Last time we spoke at length about James Roddye, we discussed his family, his personal life – or what we could know about it. I’d love to come upon some writings of his someday, so we could know something of what he thought about things. In his will, it’s clear he loved his wife – he calls her beloved twice. There’s just not much else.
I did fail to mention his appearances in the Bent Creek Church minutes. Roddye was one of the early members of the church and shows up quite a bit. Early on he comes up in a peculiar way: Apparently, our man got in some kind of fight with someone, so the church sent a couple other members over to the tavern with the red door to talk with him about it, as was common. No details are spoken of, but the members came back and said their mission was a success and they’d all decided James would come back to church when he was ready.
Bean’s Gap, across the Holston River, as seen from the probable location of Bent Creek Church. kc wildmoon
I doubt that was very long, because soon enough, he’s one of the members sent to talk with others about their transgressions.
There was one interesting point. In December 1805, James and his wife Lydia asked to be dismissed from the church, and they were. That generally means that the dismissee wants to attend another church somewhere. James and Lydia stayed away for nine years, then they reappear in the minutes in December 1814 and are “received by experience;” i.e. they came back to Bent Creek. This is another case of more research to be done, but I’m thinking one of two things: They either headed over to Claiborne County, where James owned land and businesses and where two of his daughters’ in-laws lived, or — this was when son Jesse Roddye and others of the family went to Rhea County. That southeastern county on the Tennessee River was formed in 1807, although white settlers began moving in about 1805 when the Cherokee were forced to give up their claims to the area.
Atakullakulla’s son, Tsiyu Gansini (Dragging Canoe), did not make treaties with white settlers.
Attakullakulla (Little Carpenter) made treaties with the white men.
In his more public life, though, we can know a few more things. We can only guess why he came to what would one day be East Tennessee, although if he came from North Carolina, as seems possible, he may have been moving west with other Baptists who were struggling with changes in religious doctrine. Or maybe he was an adventurous sort. I’m fairly certain he saw business opportunities. Most of the men who came into this area occupied only by the Cherokee (who had pushed out Muskogee, Yuchi, Shawnee, and more) were looking to take over land and sell it, and James certainly did his share of that.
I imagine his hanging his hat with the revolutionaries had much to do with those leanings. The colonial government of North Carolina wasn’t particularly supportive of attempts to take land from the Cherokee and in fact, had forbidden it. These future Tennesseeans, however, did it anyway, working up their own treaties – treaties that often were supported by this Cherokee leader or that one, but not this other one over here. Obviously, that’s gonna lead to conflict. Again, those are stories we’ll tell on these pages later on. For now, we’re just looking for our man James.
James pops up on the south side of the Watauga River in documents from 1778, and I think we can assume he was active in the Watauga Association, although we don’t see his name directly connected to it. We do see him as the Revolutionary War gets rolling.
Not all the Watauga men were patriots. Some were Tories, loyal to the British crown. A fellow named Grimes threatened to kill Roddye at one point, but Capt William Bean chased Grimes into the mountains and told him to get the hell out and not come back. Roddye later gets a little more land, with a cabin built by someone named Grimes …
Major Patrick Ferguson
That was just before word came into the mountains in the fall of 1780 that the British were planning to sweep across the southern colonies in search of a decisive victory that would rock General George Washington in the northeast. That word came in the form of a captured and pardoned patriot sent over the mountains to deliver a message from British Major Patrick “Bull Dog” Ferguson: Lay down your arms and quit fighting, Ferguson said, or he would “march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste the country with fire and sword.”
As you can imagine, these Overmountain men didn’t take kindly to that, so they gathered at Sycamore Shoals (now Elizabethton) and started a march for King’s Mountain in South Carolina, where Ferguson was planning his assault.
Typo on Sevier’s name. Private Roddye served in Captain William Bean’s company, and Bean’s company served under John Sevier. The heavily wooded and steep slopes of King’s Mountain made perfect cover for the crack shots of the Overmountain Men, who hunted regularly.
Two deserters warned Ferguson they were coming, but he likely didn’t expect the men he called “mongrels” to make the 330 mile trip in 10 days. The militias from Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and future Tennessee reached Cowpens in South Carolina on October 6 and learned that Ferguson was on King’s Mountain with 1,200 men. Ferguson made a huge error in camping there rather than moving on to Charlotte, just a day away.
Isaac Shelby
The Overmountain men, led by Isaac Shelby, sent 900 of their number on horseback to get cover the 35 miles to King’s Mountain pronto. They raced through a rainy night and morning, surrounding the mountain on the afternoon of October 7. And they attacked.
It only took an hour for the mongrels to run the Tories ragged, with Ferguson on horseback cutting down surrender flags with his sword. He was shot off his horse, then shot and killed the patriot who demanded his surrender, and was then shot and killed himself. By seven men. Once their angry bull dog was dead, the rest of the Tories surrendered. Grimes, by the way, was caught and hanged.
The Battle of King’s Mountain
There’s much more, of course. The Overmountain men scared the dickens out of Cornwallis, though, and he didn’t come back south for quite some time. And he lost. The colonies won their independence from Britain.
We know that Roddye went to King’s Mountain. He was in Capt William Bean’s company, serving as a private. We’re not sure if he was among the 900 men who fought the 65 minute battle or if he remained behind with the rest of the militia. But he was serving in Bean’s company — and Bean’s company was with John Sevier — so he likely did make the trip to the mountain.
And since King’s Mountain was more or less the extent of Roddye’s service in the war, we can be certain he was never a colonel. He was a private in Bean’s company, and that’s how he’s listed in genealogy records of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Our man was a colonel, though, just not during the Revolution. We’ll get to that in part three, when James Roddye packs up and moves to Greene County with his father-in-law, George Russell.
There’s not a lot out there about James Roddye, especially prior to his appearance in what was to become Tennessee. The earliest mention we know for sure is our man James is from 1778, when we find him settling on the south side of the Watauga River in Washington County, back when Washington County was in North Carolina.
So where’d he come from? There’s some indication he may have come from North Carolina, which is entirely possible – most mentions of his first wife, Catherine Jane Chase (or possibly Jane Catherine), say she came from North Carolina, and we know a lot of East Tennessee’s first white residents came over the mountains. But it’s fairly certain he wasn’t born there.
Some sources say Roddye was born in England, and others say Ireland. I say Ireland is a better bet than England, but I don’t think he was born there either. I think our man’s family was from Ireland, but by the time he was born – in 1742 – the Roddyes were living in Pennsylvania.
The most likely candidate for our Roddye’s father seems to be James Joseph Roddye Jr. He was born in Ireland, as was his father, JJR Sr, and the family ended up in Pennsylvania. I don’t know why they left Ireland, but I’m going to guess it was religious/political conflicts with England, which is what drove a lot of Irish folks over this way. All of that came to a head with outright rebellion in the late 18th century, but earlier those who couldn’t cope with England and the Church of England (and the Anglican Church of Ireland) – and that included dissenting Protestants as well as Catholics – were gettin’ out while the gettin’ was good.
James Sr died in Pennsylvania in 1734, so unless Junior came over after his father died, our man was born in what would become the Keystone State.
