State of being

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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 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:

“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.

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