Tag: Rogans

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Jackpot!

Well, I kinda feel like I hit the historical document jackpot anyway. I’ve been using Family Search’s experimental AI search of online documents, and it’s kinda working out – although I can say that I can read cursive marginally better than the AI can. Still, the machine function gets me close to where I want to be in the scanned documents, then all I have to do is page through and find all manner of surprising things.

It’s a little tedious, but also fun. Today, Imma give you the biggest news first: I found the document in which George Russell, the colonel’s father in law, sells his Russellville property to James Roddye. We knew something like that happened, since Russell’s land grants were on Fall Creek and Roddye’s were mostly on Bent Creek, but had not found the proof of it. Now we have. But we found it where we hadn’t looked before – in Hawkins County, not Greene as we’d supposed. Here’s how it went down.

George Russell’s deed to James Roddye

Russell put in for the property in 1783, around the same time that Roddye put in for his grants on Bent Creek (there is a grant for Roddye from 1780 on the south side of the Holston, which might or might not be in Russellville, but I’ve not sussed out details on that one yet). The 1783 Russell grant is for land on Fall Creek, bordering Donalson’s and Cheek’s lands and definitely corresponds to what we know of the Roddye-Nenney-Graham-Rogan property of the 19th century. Anyway, Russell put in for the property in 1783, the same year that Greene County was carved out of Washington County, then in North Carolina.

The grant wasn’t issued until nearly four years later, in 1787. Now, this is fairly common. It took 11 years for one of Roddye’s grants to be officially issued, and most of them took anywhere from three to eight years. As far as I’ve been able to tell, that has to do with there being a lot of land grants and the time and personnel to do all the recording and surveying. By hand. In duplicate and sometimes triplicate. Not to mention travel times.

And then, of course, there’s the changing political landscape in East Tennessee. By the time Russell’s grant was finally issued, that little corner of Greene County had just become Hawkins County, still in North Carolina. Meanwhile, in between 1783 and 1789, Roddye is selling his properties on Bent Creek (to names like Kilpatrick, Horner, and White that you’d recognize from our area’s history). And it takes time to record all those too.

So over in Hawkins County is the deed transfer from George Russell to James Roddye for the property listed in the 1787 grant. That’s mentioned right in the deed, which was recorded in January 1790, by which time records show Russell living across the river in what would later become Grainger County.

I have no doubt that Roddye built the house on the property, apparently before he officially owned it. Russell was the colonel’s father-in-law, after all, and the two were apparently very close. Roddye served, with Russell’s wife Elizabeth, as Russell’s executor when he died in 1798. Russell, Roddye, Bean, all those guys – they came to our area from the Watauga settlement after King’s Mountain. Bean settled on the north side of the river immediately, and apparently Russell yeeted over there pretty quickly. Roddye stayed on the south side, and, I suspect, saw to it that Russellville took the name of his wife’s family.

Lot-tery

I’ve mentioned before that most of these guys were land speculators, buying and selling and farming and running businesses, and Roddye was no different. As best as I can tell, he owned a large portion of what we know as Russellville – the little village, in particular. The Jefferson County deed book tells us that somewhere around 1820, probably just before, the colonel divided up his property in Russellville proper into lots – at least 22 of them – and began selling them at $50 a pop. These lots appear to start around where Fall Creek crosses what’s now the Andrew Johnson Highway and the old Main Street and move back west from there. That starting point is also where the colonel sold the rights for a mill race to one William H. Deaderick in about 1810, and mention of that mill race shows up frequently in the deeds. That tells me there was a mill right about there before Cain Mill was built a little further north along the creek.

Russellville now. Photo by Dakota Carmichael/The Old History Project

The colonel didn’t sell all his lots. His son Thomas sold several in the late 1820s, around the same time he signed the bulk his father’s property over to Patrick Nenney’s estate to pay for a debt he owed. Patrick was Thomas’s father in law, and he owed this debt at the time of Patrick’s death in 1824 but never paid it. The Nenneys got the property in 1829. At the same time, Thomas was having a fire sale, disposing of properties – including enslaved people – before he split Tennessee to try his hand at gold in Georgia. And before the sheriff of Jefferson County, James Bradford, seized what property he had left in downtown Russellville and sold it on the courthouse steps in Dandridge in 1835 to pay a substantial debt he owed some folks in Baltimore. His debtors bought the whole “lot” of it for $100, and, I’m assuming, made more than that selling it again, but I haven’t gotten that far in the deed book just yet.

