I read a lot. It’s one of my favorite pastimes, soaking up information from as many sources as possible, especially about history. I can spout off factoids with the best about history, especially East Tennessee history.
I do have one terrible habit, especially for a journalist like me. I tend to read some interesting fact and file that piece of information away in the appropriate part of my mind, forgetting entirely to file away the source.
A example from a few months past: During a discussion of the creation of Douglas Lake, I distinctly recalled having seen a photograph of the raising of the Walters bridge carrying US25 over the French Broad to accommodate the lake. I couldn’t find it. I looked through every book I had with no luck. Just last week, though, I found it in a book I’d forgotten I had.
And here’s another: I read in some old something that our man James Roddye was buried at Bent Creek Burying Ground in an unmarked grave. Now, there is a marker at the cemetery these days, but reading that brought so many questions. Was Roddye’s grave actually left unmarked when he was buried, or did the marker vanish with time? Did people remember where the grave was, and does the modern marker actually mark his grave? Who put that modern marker there and when? And if James Roddye went into the ground without a marker, how could that be? The man was one of the founding members of the Bent Creek church, which, by the way, was one of the first churches established in what was to become East Tennessee.
Incidentally, I found that source too. It’s in the introduction to a transcription of the minutes of the Bent Creek Church made by the Works Progress Administration in 1938. Still don’t have the answers to the other questions.
It’s hard to establish first churches in what was such a sparsely populate frontier. Early services were often conducted outside, spontaneously, and in a most unorganized fashion. Several churches in East Tennessee lay claim to that “first” honor, and two seem to have the best claims.
Sinking Creek Church says it’s the oldest still in its original location, organized in 1772 in Washington County (now Carter County). A 1783 church building still stands on the property, although a new building houses services, especially after a vehicle crashed into the old log structure in 1965.
Buffalo Ridge Church was built in 1779, calling itself the “first Baptist church on Tennessee soil.” Buffalo Ridge was established by Tidence Lane, who came across the mountains from North Carolina, having learned his preaching arts from Shubal Stearns at Sandy Creek. Buffalo Ridge eventually moved from its original location to Gray, although its burying ground is still there where it started.
Tidence Lane, however, had already moved on. And he came to Bent Creek.
Lane was among a significant number of Sandy Creek Baptists who came across the mountains in 1771. They left partly because of divisions beginning to form within the church and partly because Gov William Tryon blamed the Baptists for the Regulator Movement that harassed the colony’s rich, elite-run government until Tryon put it down by force. The Sandy Creek Association shrank considerably as its members fled over the Alleghenies, although many, if not most, of them retained their allegiance to the “mother church.”
Tidence Lane was among that number. He was christened Tidings Lane in Maryland, named for his paternal grandmother Pretitia Tidings, and we can just imagine how the spelling might have changed if the “g” were to be dropped, as often happens. Tidence had an older brother, Dutton, who was a preacher, but Tidence wasn’t so into the idea – especially the Baptists, and even more especially the Separate Baptists, for whom he admitted having “hateful feelings” – until he met Sandy Creek’s Stearns.
He’d heard of Stearns, and curiosity got the better of him. Must have been some fierce curiosity, too, because he took a 40 mile horseback ride to Sandy Creek to hear him. And here’s what he said about the meeting:
“When the fame of Mr. Stearns’ preaching reached the Yadkin, where I lived, I felt a curiosity to go and hear him. Upon my arrival I saw a venerable old man sitting under a peach tree with a book in his hand and the people gathering about him. He fixed his eyes upon me immediately, which made me feel in such a manner as I had never felt before. I turned to quit the place, but could not proceed far. I walked about, sometimes catching his eyes as I walked. My uneasiness increased and became intolerable. I went up to him, thinking that a salutation and shaking of hands would relieve me, but it happened otherwise. I began to think he had an evil eye and ought to be shunned, but shunning him I could no more effect than a bird can shun the rattlesnake when it fixes its eyes upon it. When he began to preach my perturbations increased, so that nature could no longer support them, and I sank to the ground.”
This was about the 1750s, and it wasn’t long before Lane was a convert, remaining with Stearns until his quick flight to Tennessee in 1771. Stearns, by the way, died later that same year.
Lane is often called Tennessee’s first Baptist preacher, and he’s something of a legend in East Tennessee, having been involved in the beginnings of so many of the region’s churches – Buffalo Ridge, Bent Creek, Big Spring, Cherokee Creek, and many of what were called “arms” of the Bent Creek church. Lane was the first moderator of the first religious association of any kind in what would become Tennessee, the old Holston Baptist Association.
