“By the side of Lick Creek the road led us through a long bottom with beautiful trees, but the land cannot be cultivated because the creek, in spite of its high banks, covers the entire bottom in times of heavy rain. A very high wooden bridge, with only a single span, is used then, and one must pay 12 cent toll. We rode through the water, which was low. We saw few farms.
Our night quarters we took with Colonel Roddy in Jefferson County. The overseer of this farm was very busy when we arrived, and apparently wanted to show us his authority, but rode away without taking care of us, going to a Baptist meeting, which was held tonight some miles away by a Baptist preacher from South Carolina. With the lame colonel, we had a meagre evening meal. As the mill pond had broken, there was no bread in the house, in place of which we were given sweet potatoes. Colonel Roddy belongs to the Baptists , and seems to be a man who loves the savior and is not without the experience of grace in his heart, as we concluded from his conversation with Br. Steiner. He inquired about things in the United Brethren, saying that he had always like the good order in the town and in the meetings which he had often attended in Salem, and that although he could not understand the language he always been impressed.
We had been traveling the Great Road leading to Kentucky and Cumberland, and some miles behind Colonel Roddy’s we reached the place where the road forked, going right to Kentucky and left to Cumberland.
So reads the report from Abraham Steiner and Frederick de Schweinitz, two brothers from the Moravian congregation in Salem, North Carolina, the Unitas Fratrum (United Brethren), on November 4, 1799. I think we all know exactly where the brothers crossed Lick Creek before coming on to Russellville (although, to be precise, the crossing was not where 11E now crosses the creek but likely about 1,200 feet north, where old 11E crosses on its way to Blue Springs. As you can see from this August 2023 shot from Google Maps, it’s still a bit on the floody side.
I’m guessing the brothers traveled on to Cheek’s Crossroads after leaving the colonel’s house, just a mile away, where they could have gone north toward Kentucky and the Cumberland Gap or west to the “Cumberland settlement” – the Cumberland River and the Nashville area. They apparently chose the left road, as their story continues on to Knoxville shortly after this. The brothers from Salem eventually established a mission in Georgia aimed at the Muskogee tribe living there, although this particular trip was aimed at the Cherokee.
From the brethren, we learn that the colonel was a pious fellow, something others have written about, and that he didn’t speak German, the language of the Moravian congregation. But he told the brethren had often attended their meetings in Salem (now Winston-Salem), some 200 miles away. Don’t know why – does this give us a clue to his whereabouts before Watauga and after Pennsylvania? Possibly. We believe he had relatives in the area of Statesville, about 40 miles from the Moravians, although we have no indication that he – or anyone named Roddye – ever lived there. That relative was an aunt, a sister of the man we believe was the colonel’s father, who married a Hall and moved with her family to that area a couple of decades before the colonel came to Watauga.
This short passage also tells us that the road they traveled out of Greeneville was known as the “Great Road to Kentucky and Cumberland” – and may well explain why the Kentucky Road section that’s right by Hayslope is at a right angle to Warrensburg Road. We’ve always assumed that the road came from the Newport area, probably over what’s now Warrensburg Road , but if the Salem brothers came from the Greeneville area, on the Kentucky and Cumberland highway to Russellville, it may have been THAT road that passed by the house, rather than coming from the mountains the way we thought.
What if the Kentucky Road by Hayslope is the same road as the Stagecoach Road that runs between Bulls Gap and Whitesburg, ending by the Coffman House? Because what’s now the front of the Coffman House, facing 11E, used to be the back. What’s now the back was the front, facing the original road. I’ll bet that road – the Great Road to Kentucky and the Cumberland, later Stagecoach Road – followed the route the railroad now follows into Russellville. In 1799, there was no railroad – that came in the 1850s. Following that route, the road would have slid right by the Roddye place and then turned to Cheek’s Crossroads, where it split, heading north to Kentucky and west to Knoxville and what’s now Nashville.
At some point a little later, the road extended into “downtown Russellville” and formed what would later be known as the Russellville Pike, or Main Street.
Interestingly, the brothers didn’t travel directly west from Salem and over the mountains. They went northwest, into Virginia and crossed over to Abingdon, then came down the valley on what they called “the Carolina or Great Watauga Road,” arriving in Sullivan County on November 3. From there they traveled through Watauga and Jonesborough, then Leesburg and New Washington in Greene County before arriving at their Lick Creek crossing. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant day, they wrote: “Yesterday it was warm and threatened rain; today a sharp wind blew and it froze, yet the trees were remarkably green for the time of year.” Seems the brothers made good time on that Monday, November 4, 1799, coming down from Sullivan County all the way to Col Roddye’s to spend the night.
‘Beautful black curly hair’
I came across this report in a book I hadn’t closely perused before – Samuel Cole Williams’ “Early Travels in the Tennessee Country,” although this particular translation comes from the journal of the North Carolina Historical Commission in 1944. I found that reference in a treasure trove of genealogical data from Mary Daniel Moore, the wife of former Tennessee State Librarian and Archivist John Trotwood Moore, who served in that position herself after her husband’s death.
