Tag: Hughe Graham

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We have parking!

I’ve blocked it off for the time being, because there’s no reason to park just yet. That’s coming, though, once the Civil War Trails signs are installed. Big thanks to Jerry Howington, who did a great job, and even fixed the drainage problem on the lower part of the driveway.

No parking just yet!

That was day one of my trip to Hayslope last week, along with meeting up with Everett from East Tennessee Pest Control. They’ll be treating for the termites and then the prevention of a further infestation. That’s set up and ready to go too.

Day 2 was a trip to Knoxville and the McClung collection at the East Tennessee Historical Society, where I met the society’s director, Warren Dokter, who you all may know of from The Old History Project’s work with him. It looks to me like our little area of upper East Tennessee is truly beginning to get the attention it deserves. The upper upper part, including Jonesborough and Watauga and all, and the Knoxville area have long been a draw for us history nuts. In between, with few exceptions, has often gotten short shrift.

Now, with focus coming from TOHP and the ETHS, that’s starting to change. There’s plenty to see in Hawkins, Hamblen, Grainger, Greene, Jefferson, Cocke, and other counties outside those in the far northeast and down Knoxville way. I’m really looking forward to hooking up with these folks as well as the Longstreet Museum and other organizations and groups in our area – we’re more than just a place for I-81 to run! And I’m convinced that we can be entertaining, education, and economical for all.

But what about K-town?

Well, I’d collected a list of documents I wanted to get a look at from the McClung collection – chief among them a photo showing Cavan-a-Lee, the house we now know was built by Absalom Kyle, who married Hughe Graham’s oldest daughter Mary. The photo wasn’t an original, unfortunately, but it showed the Patterson family (the Pattersons bought the property after the Kyles died) having a watermelon party in front of the house, with watermelons grown on the land.

Watermelon party at Cavan-a-Lee

This was W.H. Patterson and his wife Cornelia – Connie, another Graham daughter – and the property is the eastern half of the James Roddye estate, with Graham’s daughter Louisa and her husband Theo Rogan owning the Hayslope side.

The back of the photo says the Kyles built the house and that Absalom “personally chose every piece of lumber” that went into it. The Kyles both died at the house, it says. And it provides this brand new piece of information: Hugh Patterson, the son of W.H. and Connie, tore Cavan-a-Lee down and built a new house, discarding the old lumber in the process. His father died in 1904 and his mother in 1916, so it’s not clear when he did this, but apparently, the house bought by the Easterlys in 1952, which burned down the following year, was not Cavan-a-Lee after all.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Now, I did learn some mighty interesting things from Hughe Graham’s will, a copy of which – handwritten by his son Thomas – was in the McClung collection. We’d already learned recently that Graham got the Roddye estate from Roddye’s son Thomas as payment of a debt, and we’d assumed, based on the stories told, that Hughe had given the property to those children as wedding gifts (although the timing for the Rogans was certainly suspect, since they went to Texas immediately after they were married).

Hughe’s will, however, says something quite different. I haven’t yet read the whole thing – it’s dozens of pages, plus three codicils – but the original document, written in January 1862 (he died in March 1863) actually signs the Roddye property over to his children as of January 1, 1863.

But here’s the thing. We know that Hughe and his wife Catherine Nenney Graham got the Roddye property (called the “Rhoddy farm” in Hughe’s will) as payment of Thomas Roddye’s debt to Catherine’s father, Patrick Nenney, before he died. It appears, from the will, that Catherine’s brother Charles P. Nenney got the Roddye place after that, as Hughe’s will says it was “bought off Charles P. Nenney.” This part of the will bequeaths half of a tract of land made up of the “Rhoddy farm” and another segment known as the “King place” to Mary and Absalom Kyle, with the other half to Louisa and Theo Rogan.

The will requires Theo and Absalom to pick a man each, and those two chosen men to choose a third, who are to divide the property “to be equal according quantity, quality, and value.”

Page of the copy of Hughe Graham’s will, mentioning the “Rhoddy farm” and the “King place”

Let me tell you, Hughe Graham’s will is VERY detailed and specific. He says this division is to take place in the fall of 1862, and once done, Louisa “being the youngest” gets to choose which half she wants. The daughters are to take possession of their chosen properties on January 1, 1863, or upon Hughe’s death, whichever comes first.

What this tell us is that it’s highly unlikely that either daughter was living on the old Roddye property before 1863, since the property wasn’t even divided into two tracts until fall 1862. To review, census records put the Kyles in Hawkins County, where Absalom’s family lived, in 1850, 1860, and 1870. They are in Russellville in the 1880 census, but both died in that decade, and the Pattersons bought it. Theo Rogan had been living in Texas, returned to Tennessee to marry Louisa in 1853, then returned to Texas with her. She came back to Tennessee in 1860 with daughters Cassie and Little Maggie (who died in 1863), as the Civil War heated up, and Theo came back two years later, perhaps because his father-in-law was approaching death.