Lane must have come to Bent Creek with the many other Watauga colonists who came here after the Battle of King’s Mountain, and indeed Lane, his brother Isaac, and son Aquilla fought in that battle. Our man James Roddye’s land grants were largely on Bent Creek, and he was among the original members of the church.
The stories say that Lane and Isaac Barton did the first preaching at Bent Creek, beneath a towering elm tree, or it might have been an oak tree, on the old Stagecoach Road near the Bent Creek Cemetery is now, or maybe on the banks of the creek. Or maybe they preached on the Coffman farm just down the road first, and possiby some of the homes of other early members. Or maybe he stood on a log stretched across the creek. Or maybe all those. We all know how these stories go. The stories say that Lane and William Murphy organized the church in 1785, the same year Roddye built the Tavern with the Red Door. Barton, Roddye, and Caleb Witt were also involved in establishing the church. Barton, by the way, later left Bent Creek – with permission – to establish Bethel South in Morristown, the church that eventually became First Baptist.
The Bent Creek church’s original log structure may have been adjacent to the cemetery, although some older stories say that the church was built beneath the big old tree where the original preaching took place, and that that tree was across the road from the Kirkpatrick House, just down Stagecoach Road less than a half mile to the west. Or on the banks of Bent Creek, possibly.
The early history of Baptists come with plenty of dissension and division, as is true for most Protestant denominations. Once they came to North America, those divisions continued to crop up. I’m not going to try to explain all those controversies, but the first signs of dissent within the Bent Creek church appear in the minutes of the meeting on the second Saturday of June, 1839. It was the second order of business that day:
“took up the Institution named in our minutes and decided we will not make them a test of fellowship – vote 38 to 27 the minority rent off from this church and hold their meeting on a different day claiming to be old bent creek church but call themselves by the name of Primitive Baptists.”
There’s no explanation of the doctrinal differences that led to this move, just the note that whatever are the differences, the original Bent Creek church does not consider them out of fellowship.
There’s not another mention of this breakaway church in the minutes through August 1844, nor is it clear whether this group met at a different location or continued to use the Bent Creek meetinghouse. It’s entirely possible that both groups use the old log building until 1875, when most of the members of the original voted to move into a new brick building in Whitesburg proper and change its name to Whitesburg Baptist.
Thirty-seven of the more than 135 church members voted against the move. What exactly happened next isn’t clear: What became of the primitive baptists who broke away in 1839? And what about this group, who are known to have left the mother church at this point? This is a story to be told after more reading of church minutes, I suppose. What we do know is that at some point, the 37 breakaway members in 1875 eventually moved to the old Cave Spring school house nearby.
This group was supposedly calling itself Bent Creek Primitive Baptists, or sometimes the Second Bent Creek Church, and it maintained many of the old Separate Baptist beliefs of Lane’s time while Whitesburg Baptist “modernized.” Within a few years, the small group merged with Cedar Hill Baptist Church, a relatively new congregation that was meeting on Silver City Road between Bent Creek and Rocky Point Baptist Church, and renamed itself Catherine Nenney Memorial Church, after Catherine Nenney Graham, daughter of Patrick Nenney and widow of Claiborne County’s Hughe Graham, who provided the money to build a new meetinghouse on Silver City Road.
Whitesburg Baptist for a time shared its space with the Kyle Masonic Lodge, the church occupying the first floor while the lodge met in the second. In 1984, though, the church moved to a new brick building all on its own. That building was built on property once owned by Tidence Lane.
Both Whitesburg Baptist and Catherine Nenney have historical markers noting their beginnings at Bent Creek. The marker in front of what’s now all Kyle Lodge, installed by the Tennessee Historical Commission, reads:
“This Baptist church is successor to the church established about one mile southwest, by Elder Tidence Lane and Elder William Murphy in 1785. A cemetery is near the original church site, which stood on the Old Stage Road from Abingdon to Knoxville. This road, made by immigrant pioneers, followed game and Indian trails.”
The marker at Catherine Nenney, a carved stone, reads:
“A part and minority of the Bent Creek Church of 1785 est. here 1881. The Cedar Hill Church merged with this church 1887. Name changed to Catherine Nenney Memorial 1888 in honor of Catherine Nenney Graham, wife of Hugh Graham, wealthy landowner and legislator, and descendant of Samuel Doak.”