Mrs. Moore provided the photograph of Hayslope that’s contained in the Garden Club of Nashville’s book on historic Tennessee homes, and she was a descendent of the colonel through his son Jesse. She collected an amazing amount of data, and ran into the same dead ends I’ve run into about Our Man James and his family. She was certain he came from Pennsylvania, but never made the Sidney connection with the repeated use of that name, including, James’ daughter and, I believe, his sister.
I’ve found her correspondence with Roddye descendants fascinating, especially because they’re all much, much closer to his time than I am. Mrs. Moore’s letters come from the 1920s and 1930s, often older people who had solid information, and there’s one from 1877 that discusses some of the colonel’s descendants, including daughters Sidney and Polly.
The correspondence includes several letters from the colonel’s great-granddaughter, Annie Roddy Taylor, who was also related to the Nenneys, Grahams, Pattersons, and Rogans and was living in Dandridge during her correspondence with Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Taylor, born in 1869, provides us our first description of James Roddye, although it is of what she was told and not from meeting the man himself.
“Had beautiful black curly hair,” she wrote. “Was small of stature, and had a small foot.”
Small foot, she wrote – could that be why the Moravian brothers wrote that the colonel was “lame”?
Mrs. Taylor was the daughter of Thomas F. Roddy, who was the son of Thomas Roddye – the man who gave up his father’s property to the Nenneys because of a debt he owed. Mrs. Taylor says she doesn’t know how the property got into the hands of the Nenneys and that her grandfather died when her father was quite young – Thomas Sr. vanished in Georgia when his son was about 7. I imagine it wasn’t a subject that was talked much about in the family, as his wife Lydia had to come back to East Tennessee from Georgia and make do without him while raising seven children (although the two oldest, Lydia and Miranda, both died young, according to this correspondence record).
And speaking of Thomas, I have now found a Jefferson County record that appears to show him buying property in Russellville from his brother William in the mid 1820s. I am assuming this would be Thomas buying out his brother’s part of the Russellville inheritance he received from James’s will, since Thomas was able to use the property as collateral for the debt without William’s signature.
And, Mrs. Taylor gives us a clue about William’s whereabouts afterward – she says he lived on the Chuckey River.
Mrs. Moore’s collection also located information from Watuaga that says the colonel was appointed property assessor there in 1778. So now we know he came to what we know as East Tennessee no later than that.
Down by the old mill stream …
And then there’s the thing about the mill pond being broken through, and no bread. I’ve seen no other reference to the colonel having a mill on his property, so I’m wondering if this is not in reference to Roddye’s mill but to a mill where Roddye would’ve had his grain ground. Fall Creek, as it flows through what we know was the colonel’s property is pretty flat. The creek doesn’t drop until it gets to where 11E currently is, when it begins its drop to head toward the Holston River, and passes through the location of the old Cain Mill in the process.
Now, in 1810, Roddye sold the rights to dig a mill race on Fall Creek to William Deaderick. Haven’t determined where that was yet, but that does imply that there wasn’t one in 1799 when the Moravian brothers came through.
I’ve also heard that George Russell, Roddye’s father-in-law, may have had a mill – and we’re pretty certain that Roddye got his Russellville property from him (Roddye’s original land grants from his King’s Mountain service were along Bent Creek in what’s now Whitesburg). And that makes me wonder if the property might have extended northward, toward the river, and included the location of Cain’s Mill – which is a darn near perfect spot for a mill – or at least to the spot where the creek does drop sharply from the former Chestnut Avenue down to old Russellville’s Main Street. And THAT makes me wonder if the property that Thomas Roddye gave to the Nenneys in lieu of his debt might have included a chunk of land on the north side of the railroad, including the property where the Nenney House/Longstreet Museum now sits.
Mrs. Moore’s documents tell us that Charles P. Nenney, who eventually sold the Roddye property to Hugh Graham, actually lived in the old Roddye House for a time, probably until he moved to the newer house in Russellville proper. This is pure speculation, but now I’m curious to know if he kept the property on the north side of the railroad (which was being built in the 1850s) and sold the rest to Mr. Graham.
Roddye did build a mill over in Claiborne County in the early 1800s. Apparently, he lived over there for the time I previously thought he might have been in Rhea County. But Claiborne County court documents include one that says he was living there, and there’s a lot buying and selling of property there and in Grainger County during that time. The docs say the colonel also ran a ferry over the Powell River for a time. He left some of the property he had over there to his son-in-law, James Lea, in his will.
Rigged election!
And finally, the Tennessee State Library and Archives had this gem: a letter completely in the colonel’s hand, written to Gov. John Sevier in 1796 complaining that the recently completely election (presumably the vote for a US representative in the newly formed Tennessee) was illegally held because the Jefferson County sheriff only advertised it for 5 days instead of the constitutionally required 20 days.
Now, the colonel was up against future President Andrew Jackson and lost badly in that election, but he didn’t mention that part. I’ve not located any information about a response from Sevier.
The colonel by that time had, of course, served on the state’s constitutional committee to draw up the constitution,and was later elected to the state legislature and served as Jefferson County’s appointed registrar.