But we just don’t know for sure. Our James appears to have had a brother named William who also came to Tennessee along with him, and James Jr did indeed have two sons – James and William – along with a daughter named Sidney – which gels with our James’ daughter of an awfully similar name (most likely it was the same but spellings in those days were … inconsistent).
Brother William comes to the Watauga with James and disappears. It seems as though he was around when James came to our area – there’s a William Roddye mentioned in the Bent Creek Church minutes early on. But then he’s just … gone. There are other Roddyes/Roddys who pop up around Nashborough/Nashville in this general time frame, but again, we just don’t know.
White settlers came into our area over the mountains from North Carolina and down the valley from Virginia. The natives weren’t happy about it. We’ll get to those stories in future posts.
James’ first wife didn’t come with him to Bent Creek. Catherine, or Jane, died in 1779, and James married Lydia Russell the following year, and the entire family headed west to Bent Creek, settling there in about 1782, or maybe 1783. That included Catherine’s children, Elizabeth, Jesse, and Rachel. And possibly William, because son William is as elusive as brother William. He could have been born as early as 1771, or as late as 1801. Say it with me: We just don’t know.
James left the future Hayslope to William and and another son, Thomas, in his 1822 will, but it’s Thomas who used it as collateral for money he owed Patrick Nenney’s heirs in 1824. William may or may not have signed the final disposition of that in 1829, but as a witness and not a party – and it could easily have been another William Roddy, even Thomas’ uncle, for all we know.
James’s will, though, tells us a lot about his family, as it names all his children and his second wife, Lydia, who we know to be the daughter of George Russell, another Watauga man.
Buddy Ebsen as George Russell, Roddye’s nephew
As best as we can tell, George Russell appears to have been the original owner of Roddye’s property, having gotten it from the state of North Carolina for Kings Mountain. Roddye got property that way too, but his was in what’s now Whitesburg on Bent Creek, while Russell’s was on Fall Creek. Russell seems to be the fella who was trying to get away from it all. He moved into what is now Russellville, then off to the other side of the Holston River when Russellville, which was sometimes called Russelltown in those days, started getting crowded. And then he died while out hunting. James Roddye was the executor of his will. George is buried at Bent Creek. Fun fact: His grandson, also named George, is the George Russell portrayed by Buddy Ebsen in the Disney TV series “Davy Crockett.”
Back to our man’s will. He left 600 acres somewhere on the Tennessee River to Jesse, who’d already moved to Rhea County. John and Isaac got some land on Powell’s River in “Clayburn” County and a salt lick on Lick and Bent Creeks with William and Thomas, the two sons who got the future Hayslope. James got a slave named Thomas “which must suffice him in lieu of land.”
Mary Roddye Leuty, known as Polly. Polly was born in 1796 and married William Leuty in 1813. As best we know, the Leutys had eight children, including two who died as children. Polly died in 1879 in Rhea County. This photo and the one below of Sednah are the only images of Roddye’s children I’ve found. I’ve found no image of Roddye or his wives either. Maybe we can get a glimpse at him through these daughters?
As for the Roddye women, James left instructions to sell all his personal goods – except the household furniture, which he left to his wife Lydia – and divide it equally between his daughters – Rachel Majors, Elizabeth Lea, Anne Lea (they married brothers), Polly Leuty, Lydia Wright, and Sydnay Hale – and his wife. Lydia Roddye also had use of the Roddye home as long as she lived, but she didn’t care to stay in Russellville and soon left for Rhea County, where Jesse lived and where she died in 1825. Elizabeth, Sydnah, and wife Lydia each received a “negroe girl” slave, Thomas and William each got a horse, and James declared that his “horned cattle” should remain for the use of William, Thomas, and Lydia.
And finally, he decreed that “my negroe Harry” should be freed upon his death, and William and Thomas were to support him.
So yes, our man “owned” human beings, five at the time he wrote his will – two men and three women. He didn’t call them slaves, of course, in his will – “negroe” for the men and “negroe girl” for the women. When I was younger, there were a series of cabins along the Kentucky Road, beside the 1890s house, that some folks always thought were slave cabins. While that’s possible, I no longer think they were. More likely they were built at about the same time as the 1890s house – we do know the Rogans added cabins for the resort at that time. So for now, we don’t know where the people Roddye enslaved lived on the property, something we do hope to find out.
Sednah Roddye Hale Moore, our man’s youngest child, born in 1802. She married Patrick Hale (Hail in her mother’s will) in 1819 and had somewhere in the neighborhood of eight children. Patrick died in 1849, and Sednay remarried in 1867, to Ephraim Moore, a Baptist preacher and widower whose first wife was a cousin of Tidence Lane. I currently have both of them dying on the same day in 1875 – whether that’s correct I’m not sure. They were living in Morristown at the time.
Although he owned quite a bit of land, it doesn’t appear he was farmer – more of a land speculator and a businessman. We know at one point he had a license to operate a ferry across Powell’s River, and the salt lick seems to have been a business as well. And of course, he operated the tavern at his home.
Now, there is one little thing about the will. Well, two. One is that James gave all his daughter’s married names except Sednah’s (you may notice I’m spelling her name all the many ways I’ve seen it spelled). Interesting but not too weird. She married Patrick Hale in 1819 (and married Ephraim Moore much later when Patrick died). But daughter Rachel, now this one’s less clear. Rachel died in 1812 and was living in Rhea County at the time, and yet there she is in the will 10 years later. So maybe James wrote his will well before he died and never changed it, although he used Polly’s married name, and she married in 1813.
So that’s the family side of James Roddye. Next time we’ll do his soldiery side and his politiciany side, and I’ll tell you how we know he wasn’t a colonel in the Revolutionary War. He was, just not in that war.
This past week has been a productive one, to say the least. I started it by traveling up to Tennessee to get some things moving at the house. It was also my replacement vacation, since I canceled my beach trip a few weeks ago.
View from my cabin. Calf neighbors in field to right.
So – shout out to Linda and Vic at Mendin’ Fences in Rogersville, where I spent three very comfortable nights in a cabin next door to a couple calves and had coffee on the porch each morning watching the deer family and listening to pileated woodpeckers.
The business end of things went smoothly. I now have a key to the house – none of the ones my dad had worked! – and chatted with an electrician about how to go about rewiring the old girl.
Old History
Day 2 was super exciting. My friend Dakota of The Old History project took me to the Coffman House, which is about the same age as Hayslope and probably a little older. Had a wonderful chat with the current owner and toured the house and property.
The Coffman House was built by David Coffman, another of the Overmountain Men who fought at King’s Mountain and got a land grant from North Carolina for it. At one point in its history, the house was a dogtrot or breezeway home, built with an open breezeway through the center. That part has now been enclosed, but the renovators left the original, hand-hewn logs on the walls of the breezeway. I couldn’t stop looking at them! A couple of them were more than a foot square.
Inside the Coffman House
Outside, we walked the property, saw the home’s original spring, now on the front of the house. It was out back originally, because the main road – the old stage coach road – passed through the small valley on the other side, so what’s now the back of the house was at first the front. No turning this house around when the roads changed, like at the Nenney House where the Longstreet Museum now is – the Coffmans just started using the back as the front and vice versa.
We also wandered around the oldest barn in Hamblen County, and then out front sat on the large granite (? I guess … I don’t know my rocks) rocks that stretch all the way under the house and then under the highway – meaning we could feel the traffic passing by!
