I just spent nearly a week up in Tennessee, most of it snowed in, sitting in a camper in Morristown, drinking hot chocolate and watching Welsh crime dramas on TV. I did accomplish a few things, though.
And no, the tenants aren’t yet gone. That’s … annoying. It’s going to happen, though. Meanwhile …
I met up with Kenny, who took care of the yard at my dad’s place after his death, and he’s ready to do the same at Hayslope, once the tenants are out and the grass starts growing again.
I also planted some colorful little flags across the lower part of the yard, marking out where the CWT parking area will go, and met with Jerry, who’ll be grading that and dumping in the gravel for it. He’ll have to come back and look at it again when the snow’s gone to price it out, but we’re getting set up there too.
While wandering around the yard, I spotted two things I hadn’t noticed before. One, the gate posts at the driveway are for split rails, and two, both of the stone markers at the Kentucky Road entrance are still standing – over the summer I couldn’t get close enough to see the south one because of all the overgrowth.
Got the many boxes of books and other items out of my meditation room and into a storage space in Morristown, which was MUCH easier said than done. Turns out storage spaces, particularly climate controlled ones, are in short supply in East Tennessee. The one I finally found is small, but will do for now, and at least when I’m meditating, I’m no longer hidden behind stacks of boxes!
With all the snow – very pretty, by the way – I had a lot of inside time and used some of it (when not watching Welsh crime dramas) to do a little research. First, I tried (again) to map out Cassie Rogan’s property lines, but I’m still stumped by the reference to “old Arnott Road,” which intersects with the Russellville Road (now Warrensburg) – at least I was.
I was looking for a set of hex keys in my basement when I came across a book I’d forgotten I had, called “Historical Echoes of Hamblen County,” signed to my mom by its author, Connie Maloney Haun, who taught school in Morristown for 30 years. It’s gonna take some doing to go through this book – it’s not the best organized. But in the front was a map I’d never before seen – and that map marked “Arnott Road” as what we know now as Warrensburg Road between Silver City Road and Little Mountain Road. At that point, the road becomes Fall Creek Road on this map (which is one of the many names I knew as a child – Warrensburg Road was never one of those). So, FOUND IT. I’ll be trying again to mark out Cassie’s property soon.
A couple other interesting notes on this map, which has no date or provenance – it appears to mark what we now call Sugar Hollow Road as “Old Russellville-Warrensburg Road.” Jarrell Road used to be “Herald Road” (or was there just a mispronunciation/misspelling?) What’s now Beacon Hill Road was “Catherine Nenney Road,” and the spot where the church is was actually a community called Nenney. And a long time question has been answered for me – Silver City was at the intersection of Little Mountain Road and Silver City Road.
The map is specifically of Hamblen County, and clearly after 1942 since it shows Cherokee Lake – or very close to it. Enka Highway is marked on the map, Slop Creek Road is Slop Branch Road, and Interstate 81 – not completed in Tennessee until 1975 – is marked. Now, plans for I81 were made in the 50s, so …. and the highway is marked on the map, in parentheses, “FCA.” Don’t know what that means.
Back at my snowed in camper in Tennessee, I turned back to my search for Cavan-a-Lee, the home Hugh Graham gave to his daughter Connie and her husband William Houston Patterson. The house was built on the other half of the Roddye property, across Warrensburg Road from Hayslope.
Doing some old newspaper searches, I noticed that the name “Cavan-a-Lee” slowly vanished in the 1940s, and yet there was no reference to anything having happened to the house. One of W.H. and Connie’s sons, Hugh Graham Patterson (H.G.), had married Lucy Nenney – the great niece of the original Hugh Graham’s wife, Catherine Nenney – and they lived at the Nenney House, now the Longstreet Museum.
H.G.’s sister Louise and her husband Horace Miller apparently lived at Cavan-a-Lee until their deaths in 1942 and 1940 – which is when the name vanishes from the record. Mr & Mrs J.D. Easterly, who owned Modern Cleaners in Morristown, bought the home in 1952 and began an extensive restoration project, redoing the six-room house, “with its beamed ceiling, pine-paneled den, and wide-open fireplace accessible from both the living room and the kitchen,” Morristown Gazette columnist Connie Helms wrote in her “Connie’s Corner” column.
And on April 20, 1953, the house burned to the ground, taking with it all the restoration and numerous antiques already put in place by the Easterlys.
But where was this house? Turns out, Connie’s Corner tells us, almost – “at Hayslope near the E.M. Lane residence,” which is over by the railroad. There were a cluster of three houses there at the time – the Lanes owned a sizable chunk of the property there, which leads me to believe they bought it either from WH and Connie Patterson or from their estate.
It also seems to be an unlikely location for Cavan-a-Lee. Maybe. Another possible location – near Hayslope and the Lane home – is past Hayslope and up on the hill above the road. That property was also part of the Lane estate, though, and is supposedly the location of a home that burned mysteriously on a Halloween night – certainly not April 1953. The ruins of that home were still visible when I was a kid
Interestingly, I couldn’t find another mention of the Cavan-a-Lee fire other than in the Connie’s Corner column – or even a mention in the Morristown papers of the Halloween night fire, so …
So where was it? “At Hayslope,” Connie Helms said … could it have been standing just across the road from Hayslope? The property between the road and Fall Creek in front of Hayslope was not part of the Lane estate. Part of it belonged to Hugh Rogan – the part where the spring is. So I suppose it’s possible that part of that property belonged to the Patterson estate, and that’s where Cavan-a-Lee stood. Seems a little trip to the courthouse to find out where the Easterlys owned land is in order.
Such a shame that Cavan-a-Lee’s history seems to have been lost even before the house itself was lost, although the Easterlys were clearly making an effort to bring it back to its former glory.
Let’s see … what else. Well, while trying (again) to figure out Cassie’s property and searching for Cavan-a-Lee, I got to wondering if some of the houses out past Hayslope, on Hayslope’s side, might have been some of the cottages connected with the resort – specifically the house just on the other side of the city’s strip of property. That’ll require some deed research, I imagine. Sure would like to figure out where Cassie’s property was though. She apparently had a house on it, where her father was when he died.
And speaking of Theo Rogan, I re-read his obituary last week and saw something I’d missed. Apparently, Theo kept a daily diary from the time he was 7 years old until a few days before he died. Am I on a search for that? Why, yes, I am. And that search has already uncovered Theo writing a little history of his family, said to be excerpted from some larger “Reminisces,” which I think we can be quite certain came from his diaries.
