he lived at Hayslope for a number of years! Between Chris and Dakota we’ve really got the local history angle covered big time.
Look what we found
I say “we” because Dakota and I TECHNICALLY found it first. We just didn’t happen to pull it out from under the stairs where it’s been sitting for who knows how long. Megan did pull it out, and what a surprise! We think it’s likely telling us that James Roddye added the north annex in about 1800 and made this to commemorate. Of course, it’s always possible it was something else, but we’ll stick with this story for now!
Treasure trove
Before I even got back up to Tennessee this month, I made contact with another descendant of the Rogans, and she has scrapbooks of family material that her parents put together. There’s Theo’s will, 16 pages of “excerpts” from his reminisces, and tons more photographs. With these photos and Mallory Pearson’s, we’re getting a really good idea of how the house has changed through the years, even if we don’t know exactly what year most of them were taken. And there are some major mysteries. Like, what is that structure behind the house?
And we’ve got our first look at some of Hayslope’s “cottages” (don’t blame me – that’s what they called them!). These two were both built by Hugh Rogan, likely in the late 1880s. They have similar plans but are slightly different – the one on the right was called the Yellow Cottage.
And we have a new image of Theo (with serious hat head). We’re not sure where he’s sitting. The rocks don’t appear to be Hayslope’s, nor does the porch behind him, but it’s quite possible he’s at one of the cottages.
Inside the house
I would say I’m saving the best for last, but I honestly couldn’t tell you which of these finds is truly the best. They’re all pretty terrific. But inside the walls of Hayslope, we’ve uncovered almost all of the original cabin’s logs. We now know that Roddye built a 14 x 18 foot cabin with a loft and later added the annex – which was stick framing.
He also cut a door from the original cabin into the annex, but it wasn’t the door we use now at the back of the house. The original door was right in the middle of that north wall, and it got covered when the stairs were added. Dakota found it when he began taking off the bead board on the stairs. The idea was to see if there were logs back there, and there were – yes, we have four walls of logs!
But Dakota also found what we initially thought was a window, until we started taking the covering off the wall from the annex side. That’s when we found it was a door, carefully cut into the logs and framed, with 1-inch wooden dowels attaching the frame to the logs. This was quite a discovery, and it changed how we’ll be doing the inside of the house, because we certainly want to showcase this early door.
So, the stairs will change, we’ll close off the door that’s been used to go from cabin to annex and this door will be the passage between the two. We had considerable discussion about whether this might be the original front door to the cabin, but it is not. The front door is still the front door.
Seeing entire walls of these beautiful logs is something else, I gotta say. A big surprise is that there are no windows (unless that door between the cabin and the annex was a window before the annex was built). We kept peeling off chestnut wall coverings expecting to find the elusive window, but there were none. Except high in the southwest corner of the cabin where we found a real live slot window. There may be a slot window on the northwest corner as well – well, there probably is, but the one on the southwest is quite obvious. These windows were used by the inhabitants to protect themselves from marauding Cherokees, who naturally were pretty unhappy with these new Americans setting up shop in what had been their land.
Another thing we found – etched into one of the chestnuts – sure looked to us like a drawing of the house:
What’s next?
Speaking of chestnuts, we’ve got those all secured off-premises now and have made arrangements for later to have them cleaned and planed for use in the house. Meanwhile, we’ve got lots going on.
Currently, the last of mounds of tree stumps and other bizarre things are being hauled off to the dump, and we’ve had a chimney sweep come in and take a look at our three stacks. Work on those will begin presently, starting with the weird little third chimney currently buried in the back addition – but precariously suspended above the kitchen ceiling. The first thing to do there is to secure that.
We’re going to have the big chimney dismantled – carefully, brick by brick – to get us to the original limestone, and then we’ll rebuild it while opening it on the inside. This particular part is very dear to me and I cannot wait to see it happen.
In the meantime, we’re getting very close to a final basic plan for the restoration, which is very exciting. A couple of modern conveniences, the original 1785 cabin, Rogan-era and Thomason-era additions will all be spotlighted in a careful way that doesn’t detract from the historicity of the place.
Lotta work. And I for one am loving it.