That afternoon, it was back to Hayslope to meet up with a home inspector to get some basics about what we’re looking at. Since we already know we’re redoing the electricity and tearing the addition off the back, he didn’t look closely at that part. Instead, he gave us a good look at the structure of the house – and as I was hoping, she’s pretty strong.
Gerald crawled up under the front part of the house – and told us that while the original structure is good, the supports under the front porch, which were added in the 1930s like the back add-on, just aren’t salvageable. The front porch has to come off. Then into the cellar, where we found a poured concrete wall about 3 1/2 feet high all the way around and topped by bricks. This was great. Gerald found no signs of water ever having been down in there, which doesn’t surprise me – our man Roddye set this house in the perfect spot for water to drain everywhere EXCEPT into the house.
Beneath the original part of the house
The house is built on stone pilings, which are in good shape. There is termite and powderpost beetle damage in some of the original beams – but not all. We know at least one of those beams is gonna have to be replaced, while others will be ok with repair. The worst damage was of course in the 1930s add-on, which is gonna all come off.
There was also some termite damage in the ceiling beams on the first floor – either from downstairs or the back add-on. While some of the termite damage was old, there were some new spots. The termites are active, so we have termite treatment coming sooner rather than later.
The chimneys aren’t bad, considering. There’s a couple cracks that need repair and the tops obviously need work. Recommend capping them to keep water out until they’re repaired.
Gerald also did a mold test – waiting on the lab to send those results.
Speaking of barns …
After a quick run to Greeneville to pick up a couple books I bought from an estate sale, it was back to Russellville to join a tour of the Longstreet Museum with the good folks of the Grainger County Historical Society. The museum’s Mike Beck – whose dad worked with my mom at the electric coop for years – was pretty amazing telling the story of the Civil War in the Russellville area – a story that’s often glossed over or just ignored completely in the history books. I enjoyed connecting with the museum folks and am really looking forward to how Hayslope and the museum and coordinate to tell our stories.
While there, I spotted a photo I’d never seen before on one of their interpretive panels inside. It was labeled as showing the Russellville depot, but it just didn’t look like anything I recognized – and apparently some at the museum agreed. So the next day I went over to the spot where the photo would have been taken – if it really showed what it said it did – and I came away convinced that it does indeed show the depot. And the Hayslope barn. I’d been wondering where the barn would have been, and if I’m right here, then it was in the same spot where my grandfather’s barn stood years later.
The Russellville depot is nearly dead center in the photo. Because there’s a drop off on this side of the tracks, the depot is built on stilts. In the foreground is a sawmill. I remember the frame house to the left of the depot when I was young. And on the far left – with a barn cupola – is, I believe, the Hayslope barn.
I went from comparing current landscapes with 100 year old photos to the county register’s office, where Becky patiently helped me find all the deeds transferring Hayslope farm property to the individual children of Theo and Louisa Rogan.
When Theo died in 1904, his will left the property to Louisa. Louisa died six years later without a will. So Hugh, Griff, Cassie, Ellen, and Maggie divided the farm into five lots and divvied it up between them. Ellen, as we already knew, got the 28 acres that I now own. And it was Griff, not Hugh as I previously thought, who got the property directly south, where the two-story house and several cabins from the resort were. Hugh’s property was south of that, then Maggie’s and then Cassie’s.
I’m hoping to use all this information to eventually reconstruct Roddye’s original property, since I know that was 467 acres in 1829, and several people have asked about it. There’s a lot more to tell about all this land, but we’ll save that for when I firm up the info.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig
And after all that, I got to spend some time yakking with my cousin and her daughter-in-law before loading up the car with the last of my dad’s things that had been stored at her house. Then it was back to Rogersville. On the way, the Hunter’s Moon coming over the hills in its brilliant orange simply took my breath away. By the time it came over the hills at the cabin (where my camera was), it was no longer that beautiful orange, but I got some shots anyway.
Moon over Rogersville
I left Rogersville in the rain the following day to return to Georgia, but the productive week wasn’t over just yet.
This morning, we got notification from the IRS that our application for 501(c)(3) status had been approved. We’re officially tax exempt and tax deductible!
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.
Well, he wasn’t a colonel in the Revolutionary War. That was the State of Franklin.
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.
Sandy Creek Primitive Baptist Church, 1802. Randolph County Historic Landmark Preservation Commission.
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.
Big Spring Primitive Baptist Church in Claiborne County. Tidence Lane reportedly built this church himself.
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.
An artist’s conception of what Bent Creek might have looked like in 1785. Debbie Bruce
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.
Whitesburg Baptist Church moved into this building in 1875, meeting downstairs while the Kyle Masonic Lodge met upstairs until the church built its current building a short distance away. Courtesy Joe Moore.
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.
The old Bent Creek Church, in use as a blacksmith shop at this time
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.
The grave of the unknown traveler
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.
Photo: Madison Turner, Tennessee Baptist Mission Board
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
I’ve been a history nerd since I was quite small, especially growing up and living in a such a history-rich environment. I’ve always thought I knew quite a bit about the history of our area — and I do — it’s just that there’s so much more to it than I thought.
And that’s fun. Finding out that some of the things I though were true weren’t, or that something I knew about actually had a much larger story around it, or that there are huge chunks of our history that I was completely clueless about.
State of Franklin
Take the State of Franklin, for example. It came about because the colonists in what would become East Tennessee didn’t think they were getting a fair shake from the newly formed state of North Carolina, which is why they crossed the Allegheny Mountains (that’s what they called the Appalachians in those days) in the first place.
Always been a bunch of stand alone folks, our ancestors.
Of course, they immediately ran into trouble because the Cherokee claimed the area (never mind that the Cherokee themselves had pushed other natives out to make that claim … we’ll talk about that in a later post).
OK, well, in truth the earliest folks to head into our area came from Virginia, to be honest, following the valley right on into the territory in 1769. Another group were involved in a little insurrection in North Carolina in 1771, wherein they thought the colonial powers were too corrupt. They lost a battle and took off over the mountains.
These two groups of folks, either believing that the land they moved into belonged to Virginia (because the Crown had in 1763 declared most of the land west of the Alleghenies “Indian territory” and forbidden to colonists) or just claiming that’s what they believed, settled into the Watauga, Nolichucky, and Holston valleys. A survey subsequently determined they had indeed settled onto Cherokee land, and the colonial government told them to leave. They didn’t. Instead, they negotiated a 10-year lease for the land with the Cherokee in 1772, and three years later, bought the land.
Watauga
This was the Watauga Association. And it made the British Crown unhappy because, well, they were the government, and individuals weren’t supposed to negotiate directly with the natives. Plus, one of the Cherokee chiefs, Tsiyu Gansini (Dragging Canoe), didn’t agree with it at all, even though his father, Attakullakulla, was in favor of both the lease and the purchase.
But then the Revolutionary War broke out, and all bets were off. The Cherokee sided with the British, and the future Tennesseans with the future United States. The Watauga Association collapsed, and the colonists on the western side of the mountains created what they called the Washington District, which was, for the most part, what would become East and Middle Tennessee.
