So there I am, writing up the story of how East Tennessee, before it was East Tennessee, tried repeatedly to be its own place, and making sure I tie our man James Roddye, the builder of Hayslope before it was Hayslope, into the story, when I come across some some documents connected to said Roddye and sold at auction a few years ago.
Now, I’ve seen these documents before. There’s three of them: One is a land survey, 210 acres, conducted for Roddye in 1810. Another is a 1797 document allowing William Deaderick to use some of his land for a mill race on Fall Creek. And the third is an “indenture” between Thomas Roddy and John Donaldson.
I never read the Thomas Roddy document, but yesterday I did. And it’s way more than an “indenture.” If I’m reading it correctly, it’s the document that conveys the future Hayslope property to Hugh Graham (and his mother-in-law, Lucy Nenney) in 1829, which means that Graham had the property long before he gave it to his daughter and Theo Rogan. And it also means that Graham did, indeed, get it from James Roddye’s son Thomas and not Thomas’s son Thomas. Graham and Lucy Nenney are also in-laws of James’ son Thomas, who married Lydia Nenney, another of Patrick and Lucy’s daughters, in 1824.
And how did that come about? As I read this document, Thomas Roddye was in debt to Patrick Nenney – Hugh Graham’s father-in-law – to the tune of $2,120 when Thomas executed a deed of trust to John Donaldson securing that debt, Patrick Nenney having died in 1824 and Graham and Patrick’s widow now holding Patrick’s estate.
According to the indenture, if Thomas were to default on this debt, Donaldson was to sell the property “at the court house in Dandridge” and pay Graham and Lucy Nenney out of the proceeds. But apparently, Roddy, Graham, and Nenney came up with a better idea a few years later. Graham and Nenney would buy the property from Roddy for $2,500 ($75,000 in 2021 using the consumer price index, although it’s buying power would be about $65 million) “being the whole of said debt, interest, and charges” and release young Thomas from further claims.
The document includes a description of the boundaries of “four hundred and sixty-five acres more or less” on Fall Creek, bordering the Cheek and Witt properties and “the road leading from Russellville to Cheeks x roads.”
The document was witnessed by Needham Jarnigan and William V. Roddy – presumably Thomas’s brother, who had inherited the property from their father along with Thomas when James died in 1822 – and recorded in the registry in Jefferson County. And now I have the specific book and page number to look for.
Needless to say, I’m gobsmacked.