In December 1863, Maj Gen Lafayette McLaws brooded within the walls of Hayslope, the cozy home of Theophilus Rogan and his wife Louisa, where the Confederate general made his headquarters in Russellville, Tennessee. A half mile away, at the Nenney House in downtown Russellville, his commanding officer, Lt Gen James Longstreet, prepared to relieve him of command, blaming him for the failure of the Siege of Knoxville. Between them and around the house in the fields of the Rogan farm, weary soldiers bound their wounds and huddled under threadbare blankets, exhausted from inconclusive campaigns and a growing worry their war against the United States was doomed to failure, and that failure was coming soon. It was bitterly cold in East Tennessee, never particularly friendly toward the Confederates, and extraordinarily unkind in that brutal winter of 1863-1864.
Hayslope was already a storied home in Russellville by the time McLaws and his drained troops settled in for the winter. Originally built in 1785 by James Roddye – one of the famed “Overmountain Men” who quick-marched to South Carolina five years earlier and took just an hour to beat the British in the Battle of King’s Mountain – as a one room log cabin with a loft or second story on the Kentucky Road and was well known as the Tavern with the Red Door, where travelers could stop for a night and a hot meal before heading on their journey into the wilderness of what was then part of North Carolina.
Roddye had been part of the Watauga Association of early East Tennessee settlers before heading out with his friends George Russell, William Bean, and John Sevier for King’s Mountain. After the war, he was given tracts of land on Bent Creek further west and then bought part of Russell’s land on Fall Creek. It was there, on Fall Creek, above two babbling springs, that he built his home, living there until his death in 1822.
In between, Roddye served in the North Carolina House of Commons, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of the failed State of Franklin, and was one of the framers and signatories to Tennessee’s first state constitution. And he served as justice of the peace and county registrar.
Upon Roddye’s death, the house passed to his sons Thomas and William, then into the Nenny family, and was eventually purchased by Hughe Graham, a prominent Irish immigrant and Claiborne County merchant, and later given to his daughter, Louisa, wife of attorney Theophilus Rogan, in 1862. Then came the interruption of the Civil War, with Hayslope at the center.
Prior to the winter of 1863-64, both Union and Confederate troops passed through and sometimes camped in the area. Longstreet’s billet is a now a museum dedicated to the general. While McLaws was at Hayslope, another of Longstreet’s commanders, Maj Gen Joseph Brevard Kershaw, was about a mile west at Greenwood, a home that has since been torn down. The small outbuilding Kershaw used as his office, however, has been moved to the grounds of the Longstreet Museum. Artifacts from the encampment on the Hayslope property have been uncovered and are on display at the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, Tennessee, and the Crockett Tavern Museum in Morristown.
After the war, Hayslope returned to a more bucolic existence. Louisa began advertising for boarders, and, with the railroad just a few yards to the north, visitors were aplenty. Hayslope joined other resorts in the area – Galbraith Springs, Three Springs, and even Tate Springs in Tazewell – hosting summer visitors who enjoyed the fair summer climate and joyous parties of the era.
By 1898, the Rogans had added several more cabins and cottages and expanded the original house to include a dining room. The farm grew vegetables and chickens, and Hayslope’s heyday culminated with the Rogans’ 50th wedding anniversary in December 1903.
But Theophilus Rogan died the following year, and Louisa followed him in 1910. The lands passed to their children. Part of the property was sold to a cousin, Robert Patterson, and the 28 acres that includes the old Roddye house were sold into the Thomason family, where it remains today.
Col James Roddye and Hayslope, or the Tavern with the Red Door, were an integral part of the history of Russellville, of Tennessee, and of the United States. While other men and properties have been recognized for their roles, this man and this property have not, save for a Tennessee Historical Commission marker some distance away from the house that points in the wrong direction and that is now in danger of disappearing altogether because of highway construction. The current owner would like to preserve this bit of history for future generations and connect it with other pieces of the region’s celebrated history.