I should probably pause here and tie our man James Roddye into all this. We believe he started out in Pennsylvania, and may have moved into our area from North Carolina, but I’m not certain of that. He married Catherine Chase, who may have also been from North Carolina or may have been from Kentucky or somewhere else entirely, in 1766, and that’s too early for them to have met in the future Tennessee, since William Bean didn’t plant his cabin there until 1769. I’m still working on tracking Roddye, but I know he had property on the Watauga River in 1778, and he was likely there earlier: Another note I saw said that his first location was on Roan Creek, which is a tributary of the Watauga.
Plus, as independence fever began to heat up that year, a tory by the name of Grimes led a group of fellow tories in an attack on Watauga, killing one man and threatening to kill two others – one of whom was James Roddye. But William Bean led a group of men up into the mountains and ferreted out the tories, chasing them into the Carolinas with the warning they should not return. That could explain how Roddye came into possession of lands belonging to someone named Grimes on the Watauga, including Grimes’ improvements, that year.
Land grant giving land to Roddye “on the south side of the Watauga River” including “a cabin built by Henry Grimes”
Catherine Chase died in 1779, and the following year Roddye both marched over to King’s Mountain in South Carolina (where Grimes, fighting for the British was captured and hanged) and married Lydia Russell, so we know he’s still in what was known as Washington County, North Carolina, at that time. But by 1783, he’s in Greene County, on Bent Creek in what’s now Whitesburg. And we know he built the tavern with the red door in Russellville in 1785. And by then, Russellville was in the state of Franklin, and Roddye was a representative to the proposed state’s first convention, aimed at creating a government.
The move for a separate state started in earnest in 1782, when Arthur Campbell, of the Virginia Washington County, and future Tennessee Governor John Sevier began to push the idea that the Overmountain towns that furnished the soldiers for the Battle of King’s Mountain should be a separate state. Campbell was thinking big. He wanted a state that included parts of what are now Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Sevier thought that was a bit much, although he ceded to Campbell’s leadership – until Virginia Governor Patrick Henry pushed through a law that made it illegal for anyone to try to create a state out of any Virginia territory. And so Campbell’s Frankland ended almost before it started.
Sevier had wanted just the eastern part of the Washington District to be the new state. He and the other Franklinites became quite alarmed when, in 1784, North Carolina’s legislature, noting that the fledgling US Congress was deep in debt because of the war, voted to “to give Congress the 29,000,000 acres lying between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River.” Very magnanimous. Fearing that Congress might do something really drastic, like sell them to Spain, the Franklinites began talking amongst themselves.
In a few very short months, North Carolina (with no immediate action from Congress, imagine that) thought better of the cession and took it back. They ordered courts to start doing courtly things and even set up a brigade of soldiers for defense – with John Sevier heading it up.
John Sevier/Charles Wilson Peale
It didn’t take long before the Overmountain men were unhappy with North Carolina. They met in Jonesborough in August 1784 and declared themselves independent of the state and elected good ole John Sevier as governor, even though he had just urged the Overmountaineers to refrain from taking such action. Still, he accepted the position.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the state of Franklin is likely where James Roddye became a colonel, and not the Revolutionary War. Roddye was known to be a private in the Battle of King’s Mountain, serving under William Bean. Later, in the wars against the Cherokee, he appeared to be commanding troops and was likely a captain. There’s just no evidence he was ever a colonel during the Revolution.
But at Franklin’s first constitutional convention (fyi, they never actually passed one, and this caused some internal strife that eventually hastened the demise of the state), the act creating the militia names Alexander Outlaw as colonel of the militia for the “middle county” (later named Caswell during that same session) and Roddye as lieutenant colonel. Since Daughters of the American Revolution applications NEVER mention him as a colonel (almost always a private, although one or two let captain slip in), I’m guessing that Roddye’s colonel days came from Franklin.
Franklin, or rather Frankland for now, started out with three counties – Washington, Sullivan, and Greene. Frankland’s Washington was more or less today’s Washington and Unicoi. The legislators later created Spencer County out of a portion of Sullivan County and a little piece of Greene; that more or less corresponds with today’s Hawkins County. They took another part of Washington County, and the part of North Carolina’s Wilkes County on the western side of the mountains, and named it Wayne (today, that’s Johnson and Carter). Then they added Caswell and Sevier Counties out of Greene County. Caswell is today Jefferson and Hamblen, and Sevier is more or less what it is today, although it originally held a piece of what is now Blount County. Greene was still a pretty big county – at this time, it included what’s now Cocke County as well. Blount, too, was a part of Frankland, minus that little bit that was in Sevier at this time.
Early History of Franklin from The Old History Project
In 1785, Frankland petitioned to join the union, but only seven of the 13 original states (still under the Articles of Confederation) voted in favor. It needed nine.
The Franklinites went back to the drawing board and changed the name to Franklin, hoping naming it after Benjamin Franklin (which Sevier wanted to begin with) would make Congress happier. They even wrote to old Ben asking for his endorsement, and, while he was flattered, he declined, saying he was “too little acquainted with the circumstances” and urging Frankland to “amicably” settle its troubles with North Carolina, which, incidentally, was threatening to squash Franklin by force.
At this point, Franklin just began acting as if it were a state. It moved its capital to Greeneville, added the new counties, collected taxes, and made treaties with the Cherokee (except, of course, Tsiyu Gansini’s Chickamauga Cherokees).
Colonel John Tipton
North Carolina didn’t like any of this, especially the part about not paying taxes to North Carolina. So legislators, in 1786, offered to waive the taxes the Franklinites hadn’t paid if they’d just rejoin North Carolina and start paying taxes to the state again. The Franklinites thought about it, but nixed the idea. And so North Carolina sent in troops, under the command of Col John Tipton, who had moved to the area in 1783 and initially supported the new state but switched over when North Carolina repealed the cession of the territory to Congress.
Also, he hated John Sevier. The feeling was mutual.
By 1787, Franklin was seizing Cherokee lands by force, which was pulling more natives to Tsiyu Gansini’s side and prompting attacks on the European settlements. And Tipton was demanding repayment of North Carolina’s taxes. Little Franklin was getting squeezed. And then Tipton had Washington County, North Carolina, Sheriff Jonathan Pugh go over to Sevier’s place (while Sevier was off stealing land from Cherokees) and take his slaves as payment for the taxes. Pugh brought them to Tipton’s house and hid them in a room beneath the kitchen.
When he returned, Sevier was … unhappy. He gathered up several dozen men and, in a blinding snowstorm that Leap Day 1787, marched to Tipton’s house, demanding the release of his slaves. Tipton refused, and Sevier decided to just sit there, surrounding his house, until he changed his mind.
He didn’t. Instead, North Carolina reinforcements arrived and a brief skirmish, now known as the Battle of Franklin, ensued. Neither side really wanted to hurt the other, so observers noted that the North Carolinians generally fired into the air while the Franklinites fired at the corners of the buildings on Tipton’s property. Nevertheless, several men were wounded and three were killed – including Sheriff Pugh – and Tipton’s forces captured a few of Sevier’s – including two of his sons.
Tipton’s home is still standing, but is much changed. This is artist Hugh Pruitt’s interpretation of how it likely looked in 1784. Note the giant chimney – similar to Hayslope’s.
Tipton’s enmity toward Sevier was only getting worse by the point, so he demanded that Sevier’s sons be immediately hanged, but cooler heads prevailed, and the boys were released.
