The more we learn, the less we know, part two

When last we spoke, yesterday I believe it was, I told you all about the exciting week of visitors at Hayslope, from the termite technician to cousin Peggy. After all that, I came back home to recuperate.

But before I left, I received a message that was about to change everything. OK, maybe not everything, but a lot.

See, a few weeks ago, I put out a few feelers trying to find descendants of the Rogans who could maybe tell me a little about the family’s time at Hayslope or even show me some photos of the people and/or the house.

I received one reply before I headed to Tennessee, from a great great granddaughter of Theo and Louisa Rogan via William Henry and Margaret Rogan Millar’s son Winn. She was headed out of the country, though, and promised to get back to me when she returned.

While in Tennessee, I was put in touch with Mallory Pearson by her son. Mallory is also a great-great granddaughter of Theo and Louisa, via William Henry and Margaret’s other son, Rogan Latimer Millar. And Mallory was excited about my little project, particularly because of the love and memories of her mother, Charlotte, and grandfather.

I sent Mallory the photos of the house that I have, and then on Monday, the treasures began.

26 years ago

Mallory and Charlotte visited East Tennessee in 1996, stopping by Hayslope and Hugh Graham’s Castle Rock, which of course by that time had been moved from Tazewell to Knoxville and was called Speedwell Manor. But let’s take a look at Hayslope 26 years ago.

Here’s the back of the house as it appeared back then. It’s not terribly different from how it looks now but for one little thing: jutting up from the dormer roof is a chimney, and it’s the mystery chimney we’d found in the closet of the cedar room, now known as Bobby’s room.

It may have been in use in 1996 – it clearly came out into Uncle Escoe’s kitchen and in all likelihood was used for a wood burning stove. Now, however, it’s capped off and roofed over on top, existing only in the closet upstairs.

It’s possible, but we sure don’t know yet, that this chimney was the first chimney in Roddye’s old cabin. If that’s true, it would have been in the back right corner of the main room before Roddye added the second room on the north side of the house.

It does appear to be made of homemade brick, which means it almost certainly wasn’t the Rogans’ or the Thomasons’ doing. It’s also gonna be a little tricky when it comes time to take off that back addition – the bottom part of the chimney no longer exists. It stops at the ceiling in the kitchen.

Next up is Charlotte standing in front of a rock building. Mallory tells me this was the ice house and that her mother recalled collecting butter and other chilled items for her grandmother, Margaret Rogan Millar. Charlotte called Margaret (known as Mattie to friends and adult relatives) “Hanka” and her grandfather “Pop.”

Turns out that Dakota knows where the ice house once stood – back of the house near the gate into the field – and it matches with Mallory’s description of its location. I am particularly interested in this house because of a note I found in February while going through documents at the East Tennessee Historical Society. It was copied from the papers of Antoinette Miller Taylor by Sara Mauer, who was researching the Rogans at the time. It was sometime after Cassie Rogan’s death in 1932, likely in 1937 when Escoe and Briscoe Thomason bought the place from Ellen Stephens. Mrs Taylor wrote:

“Hayslope had been sold. The new owner was pressing to take possession. All the furniture and other items had been divided among the heirs or sold. Heartbroken to see the lovely old place to go out of the family where it had been ‘since Indian days,’ I was wandering disconsolately through the now empty rooms when Louisa Rogan’s daughter Margaret (Millar – Mallory’s great grandmother) found me. ‘You may have anything that is left you would like. We are going to burn everything down at the old rock house right away.'”

She must have been referring to the ice house. What must they have burned! We plan a dig around the area to see what we find – no papers or other flammable materials, for sure, but perhaps some metal or stone.

Hayslope’s Rogan family

Mallory sent me a mind-blowing trove of photos of Rogan family members, and immediately I knew that I’ll have to create a gallery of them for the house. The best I can do now for you, dear readers, is to show you a digital gallery:

There are more. This is but a sampling. Mallory is kindly making me some actual copies of many of these. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more as we go along, but already this post, too, is growing longer and I have a few more delicacies to present.

There are a lot of stories about famous people visiting the house, either when James Roddye owned it or later when the Rogans did. Mostly we have no proof of those, although they do make a lot of sense. It is likely that Andrew Jackson stopped by. Maybe even Andrew Johnson. The future king of France, Prince Louis Phillippe was in the area in the late 18th century, but we don’t know if he came by the house.

We do know that this princess did, however. Her name is Donna Miriam DeLiguori, and she was the daughter of Prince Ferdinand DeLiguori of Italy and his wife Mary Williams – Louisa Rogan’s niece and daughter of her sister, Lucy Jane. That’s the princess’s son Vrin with her when they were visiting their relatives at Hayslope. I don’t have a date for this photo, nor have I found anything more about the family, but then I’ve only just started looking.

And then, this

Mallory and I spent much of the day passing photos and questions and answers back and forth. It was utterly delightful for me, and I certainly hope she enjoyed it as much. Near the end of the day, though, came the biggest surprise of all. She’d already sent me one photo of the house, but it appeared to be a later photo made after Uncle Escoe had moved in and renovated. Then she sent a second one:

At first glance, it would appear to be after Escoe’s renovations. But the date on the back, from the photo shop that processed it, says no: This photo was taken in 1935, before the Thomasons bought the house.

That’s when I started noticing the differences. Like the front porch – screened in during Escoe’s time, and now but open in 1935. The rooflines on the right and left appear to still be on the edge of the house, keeping the chimneys outside the roof, not coming through as they do now. The “carporty thing” – obviously not a carport – is wider than it is now, and there’s an obvious porch on top, with a level floor, not the sloping roof it has now. I can’t tell for sure if there are dormers on the roof, but I think not. The faintest hints of the dining room are visible at the back of the house through the carporty thing/roof porch supports and above, behind that porch roof.

My assumption had always been that this construct was my uncle’s doing, but it apparently was not. I had also assumed that the Rogans kept the basic log look of Roddye’s home, but apparently they did not. But Anne Kendrick Walker’s description (when she wrote about the Rogan’s 50th wedding anniversary) of the front porch being of the “small” and “boxed” type suddenly makes more sense.

With the discovery of this photo, we’re now of the mind that this was the front of the house while the back looked like it does in the photo I got from Peggy Farmer. Escoe did later take that porch off and remove the dining room, but for the Rogans, this may well have been how the house looked from the final years of the 1890s until Escoe began his work.

When I first began this journey, I was surprised at how much I thought I knew about this historic place just wasn’t quite true – but then, stories do change in the telling, particularly when you’re starting 240 years ago. I guess I just thought things might be a little more sure later on in the history.

It’s all perfectly fine though. Coaxing out the history of this jewel is just my cup of tea, or coffee in my case. And I look forward to more discoveries.