And the old log church? An article by Don Floyd in “Historic Hamblen” says the building was eventually moved to the nearby Coffman farm and used as a barn, until an effort began to rebuild and preserve the old historic structure. At that time, the logs were moved back to Whitesburg, but money was not forthcoming, and the logs rotted away.
There’s one old photo of the log structure, found in Jim Claborn and Bill Henderson’s Pictorial History of Hamblen County as well as Emma Deane Smith Trent’s “East Tennessee’s Lore of Yesteryear.” The date is uncertain, but it must have been after the congregation moved away, as Trent says it was in use as a blacksmith shop at the time.
From the beginning, Bent Creek church welcomed slaves as full members of the church. A read-through of the church minutes shows mentions of Black George or Negro Sal, sometimes a man or woman “of color.” In the early years there are few references to slavery, although Black George was once admonished for spreading a false story about his “master.” In later years, however, mentions of enslaved members are often accompanied by their “masters'” names. Still, the church liberated “Banet a man of couler to exercise his gift” (without a mention of his “master”) on the second Saturday of May in 1835 – meaning they recognized he could preach and told him he could do so. I’m not clear if “Banet” was a typo – by the end of the year, the church had granted a “letter of dismission to … black man Barnet,” a phrasing that means Barnet had requested to be dismissed from Bent Creek – likely to join another congregation, as such letters meant the bearer was in good standing with the church and could be used to be “received” elsewhere. Having not yet seen church minutes closer to, during, and immediately after the Civil War, I can’t say how they reflected their times.
While Tidence Lane might have been happier with the primitive baptists, at least for a time, he died long before that change, in 1806, having been Bent Creek’s pastor from the beginning. He was buried in the Lane family cemetery on his property, because Bent Creek had no cemetery at that time.
That came in 1810, when William Horner, another early member of the church, donated an acre of his land to be the church burying ground. He was the original owner of the Kirkpatrick Farm (the Kirkpatricks, incidentally, apparently initially owned land a little further out from Whitesburg, still on Bent Creek, perhaps near where James Roddye’s original lands were). Another story: There was already a grave on the acre Horner gave to the church trustees – Caleb Witt, Samuel Riggs, and Joseph Coffman – that of a traveler from North Carolina who died while spending the night at Horner’s farm. Horner reportedly traced the man’s family and traveled himself to North Carolina, with the man’s horse, to tell them what befell their relative, but his name was never recorded.
The Bent Creek Cemetery is now about eight acres and holds the final resting places of a number of early area illuminaries. Revolutionary soldiers like Roddye, John Kilpatrick, John Day, William Horner, Samuel White, John Arnott, Alexander McDonald, George Russell, Caleb Witt, and Tidence Lane Jr, the pastor’s son; Andrew and David Coffman; and Patrick Nenney are all buried in the old burying ground.
Also resting at Bent Creek are three-time light welterweight world boxing champion Frankie Billy “The Surgeon” Randall and World War I Medal of Honor winner Edward R. Talley.
Talley is one of two Medal of Honor winners from Hamblen County, the only county in the country to have more than one. Talley was born in Russellville and chose to have his medal awarded to him at his alma mater, Russellville High School. The other Hamblen County medal winner was Calvin John Ward, an Army National Guard soldier also awarded for his actions in World War I. Ward was born in Greene County and lived most of his life in Morristown. He was buried in Bristol.
An interesting note – the Talley-Ward Recreation Center was named for these two gentlemen.
And what of Tidence Lane, the pastor? Well, he’s no longer resting in the middle of a lonely field. In 2017, Whitesburg First Baptist Church disinterred Lane and his family and reburied them next to the church in a place of honor.
Sources:
- The Sesquicentennial History of the Nolachucky Baptist Association, Glenn A. Toomey
- Bent Creek Church Minutes 1786-1844
- Faces, Places, and Things of Early East Tennessee, Emma Deane Smith Trent
- East Tennessee’s Lore of Yesteryear, Emma Deane Smith Trent
- Historic Hamblen: Centennial souvenir book
- Hamblen County, Tennessee: A Pictorial History, Jim Claborn and Bill Henderson
- Bi-Centennial Holston: Tennessee’s First Baptist Association, Glenn A. Toomey
- “From cow pasture to memorial: Tennessee Baptists move remain’s of state’s first preacher,” Amy McRary, Knoxville News-Sentinel, November 26, 2017