Sevier’s troops retreated to Jonesborough, but the fight was quickly going out of the Franklinites. North Carolina Governor Samuel Johnston issued a warrant for Sevier’s arrest for treason in 1788, and he eventually surrendered to be taken across the mountains, where he was released by supporters before going to trial. OK, he wasn’t exactly “released.” The sheriff in Morganton allowed Sevier to visit with friends around the area before sending him on for trial. Meanwhile, Sevier’s sons and a couple other men who had been trailing the crew taking Sevier over the mountains caught up with them in Morganton. They mingled with the people Sevier was visiting and eventually spirited him away back over the mountains before anyone had any idea what was going on. Not that they minded – Sevier had a lot of friends in those parts, including the sheriff there, having served with them at King’s Mountain. And so Sevier made his own way home, and that was the end of Franklin. Except for a little part of Franklin that became known as Lesser Franklin (mostly Sevier county), until 1791, but because Sevier had by then sworn an oath to North Carolina, and no other leader surfaced, Lesser Franklin also died away.
It was not the end of the Tipton-Sevier rivalry, however, and our man Roddye gets into it a little later, because John Tipton could hold a grudge.
So here’s what happened next. North Carolina approved the new US Constitution in 1789 after Congress had realized the Articles of Confederation just weren’t working well enough. Tipton initially blocked that approval, holding out for a Bill of Rights. Congress passed that, and the Constitution came back to the state legislature, where this time it passed.
At the same time, the state assembly passed a measure that pardoned all those who had participated in the state of Franklin except “that the benefit of this act should not entitle John Sevier to the enjoyment of any office of profit, of honour or trust, in the State of North-Carolina, but that he be expressly debarred therefrom.”
Ouch. Now obviously, that couldn’t stand, because Sevier was extremely popular and his military expertise was renowned. Plus Greene County had elected him as a state senator. Sevier came to Fayetteville, where the assembly was held that November of 1789, but he stayed away while his friends proposed the repeal of that particular part of the measure.
Ramsey tells us how it all went down:
Thomas Amis, from Charles Lukens Davis’s North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati, published 1907
“During the debate on the resolution, acquitting Sevier of the alleged treason, and restoring him to the rights of citizenship, Mr Amy (Thomas Amis – I have friends from this family now who pronounce their name with the S, but clearly it was not pronounced originally), the member from Hawkins County, warmly urged the passage of the bill. In doing so, he gave offence to Colonel (John) Tipton, the member from Washington County. A rencounter was prevented with difficulty, and the debate postponed until the following day. The evening was spent in reconciling the desputants, and Mr Roddy (our man James Roddye), another member from Greene, reprimanded Amy for using language calculated to irritate Colonel Tipton, and begged him thereafter to pursue a course which would ‘soothe his feelings.’ It was finally concluded, that on the next day, Colonel Roddy should conduct the debate, as least likely to give offence. Accordingly, when the debate was resumed, Colonel Roddy began his speech, but had not proceeded far, when Colonel Tipton became infuriated, sprang from his seat, and seized Roddy by the throat. At this moment, Mr Amy cried out to Roddy, ‘Soothe him, Colonel, soothe him!’ The parties were soon separated, but a challenge to mortal combat was the consequence. By the interference of mutual friends, the difficulty was honourably accommodated.”
The measure eventually passed, too, and Sevier took his seat.
But at the end of the year, the state again ceded its territory west of the Alleghenies to the US government. And this time, Congress created the Southwest Territory, naming North Carolinian William Blount governor. Thus ended Lesser Franklin, too.
One of Blount’s first acts was to meet with Tipton to persuade him to chill about Sevier, because Sevier was really quite popular amongst the soon to be Tennesseans and was now brigadier general of the new territory’s militia. Tipton apparently agreed to be less public about his hatred, although it’s quite clear the animosity never left (he was later behind an effort to imprison him for fraud).
Sevier used the militia to wage war against the Cherokee, even though the official position of the federal government was to seek peaceful solutions. It wasn’t just Sevier either. Almost the whole of the mountain people backed him, especially those on the fringes of treaty-created territories (sound familiar?). They wanted to see the Cherokee not just pushed out of the territory, but wiped off the continent. It was a sentiment that later led to the Indian Removal Act of Andrew Jackson, another local favorite and frequent visitor to East Tennessee., even though Sevier and Jackson later got caught up in quite a rivalry themselves that almost ended in a duel in Knoxville.
Blount, the governor, did his best to maintain an uneasy equilibrium between the angry mountaineers and the government. I’m sure he was quite happy in 1796 when Tennessee was accepted as a state, ironically choosing a name based on a native word, and John Sevier was elected governor. Blount was chosen as senator, along with William Cocke.
Our man Roddye, meanwhile, served as register of Jefferson County in the Southwest Territory in 1793 (the county was formed the previous year and included that portion of Greene County where Russellville and Whitesburg are) and was a member of the constitutional convention of the state of Tennessee. His signature is on that document. Sevier named him a justice of the peace in Jefferson County when Tennessee became a state in 1796, and he was a member of the state senate in 1797.
Thus ends the saga of Europeans trying to govern themselves in what became East Tennessee. I should tell you that very few of these early colonists were, in fact, poor farmers looking to settle themselves onto a piece of land and live their lives. Oh, sure, some were. George Russell, who ended up on the Holston in Grainger Couty, perhaps. John Crockett, maybe. Even the Morrises, who founded Morristown. But Sevier, Blount, Tipton, Amis, Knoxville’s James White, even Roddye and many many more were, largely, land speculators. They aggressively sought to obtain as much land as possibly as cheaply as possible – including killing and driving off Cherokees – and then sell it off. It wasn’t until those men got older (and most of the land was already in European hands) that they settled down, and what they hadn’t sold was divided up amongst their children.
The story of our country’s colonization is an exciting one. It’s also a tragic one, and one I have so many mixed feelings about. Hayslope holds a rich and fascinating history of colonization and nation-building, of war and change. It also holds an equally rich and fascinating history that was never written down, a story of loss and devastation, of beauty and of mystery.
My aim is to tell all the stories of this place, and not just the ones handed down to us or mentioned briefly in school. There’s so much more, and it all deserves to be told.
Sources:
Ramsey’s Annals of Tennessee
Haywood’s Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee
History of the Lost State of Franklin, Samuel Cole Williams
First Families of the Lost State of Franklin, John C. Rigdon
History of Tennessee: The Making of a State, James Phelan
So there I am, writing up the story of how East Tennessee, before it was East Tennessee, tried repeatedly to be its own place, and making sure I tie our man James Roddye, the builder of Hayslope before it was Hayslope, into the story, when I come across some some documents connected to said Roddye and sold at auction a few years ago.
Now, I’ve seen these documents before. There’s three of them: One is a land survey, 210 acres, conducted for Roddye in 1810. Another is a 1797 document allowing William Deaderick to use some of his land for a mill race on Fall Creek. And the third is an “indenture” between Thomas Roddy and John Donaldson.
