A new family has taken the helm of Hayslope. I knew this would be hard – restoring this old place has been my dream for a long time – but it just became increasingly clear that I lacked the wherewithal to actually finish the job. The search began to find someone who could.
With the able help of Daniel Shew, a Bristol realtor who specializes in historic properties, we found that person.
Josh Callahan, with his wife Taylor and family are the new owners of Hayslope. Josh is from Big Stone Gap and has an education degree (specialty in history, although his job is insurance man). He doesn’t know the ins and outs of Hamblen County’s history – yet – but he has a deep and abiding interest. After the signing last week, I took him up to the Longstreet Museum and introduced him to a few of the guys who will be happy to help him learn as much as he wants, as well as offer introductions to more folks.
Josh, who currently lives over on Cherokee Lake, is still letting plans percolate through right now and isn’t completely settled on what he wants to do. He is definitely behind restoring the original cabin portion of the house that James Roddye built and perhaps the other half too. He is undecided if he wants to live in in the historic house or restore it and build a living residence elsewhere on the property.
He also wants so get the old spring functional again and is looking at what needs to be done to that bottom land to make that happen.
The web site is gonna stay up for now. Josh says he’d like for it to track his progress, the way I used it to track mine, so we’ll be sorting that out as we go. There’s also just too much information about the property and all the people involved here to let it go!
So, from the Roddyes to the Nenneys, the Grahams then the Rogans and the Thomasons, Hayslope continues its 240 year journey with the Callahans. Please welcome them to Russellville if you see them about!
But wait! There’s one more thing …
I should take this opportunity to let you know that it’s absolutely confirmed that James Roddye came to what became known as Tennessee from Pennsylvania. I was 99 percent sure of it, but while I was handing over the mountain of books and other things I’ve collected over the years to Josh, I took another look at the diary of the two Moravian brothers who traveled through our area in the late 1790s and spent a night at the colonel’s.
The brothers came from North Carolina and were headed to the Nashville area. They wrote about their journey and the people they met along the way, including the night they spent at Roddye’s home. I can’t say how I missed this the first time, but this time I saw that Roddye himself told the brothers he came south from Pennsylvania and that he was familiar with their church because he had attended their congregation in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on several occasions.
Lititz is near Lancaster, which is the area I felt all but certain the Roddyes landed when they came from Ulster decades earlier.
And there we have it. James Roddye came from Pennsylvania, settling in the Watauga area before the Revolutionary War. After his service at King’s Mountain, he had land grants in the Bent Creek area, while his father in law, George Russell, had the land grants in what would eventually become Russellville.
I’ve never seen any indication that Russell actually lived on the property – he appeared to live across the Holston River in what would eventually be Grainger County. Roddye began building his house there on Fall Creek in about 1785 and bought the property from Russell.
The Roddyes lived there until the colonel’s son, Thomas, used the property as collateral for the debt he owed his father in law, Patrick Nenney. After Patrick’s death, his executors – his widow and son-in-law Hugh Graham – called the debt in. Thomas hightailed it off to Georgia a few years later and disappeared. His wife, the former Lydia Nenney, came back with her children.
The property belonged to the Nenneys until about the mid 1850s, when Graham bought it. He left the old Roddye property to two of his daughters in his will, and Louisa, married to Theophilus Rogan, got the part of the property with Roddye’s homestead. The Rogans owned the property until Theo’s death in 1904 and Louisa’s in 1910, when the property was divvied into five parts for their children. Ellen Stephens got the 28 acres with the house, although her sister Cassie lived in it until her death in 1932.
Ellen sold the house and its acres to Briscoe and Escoe Thomason in 1937, and Escoe sold his half to his brother about 10 years later. My dad inherited it from Briscoe, his dad, and I inherited from my dad.
And now, the Callahans will see it through.