It’s going to be some fun going through this will. It’s long. This part, though, concerning the “Rhoddy farm,” is obviously of interest to our story!

Louisa Rogan left no will

But there’s more!

Most of the documents I saw were given to the historical society by a Graham descendent named Antoinette Miller Taylor, and many of you in the Russellville area knew her. These documents included store account books from Grahams and Nenneys and Mrs Taylor’s own notes as she worked to trace the history of her family. And boy, were her notes interesting.

Louisa left no will when she died in 1910 (Theo had died six years earlier) and so, Mrs Taylor says, the children “very equitably divided the estate after it had been surveyed,” wrote the names of the five divisions they’d created on a slip of paper, and drew for them.

The youngest daughter, Ellen – who was living in Lakeland, Florida, where her husband operated a large orange grove – drew the old homeplace and “suggested that Cassie (the oldest, and unmarried) live in the home place – Hayslope – which she continued to do for the rest of her life.”

Wow.

The other divisions went like this:

  • Margaret drew “Bayne’s Hill,” which she sold to someone named Bayles;
  • Griffith drew the section directly south of Hayslope and eventually sold it to Maude St John Philpot Hooper of Selma, Alabama, who had spent her summers there. One of W.H. and Connie Patterson’s sons, Robert – who was married to Mrs Hooper’s daughter Maude – put in a significant amount of money for that purchase (and may have been the actual purchaser) and, according to Mrs Taylor, built the large home I remember sitting there, as well as the three cottages behind it – which means that the house was NOT the one built by Griffith in 1898. She makes no mention of Maude Hooper’s sister Ruth, married to a Scotsman named Robert Blair, although the Blairs are mentioned as often as the Pattersons as staying there. Eventually, with both Roberts dead, the Hooper sisters lived there. Robert Patterson, Mrs Taylor says, named the house Killiecrankie, after a famed Scottish battle, but I can’t help but think Robert Blair may have had more to do with that name. The house is mentioned in newspaper articles as Killiecrankie a few times between 1915 and 1925, but then it becomes known as Hayslope until the Hooper sisters died and the house was torn down by the city of Morristown;
  • Cassie drew the Sugar Hollow section, but lived at Hayslope;
  • Hugh drew the section nearest to the Taylor place – Greenwood – and sold it to Robert Patterson as well.

Antoinette Taylor never found what I found – Ellen Stephens selling her 28-acre portion, including the old home place, to Escoe and Briscoe Thomason in 1937, although she did know that it had happened, and that it passed to Briscoe and to my dad C.D.

The other part I’ve found is the deeds transferring those five partitions to each of the children, with their descriptions.

Scrapbooking

One more interesting note. I looked through two boxes of scrapbooks, attributed to Margaret Rogan Millar, Theo and Louisa’s daughter. The scrapbooks were largely newspaper and magazine articles about happenings around the world, but the most interesting thing about them is that these articles were pasted over the pages of Theo Rogan’s old law books, including one that was “made by her father” at Hayslope.

Another page pasted into an old book talks of Hugh Rogan’s marriage to Bertie Millar (Margaret’s sister-in-law) in 1901. That page also includes an ad for “Hayslop Farm” (must have been a typo – it’s always been spelled with the “E” prior to this, although sometimes as two words). “At Russellville, in mountains of East Tennessee, on main line of Southern Railroad,” it reads. “19 hours from New Orleans. Through sleeper. Telegraph, long-distance and local telephone; express service; 10 passenger trains daily; fine springs; macadamized roads for driving and cycling; first-class table and service. For particulars, address Mrs. M.L. Rogan, proprietor; Mrs. T.L. Bayne, manager.

And that’s the first I’ve heard of Mrs Bayne, but certainly not the last: Mr Bayne, it seems was poultry farmers from New Orleans, persuaded by Griff Rogan to move to Hayslope, where he built them a 6-room cottage the Baynes called “The Cedars,” perhaps on Bayne’s Hill? And Mr Bayne’s poultry of choice? White Wyandottes. Mr Bayne even edited The Industrious Hen for a while. And that makes me wonder if Margaret Rogan Millar, who drew the Bayne’s Hill property, perhaps sold it to the Baynes and not someone named Bayles …

And there’s so much more. I’ll be looking over this material for a long time – there are names of people who could have documents and pictures of the Rogans and Grahams, and I’m sure to go back to Knoxville to study some of the account books, perhaps to find out how Thomas Roddye got into so much debt!

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Everybody’s a cousin

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.

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Following a faint trail

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!