I never read the Thomas Roddy document, but yesterday I did. And it’s way more than an “indenture.” If I’m reading it correctly, it’s the document that conveys the future Hayslope property to Hugh Graham (and his mother-in-law, Lucy Nenney) in 1829, which means that Graham had the property long before he gave it to his daughter and Theo Rogan. And it also means that Graham did, indeed, get it from James Roddye’s son Thomas and not Thomas’s son Thomas. Graham and Lucy Nenney are also in-laws of James’ son Thomas, who married Lydia Nenney, another of Patrick and Lucy’s daughters, in 1824.
And how did that come about? As I read this document, Thomas Roddye was in debt to Patrick Nenney – Hugh Graham’s father-in-law – to the tune of $2,120 when Thomas executed a deed of trust to John Donaldson securing that debt, Patrick Nenney having died in 1824 and Graham and Patrick’s widow now holding Patrick’s estate.
According to the indenture, if Thomas were to default on this debt, Donaldson was to sell the property “at the court house in Dandridge” and pay Graham and Lucy Nenney out of the proceeds. But apparently, Roddy, Graham, and Nenney came up with a better idea a few years later. Graham and Nenney would buy the property from Roddy for $2,500 ($75,000 in 2021 using the consumer price index, although it’s buying power would be about $65 million) “being the whole of said debt, interest, and charges” and release young Thomas from further claims.
The document includes a description of the boundaries of “four hundred and sixty-five acres more or less” on Fall Creek, bordering the Cheek and Witt properties and “the road leading from Russellville to Cheeks x roads.”
The document was witnessed by Needham Jarnigan and William V. Roddy – presumably Thomas’s brother, who had inherited the property from their father along with Thomas when James died in 1822 – and recorded in the registry in Jefferson County. And now I have the specific book and page number to look for.
One of the many things I’m doing to pass the time is perusing old newspaper clippings to learn more about Hayslope and those who visited, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oh, there were dances and parties and dinners and all manner of things! Not all of them good – a fire destroyed one of the “rustic cabins” and at another point Hugh Rogan was struck by lightning! He survived, of course.
Weary Waggles
Here’s one of my favorite stories. I’ve been wanting to write it up for a while, but I was trying to find out more about the story’s protagonists (or maybe antagonists?) to no avail. All I can tell you is that they were a young couple from Mississippi, apparently visiting with a number of other people from that state, for the summer of 1897. Their names were A.W. Cooper and Emma Hooper. Here’s what happened, according to the Knoxville Journal & Tribune:
It was a Tuesday, the newspaper said, July 20. A.W. and Emma apparently were unsatisfied “with the attractions of the resort where they were sojourning” and hit upon a stellar idea. They would take a ride on a freight train, like Weary Waggles or Henry Hobo, perched on a coal car.
So they trudged up the hill from Hayslope to the Russellville train depot to await their carriage. Coal carriage. Plenty of those on the tracks, since coal country was just up the way a bit and coal trains frequently made their way from West Virginia and Virginia down toward Knoxville and beyond.
Russellville depot
Didn’t take long, the paper said, before said freight train pulled into the station and Emma and A.W. climbed aboard “one of the long string of coal cars,” intending to ride to Morristown.
“The rumble and jostle of the black diamond vestibule and the jerking and bumping of the cars was in striking contrast to riding in Pullman cars on highly upholstered seats, but to them variety was the spice of this life and in this case it was greatly enjoyed,” the Journal & Tribune reporter wrote.
But alas, before too long, one of the brakemen saw the trespassing couple and alerted conductor Charles Bailey.
Late 19th Century coal train
“The idea of an elopement at once entered the mind of the man in charge of the train, but corporations having no soul cannot expect their employees to have any sentiment, and for this reason it became his painful duty to flag down the engineer and unload his precious human freight,” the article reads.
And so, with a “shrill blast from the whistle,” the train came to a stop and Bailey went to the coal car in question to tell A.W. and Emma that they must “come off” because it’s against the law, and besides, another train is coming along behind very shortly.
“Is this Morristown?” Emma asked.
No, Bailey told her, again insisting that they get off, but “all of his appeals had the same effect as that of whispering to a whirlwind.” The conductor eventually gave up and waved the engineer on, but not before telling our wayward Mississippians that when they arrived in Morristown, they would be arrested.
Morristown depot
And so they were. At the Morristown depot, Emma was ushered into a waiting room while A.W. was taken to the office of the recorder, where fines were assessed and paid, while the “usual crowd of idle men and small boys” watched the denouement, amused. Once the fines were paid, “the young people from Mississippi departed a sadder but wiser couple.”
A Morristown man told the Journal & Tribune reporter that the police chief (Bartlett was his name) “and his men are death on tramps and people who steal rides on the trains.”
“Every freight train is searched, and woe be unto the tramps that find themselves discovered in Morristown,” the man said.
But, the fellow said, there was a question as to whether Chief Bartlett had the authority to arrest a pair of miscreants from Hayslope.
“Many people think he overstepped his authority and that they should have been released and saved the humiliation to which they were subjected,” he said.
Alas, too, I found no mention of this story in the Morristown papers … but doncha just wonder what A.W. and Emma had to say around the Hayslope dinner table that night?
That’s where we are now … waiting waiting waiting.
Can you tell anything about this room? I sure can’t.
The IRS has gotten up to May 20 in assigning 501(c)(3) applications, so we’re still about two months out getting ours assigned. I couldn’t get the interior photos I needed to start the application for the National Register of Historic Places, so that’s on hold until I can – possibly not until the tenants are gone at the end of the year.
We’re also waiting – and this is a terrific thing to be waiting for – for Dr Carroll Van West of the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area to pull his team together and come up for an assessment of the property and recommendations for rehab and reconstruction work. The TCWNHA gets federal money to provide these type of assessments in the heritage area, which covers the entire state of Tennessee, so to say I’m excited about this is a grand understatement. Dr West is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University where he’s the director of the Center for Historic Preservation AND he’s the Tennessee State Historian. He tells me he visited Hayslope once before, many years ago, so it’s a bit of an exciting thing all the way around. More to come on this!
“the home of Mrs James Roddye.” Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
And what do I do while I’m waiting? More and more research, of course. I’ve learned that the old photo of the house before the clapboard – used in the Garden Study Club of Nashville’s 1934 “History of Homes and Gardens in Tennessee” – is in the collection at the state archives, where it’s titled something akin to the “the home of Mrs James Roddye.” That’s an interesting title … if it refers to Mrs Col James Roddye, then she died in 1825 and I SERIOUSLY don’t think the photo dates from then. But does it mean that the house belonged to another James Roddye? Our James had a son James, but our James left the house to Thomas and William, and Thomas lived in it while his mother went to Rhea County, where the son James lived and where she died. Thomas died in 1844, and I’d assumed the house went to his oldest son, also named Thomas. But did it go to his second son James? If that’s the case … it throws into question the story about Hugh Graham buying the house in 1853 to give to Theo and Maria Louisa, who we know didn’t live in it at least until 1862, when Theo came back from Texas. What if the Hugh Graham story is just wrong, and James A Roddy, son of Thomas, inherited the house? He died in 1877, and the photo could very well have happened after that. Theo’s family was living in Jefferson County District 15 in the 1870 census – Witt’s Foundry – and in Russellville, Hamblen County (which was formed in 1870) in the 1880 census. We shall see, I reckon.*
Anyway, what else am I doing? Thinking about what the property can be. I do want to live in it, of course, but I’d also like to find a way to share it, in the tradition of the Roddyes and the Rogans. In that vein, I’m building a library! Books about the area and its history, and who knows what else. If you’d like a look at what I’ve collected so far, it’s right here … and growing.
