The Tavern with the Red Door 1785-1829
James Roddye’s log home was initially built as a one room squat log cabin with either a second story or a loft. A ladder led to the upstairs, and a large fireplace covered much of the south wall of the house, facing the Kentucky Road. The 18 by 14 foot room features at least one slot window on the west wall and possibly a second.
Around 1800, Roddye expanded his house, adding a second room at ground level, slightly larger than the original room, which and created a slight L-shape on the east side. Roddye added stairs to the second level a little later, with access on the outside of the structure from a small porch created by the L-shape.
Most incredibly, the north annex was a stick frame structure and not built of logs. It is one of the oldest stick frame buildings still standing in Tennessee.
Roddye’s original chimneys were made of sun-dried brick and limestone, although they were later fully encased in brick. The logs and other lumber came from the property, the nails were made in Roddye’s blacksmith shop, and the roof shingles were walnut.
Roddye was known to like a good drink, and Tennessee tax records show he had his own still – reportedly by the spring – as did many of his regional neighbors. The Jefferson County Courthouse – the tavern was in that county at the time – has a document with Roddye’s prices:
- Breakfast and supper: 9 cents
- Dinner: 10 cents
- A night’s lodging: 6 cents
- A half-pint of brandy: 8 cents
- Wine: 10 cents
- Rum, whiskey or a quart of cider: 6 cents
- Gallon of corn or oats: 6 cents
- Hay or fodder for the horse: 6 cents
- Pasturage for the night: 6 cents
There are two springs near the house – one down the hill to the north, which is still on the current Hayslope property, and a second directly across Warrensburg Road on the property of the house there. While the one to the north was surely used by the Roddyes, it’s not clear if the spring to east was as well. Both springs feed into Fall Creek.
Roddye had slaves, 13 at the time of his death, attesting by his will, which left that many to his children and his wife. It’s said the slave quarters were behind the house, which we’ve always thought would be the west side, but there is some indication that the cabin’s front may have originally faced the Kentucky Road on the south, making the north side the back.
We have found what we believe to be the remnants of a fireplace hearth just to the northwest of the house which may well have been a slave house.
Roddye planted orchards on the property, and the remnants are still standing.
1829 to 1862
James Roddye left his sizable property to his sons William and Thomas when he died in 1822, with the provision that his wife Lydia, daughter of George Russell, would have full use of it until her death, which came in 1825 while she was away in Rhea County visiting some of her children.
By the time of Lydia’s death, Thomas had married Lydia Nenney, the daughter of Patrick Nenney, who founded the Bent Creek store and was a prominent businessman in the Russellville/Whitesburg/Bent Creek area. Thomas also appears to have gotten into considerable debt to Patrick Nenney, so that when Nenney died four months after Thomas and Lydia married, the estate came calling.
William ends up living in Cocke County and sells his part of the old estate to his brother, who signed a document in 1825 agreeing to repay the $2,120 he owed Nenney, using his father’s property as collateral. He didn’t pay it back, so in 1829, Hugh Graham and Patrick’s widow, Lucy Nenney, took possession of the property on behalf of Patrick’s estate.
We believe that the American chestnut wall boards that covered the original cabin’s wall were added during this time, and possibly quite early – hand-forged nails attach the boards directly to the logs. At some point, a back door was cut into the west wall, and the roof appears to have been raised, although that could well have taken place during Roddye’s 1800 expansion.
Jefferson County deed books put the property into the hands of Charles P. Nenney, Patrick Nenney’s son, in 1834. Those same books show that Hugh Graham bought it from Nenney in 1845, and that Nenney — brother of Graham’s wife Catherine — was living there at that time.
Hugh wrote up his will in 1861, and it was a long, complicated document with four codicils. Of interest to us is what happened to the “Rhoddy farm,” which was attached to a small piece of property called the “King place,” which may have been Ezekiel King, an heir to Jesse Cheek.
At any rate, Graham’s will called for Theophilus Rogan, his daughter Louisa’s husband, and Absalom Kyle, daughter Mary Ann’s husband, to each choose a man, and for those two men to choose a third man. Those three were to figure out how to divide the Rhoddy farm and the King place equally. Once that was done, Louisa, “being the youngest,” got to choose which half she wanted. Louisa chose the half that became known as Hayslope.
Graham’s will further said that the Rogans and the Kyles could take possession of their respective properties on January 1, 1862, or upon his death, whichever came first. Hugh Graham died in 1865, so Theophilus and Louisa, who had returned to Tennessee from Texas, where Theophilus had gone to practice law with his brother, owned the home from 1862.