And finally, I’m thinking about adding the house to the Civil War Trails, which is a pretty cool system of markers of Civil War sites. The Longstreet Museum and Bethesda Church & Cemetery are already on that system, so it makes perfect sense to add Hayslope. So, while I’m doing all this waiting, I started working on the text for the Trails sign. I’ll include it here – let me know what you think:
Hayslope
“Hundreds are without blankets or shoes”
Gen. Lafayette McLaws, headquartered in the home you see before you, wrote his wife before even arriving here in late 1863 that “many of my command are without tents,” shoes, or blankets, and that “the ration is not sufficient, and many are sick.”
After failing to take Fort Sanders in Knoxville, shivering Confederate soldiers camped in the fields around the house in all directions throughout the winter of 1863-1864, as sleet and snow pelted them and temperatures dropped below zero. When winter ended, these weary men followed Longstreet into Virginia and on to Appomattox.
Blaming McLaws for the loss at Knoxville, Gen Longstreet relieved him of command, although the order was countered in Richmond, and McLaws eventually survived a court martial.
Both Union and Confederate troops stayed here over the course of the war, but it was this final winter that left its mark on both civilians and fighters.
Pull quote:
“Out of 300 men in the 13th Regiment, only 32 are reported today as having shoes. The balance have been going barefoot over the frozen ground and a great many were without shoes during the campaign of the last two months. I have seen them marching on the frozen ground with their feet bleeding at every step.”
-December 31, 1863. Sgt William H. Hill, 13th Mississippi Regiment, McLaws’ Division
Sidebar:
This house was built in 1785 by King’s Mountain veteran James Roddye, a signer to Tennessee’s first constitution. He operated his home as the Tavern with the Red Door here on the Kentucky Road. Many a traveler from North Carolina to Kentucky stopped here for a hot meal, a swig of Roddye’s whiskey distilled on the property, and a good night’s sleep.
Alternate sidebar:
Both Federal and Confederate troops occupied the area throughout the war. Longstreet’s chief of staff, Moxley Sorrel, noted: “When the Confederates came on the ground, then was the time for acts of brutality against their Union neighbors …. Burnings, hangings, whippings were common — all acts of private vengeance and retaliation. When the turn came and the Unionists were in authority, Confederate sympathizers were made to suffer in the same way, and so it went on throughout the bloody strife.”
Soldiery artifacts at the Museum of Appalachia
I’m hoping to include the photo of the house, if I can obtain a copy from the state archives, possibly a photo of some soldiery artifacts found on the property, and a couple others I’m considering.
Whachyall think?
back of the photo of the house. Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
So … shortly after writing this post, the Tennessee State Archives emailed me with a scan of the original photo of the house – and the back of it. And it doesn’t say “home of Mrs James Roddye” at all. It says “home of Col James Roddye” and that the photo came from Mrs John Trotwood Moore, the great-great-great granddaughter of the colonel (if he really was a colonel) and his first wife (Catherine Chase). Anyway, I’ve tracked her lineage back to James’ son Jesse, who was one of the sons who moved to Rhea County. Now I have some leads to see if I can’t find more old photos of the house … that particular one has to be pretty old. And also, I’m gonna get a high quality print of the photo from the archives!
scan of the original print. Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
Sorta seems that way sometimes, but in this case I’m actually talking about Russellville’s illuminati, the founders and movers and shakers of the little town. I was thinking about this because I read that Hughe Graham, the ridiculously wealthy Tazewell merchant who supposedly bought James Roddye’s tavern for his daughter when she married, bought another Russellville house for another daughter, upon her marriage.
I can’t be sure, so far, either way, although it’s true that Maria Louisa Graham and Theophilus Rogan owned and lived in the Roddye house, renaming it Hayslope, and it’s also true that Connie Graham and William Houston Patterson owned a house Hughe Graham named “Cavan-a-lee” when he bought it, after the Graham estates in Ireland the family was forced to leave behind after that failed insurrection in 1798. The Pattersons were part of that, too – in fact, if it hadn’t been for their connections with Grahams – Francis Patterson was married to Hughe’s older sister Ann – the Pattersons would have all been executed. Instead, they were exiled.
William Houston Patterson
William Houston Patterson was the grandson of Francis and Ann, so when he married Connie, he married his grandmother’s niece. Cousins. We’re all cousins.
Just so you know, William H Patterson’s father was Robert Patterson, a famous general of the War of 1812. He was married to an Engle, so no close cousin there.
Hughe Graham, as you may or may not know, married Catherine Nenney, a well-known name around Russellville and Whitesburg and the daughter of early settler Patrick Nenney. Patrick Nenney was born in Ireland, according to records at the Bent Creek church, although I’m not sure yet when he came over – prior to 1796, certainly, because that’s when he married in Virginia.
Anyway, William and Connie Patterson had several children, one of whom was Robert, who bought part of the Hayslope farm from Hugh Rogan in 1913. A son was also named Hugh. Hugh Patterson married Lucy Nenney, the great-grandaughter of Patrick Nenney through his son Charles, Catherine’s brother, who was married to Sarah Galbraith of another wealthy area family.
Another daughter of Patrick Nenney – Lydia – also married into a famous Russellville name. She was the wife of James Roddye’s son Thomas and the mother of the younger Thomas who presumably sold the tavern and farm to Hughe Graham.
Next time maybe we’ll look at the Russells, although a lot of that is very, very murky. And more cousins. James Roddye, you may recall, married Lydia Russell (Lydia being a very popular name), the daughter of George Russell. Roddye supposedly named Russellville after his wife … I don’t know if that’s true or not. George could just as easily have named the village after himself.
Russell and Roddye were both members of the Overmountain Men (I should see if Patrick Nenney was … ) in the Revolutionary War, along with William Bean, considered East Tennessee’s first colonist. After the war, Bean founded Bean’s Station across the Holston River from Russellville, while Russell and Roddye settled around Russellville and Whitesburg. Bean was married to George Russell’s sister Lydia, and Russell was married to Bean’s sister Elizabeth. Something something Daniel Boone something something David Crockett. I don’t know. Yet.
Or maybe I’ll talk about a Patterson who married a Patterson who wasn’t related and lived in North Carolina, where she wrote and did a lot of other interesting things.
There’s only so much research one can do from a living room on a laptop. Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to go to a courthouse or two and start pouring through old records.
I’m particularly interested right now in tracing the ownership of Hayslope, as best I can, through the records. We just don’t have very many of those. In fact, the only ones I’m 100 percent sure of are that I inherited the property from my dad, and he inherited it from his dad, because I have their wills.
A young Briscoe Thomason
My grandfather, Briscoe Thomason, got the property somehow, presumably from his brother Escoe who was living there in the 1940s (and as early as 1938, when mention of the remodeling of his “historic house” appears in a newspaper article). That’s also when the house got its first modern plumbing and electricity, and, I’ll bet, kitchen.