Hayslope 1862 to 1937
The Rogans took possession of the house in the latter part of the first half of the Civil War. As Union and Confederate troops passed back and forth through East Tennessee, we doubt that the Rogans had time, inclination, or money to do much with the house. But after the war, in the 1870s, Louisa Rogan began advertising for boarders, and we believe the Rogans would have begun small renovation projects around this time.
It’s said that Louisa gave the property its name, Hayslope, either because of the hay on the slopes or because she liked George Eliot’s 1859 novel, Adam Bede, which was set in a fictional English village called Hayslope. Given that her father was known to have an extensive library at his Tazewell home, Castle Rock, I’m inclined to think she may have chosen the name both because of the property’s gentle slopes and because she read Eliot’s book.
Newspaper reports tell us of the goings on at the property throughout the late 1800s, including building projects. Those projects reached a crescendo in 1898, when the Rogans added multiple cottages and cabins to the property and built a dining room extension onto the original house.
We believe the Rogans were the ones to encase the original limestone chimneys with brick and to create an actual front porch. They also likely added a porte cochere on the north, which included a porch accessed from the upstairs room on that side.
The Rogan Hayslope included a large barn, although it’s not known where that was located. A barn once stood across Fall Creek from the house, by the railroad – an older photograph looking up toward the railroad from the creek shows a barn cupola – and that could have been the location of the original barn. It’s said that some of Longstreet’s freezing men retreated to the Rogan barn for shelter during the dreadful winter of 1863-1864.
A railroad advertisement from 1890 tells us that it costs $1 per day to stay at Hayslope, $7 for a week, and $25 for a month.
Perhaps the best detail about this period came from an article in the Birmingham Age-Herald on February 21, 1904, describing the 50th wedding anniversary celebration of Theophilus and Louisa Rogan at the home. Annie Kendrick Walker opened her story:
There may be other places where life goes on uninterruptedly and where old-fashioned gardens with the phlox and altheas are just as they were fifty years ago, but I have never known one where the clematis-covered trellises have stood for a lifetime, where the old trees in the old orchards are still standing and where the phlox and altheas are allowed to bloom as riotously as the morning glories in the corn fields. Only a few hours ride out from Birmingham and yet such an old-fashioned garden, with its tangle of flowers reaching to the orchards and meadows and little winding walk to the quaintest, most old-fashioned house in the world.
Walker wrote that the celebration included a repeat of the wedding dinner served in the dining room of the house, which was decorated with evergreen boughs from trees Louisa Rogan planted 40 years earlier – and that 100 people were served.
Hayslope 1937-present
After the Rogans died, their children inherited the property. Cassie, the oldest, lived in the old house until her death in 1932, while the rest of the property was sold off. A cousin, Robert Patterson, owned a strip of land directly to the south, across the Kentucky Road, where he built a large, two-story home for his family, including his mother-in-law and sister-in-law and her husband. The house, which he called Killiecrankie after a famous Scottish battle, including three smaller cottages, the remnants of which still stand.
The city of Morristown bought that strip of property after its last owner, Patterson’s sister-in-law Ruth Hooper Blair, died in the 1960s. The city tore all the buildings down.
The Rogans youngest child, Ellen Rogan Stephens – who had married a citrus magnate and lived in Florida – inherited the 28-acre property that included the old house. It was she who suggested that her sister Cassie live there. After Cassie’s death, Ellen sold the property to brothers Briscoe and Escoe Thomason in 1937.
Escoe Thomason took charge of sprucing up the old house, taking off the dining room addition and closing off the back porch to add a kitchen downstairs and a bathroom upstairs. He reroofed the building, adding dormers to the front and back.
Escoe and his growing family lived in the house until the late 1940s, when he sold his interest in it to his brother and moved to Bulls Gap. From that time, the house has been a rental property.
Hayslope has suffered from neglect. It still stands, however, a testament to the design and construction of James Roddye.
The Future
Hayslope’s current owner seeks to stop the erosion of Hayslope’s structural integrity and then to begin the arduous work of restoration with the goal of someday living in the house and opening it once again to visitors.
We want to see the property takes its rightful place in the history of Russellville and East Tennessee and to share that with others. Work has begun to place it on the National Register of Historic Places, and soon we hope to see the gardens of Hayslope come alive once more with native East Tennessee flora and fauna.
Progress and lack thereof will be detailed on this page’s blog – sign up to receive notification whenever something new is posted, and drop us a line with questions. The blog will follow all the work as it takes place and preview what’s next.
We don’t yet know where we’ll end up, but everyone’s invited. One day soon we can all sit by one of the giant fireplaces and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and tell tales.