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? So. James Roddye built the house in 1785 on a sizable chunk of land he apparently got from his father-in-law, George Russell, who got it from a North Carolina land grant. Roddye got land grants too, but his were closer to what’s now Whitesburg, on Bent Creek. Roddye’s Tavern with the Red Door is just up the hill from Fall Creek. All of this was in Greene County at the time, although it moved to Jefferson County in 1792, when that county was formed from parts of Greene and Hawkins counties.
James died in 1822 (he’s buried at Bent Creek cemetery), and he left his “plantation” to his sons William (from his first wife Catherine Chase) and Thomas (from his second wife Lydia Russell) in his will. Now, William and Thomas were both living in Georgia at the time. It appears that Thomas came back to Russellville, but William did not – he remained in Georgia until his death. Thomas stayed in Tennessee but died at 44 in 1844 – apparently during a trip back to Georgia. He too is buried at Bent Creek.
Presumably, Thomas left the estate to his oldest son, also named Thomas, who was 14 at the time. I’ve not yet found a will for the elder Thomas and suspect he may have died suddenly, perhaps without a will.
(Edit: Further research has cast doubt on the above Thomas and William stuff. We’re still checking, although it seems all but certain that James Roddye’s son Thomas died before 1850, when he disappears from census records while the rest of his family continues).
Now it starts getting really murky. Family histories say the house was bought by Hughe Graham of Tazewell from Thomas Roddye (who would have been 23 by then) as a wedding present for his daughter, Maria Louisa, when she married Theophilus Rogan in 1853. Maybe … but … Rogan, who was born in Kingsport, was an attorney living in Lockhart, Texas, in 1853. The wedding took place in Tennessee on December 14 of that year, but it appears that Rogan took his bride with him back to Texas.
Two daughters were born to the Rogans in Texas – Cassie in 1856 and “Little Maggie” (who died at 7 in 1863) in 1858. It’s possible son Hugh was born in Texas, although most histories say he was born in Tennessee – Tazewell specifically – in 1860. Hugh was certainly conceived in Texas, as Theophilus brought his young family back to Tazewell in 1860, according to his 1904 obituary, and then returned to Texas. He came back to Tennessee two years later, intending to again take his family to Texas, according to the obituary, but by that time the fighting in the civil war made the return trip impossible.
Hayslope, before the remodeling. Date unknown.
So did Hughe Graham buy Roddye’s property in 1853? Possibly. Young Thomas Roddy didn’t leave the area – he’s seen living at Witt’s Foundry in the 1870 census and back in Russellville 10 years later. Did Hughe give it to Louisa as a wedding present? Again, maybe, but she didn’t live in it right after the wedding. The Rogans almost certainly didn’t live at the Roddye property until at least 1862.
Whew. It doesn’t get any better, at least not after the deaths of Theophilus and Louisa Rogan in 1904 and 1910, respectively. First is the issue of just how much property they had. We’ll go on the assumption that the land itself was unchanged from Roddye’s ownership, which, of course, may or may not be true. Louisa named the property Hayslope, and it was known by that during their lifetimes through frequent newspaper reports of the comings and goings of friends, relatives, and other visitors as Hayslope became a well known area resort. At least in the latter part of the Rogans’ lives, it appears that son Hugh did much of the property management, as he is listed as overseeing construction of new buildings to accommodate visitors and also on farm matters, although is sister Cassie shows up in that capacity at times.
Hayslope grew during this time. “Rustic cabins” were on the property, and in 1898, Hugh’s brother Griff was said to be building a 6-room cottage for lease to a couple from New Orleans, and a dining room and a 2-story frame home were also under construction. That frame home becomes important to our story in the latter years of Theophilus and Louisa and, especially, after their deaths.
In 1903, the Rogans had a 50th wedding anniversary at Hayslope. Many of the descriptions talk of the old Roddye house, then more than 100 years old, and a dinner for 100 people, presumably held in the recently constructed dining room. It appears, however, that the Rogan children – at least those who hadn’t married and moved away (Margaret to Virginia and Ellen to Florida) – were living in the 2-story frame home. Theophilus died less than a year after the anniversary party, and Louisa six years after her husband. Now the property divides.
We’ve found deed transfers from Louisa’s heirs to Maggie for 55 acres; to Cassie for 51 acres; and to Hugh for 50 acres; but none so far to Ellen or Griff. It’s all but certain that Hugh and Cassie were living in the frame house, and possibly Griff, who didn’t marry until 1919 (Cassie never married).
So that’s 156 acres we can account for. Assuming that Ellen and Griff got about the same, add another 100 acres, and we’ve got about 250 acres in all.
Give or take, because we know that Ellen, who had been living in Florida since her marriage in 1893, owned property in Russellville as late at 1937, when a newspaper article notes that she sold 28 acres that year to Escoe Thomason. Escoe, who the next year had remodeled his “historic home.” And 28 acres? That’s the exact size of the property the old Roddye home sits on today. Have we found the answer? We don’t know, yet, but another trip to the Hamblen County (the county formed from parts of Jefferson, Grainger, and Greene in 1870) courthouse may give us that answer.
Citizens Bank of Russellville, corner of the Russellville Pike and Depot Street. Photo faces roughly southwest. Appoximately 1910.
But what about that 2 story frame house? It appears that house, just a few feet away from the Roddye house to the south, was on Hugh’s 50 acres. Hugh’s health was declining. He had been working as a cashier at the Citizens Bank of Russellville, his obituary said, but in 1913, he sold that 50 acres to a cousin, Robert Patterson, and moved with his wife to Florida, where his sister Ellen lived. Hugh died two years later, and his wife – who was the sister of Margaret Rogan’s husband – moved back to Virginia, where she was born.
Newspaper articles continue to talk about Hayslope comings and goings, now centered on Patterson and his wife, the former Maud Hooper from Selma, Alabama, soon joined by her sister, Ruth, and her Scotsman husband Robert Blair. The Pattersons and Blairs generally spent summers at Hayslope and winters with Hooper family members in Alabama. Patterson, who owned some property in the area prior to buying Hugh Rogan’s 50 acres, put up for sale 60 acres connected with the Hayslope farm in 1921. We haven’t yet learned if he made the sale then or later, but he does appear to have sold property to the south of the frame house at some point, while keeping a narrow strip on which that 1898 house sat.
Gradually, the term “Hayslope” came to refer only to that house and not the old Roddye house where Theophilus and Louisa Rogan lived.
Well after Escoe Thomason lived in the Roddye house, the Pattersons, Blairs, and their friends came and went. Robert Blair and Robert Patterson both died in the late 1940s, and Maud and Ruth continued the tradition of winters in Alabama, summers in Russellville. Maud died in the 1950s, and Ruth kept up the tradition until her death in 1966.
I recall peering into the windows of the house one year while Ruth was in Alabama, seeing the furniture covered with sheets, waiting for her return to open the house again.
That can’t happen anymore, though, as the city of Morristown acquired the property after Ruth’s death and tore everything down. They were hoping to acquire the Thomason property too, to expand their industrial park over to Warrensburg Road, but my grandfather drew a line in the proverbial sand, and the city ended up with a narrow strip of land that is largely useless to them and is now a mass of tangled underbrush and snakes.
And that’s what I know at this particular point in time. I’ll be digging when I get back up to Tennessee, likely both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, I’d be delighted if anyone has information I don’t have. This journey has been so very interesting, as I both learn things I didn’t know and find out some of the things I thought I knew weren’t true at all!