What happened to Thomas Roddye is still a mystery. There’s an 1834 JeffCo document that says he is “lately deceased,” but I don’t know how accurate that is. Needham Jarnigan, who travelled with him to Georgia, wrote to Charles P. Nenney (both Roddy and Jarnigan’s brother in law) in 1837 saying that his whereabouts are unknown and that he suspects rumors that he killed himself over the substantial debts he owed, a sizable portion apparently incurred while in Georgia, were true. It was around that time that Thomas’s wife, Lydia, came back to Russellville/Whitesburg.

Charles P. Nenney was by then almost certainly living at what would eventually be known as Hayslope. The executors of Patrick’s will, Hugh Graham and Lucy Bramblette Nenney, Patrick’s widow, signed the property over to him in 1835. He was living there in 1845, when he sold it to Graham. So there you have it – the Nenney ownership was from 1829 to 1845.

Lydia Nenney Roddy, Charles P.’s sister and Thomas’s wife, lived in Whitesburg on property she inherited from her father for the rest of her life, by the way.

The Rogans forward

Graham’s will, written in 1861, designates how his children were to divide his property after his death. As far as the old Roddye property is concerned, the will says for Theo Rogan, Louisa’s husband, and Absalom Kyle, Mary Ann’s husband, to hire surveyors to divide it in half, and then Louisa, “being the youngest,” gets first pick. She picked the half with Roddye’s old home on it

The will gives the property to Mary Ann and Louisa (specifically the daugthers and not their husbands) on January 1, 1862, or Graham’s death, whichever comes first. Graham died in 1865, and we know the Rogans were living at the house in the latter part of the Civil War, but we also now know that the official deed transfer didn’t take place until 1868, likely because of that war.

The Kyles held onto the other half until the 1880s, when their heirs sold it to another Graham sister, Connie, and her husband William Houston Patterson. The Rogans kept the their half until their deaths, Theo in 1904 and Louisa in 1910, when it went to their five surviving children. They divided the property up and drew lots from a hat to see who got what.

The colonel’s property south of Russellville. Dakota Carmichael/The Old History Project

Ellen, the youngest, got the 28 acres with the house. As she was married to a citrus magnate and living in Florida, with no intentions of returning to Tennessee, she told her sister Cassie she could live in the house. Cassie, the oldest Rogan and the only one who never married, sold her own lot, which was down by Sugar Hollow, and moved into the old Roddye place, now called Hayslope by her mother.

The other three children – Griffith, Hugh, and Maggie – eventually sold their portions as well. Griffith and Hugh eventually moved to Florida, near Ellen, and Maggie already lived in Virginia. Cassie lived in the house until she died in 1932, and Ellen sold it to Escoe and Briscoe Thomason – whose family by that time had bought a substantial portion of the colonel’s Russellville “town lots” and sold many of them again — in 1937. Escoe sold his portion of the property to Briscoe about 10 years later.

My dad inherited those 28 acres from his dad, and I inherited from him.

And that, my friends, is the story of James Roddye’s property in Russellville.

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In the heat of the summer

Chris Hurley

It’s been a while, and I’ve got a lot to share! First, though, I want to thank the Hamblen County Genealogical Society for inviting to me to speak this month and share what’s going on at Hayslope. I had a blast meeting folks and answering questions!

And next, I’d like to welcome our newest board member, Chris Hurley. Chris works for Southern Constructors – and he lived at Hayslope for a number of years! Between Chris and Dakota we’ve really got the local history angle covered big time.

Look what we found

I say “we” because Dakota and I TECHNICALLY found it first. We just didn’t happen to pull it out from under the stairs where it’s been sitting for who knows how long. Megan did pull it out, and what a surprise! We think it’s likely telling us that James Roddye added the north annex in about 1800 and made this to commemorate. Of course, it’s always possible it was something else, but we’ll stick with this story for now!

Treasure trove

Before I even got back up to Tennessee this month, I made contact with another descendant of the Rogans, and she has scrapbooks of family material that her parents put together. There’s Theo’s will, 16 pages of “excerpts” from his reminisces, and tons more photographs. With these photos and Mallory Pearson’s, we’re getting a really good idea of how the house has changed through the years, even if we don’t know exactly what year most of them were taken. And there are some major mysteries. Like, what is that structure behind the house?

And whoa – there were dormers before Uncle Escoe’s! That explains that weird closet upstairs over the stairs!

And we’ve got our first look at some of Hayslope’s “cottages” (don’t blame me – that’s what they called them!). These two were both built by Hugh Rogan, likely in the late 1880s. They have similar plans but are slightly different – the one on the right was called the Yellow Cottage.

And we have a new image of Theo (with serious hat head). We’re not sure where he’s sitting. The rocks don’t appear to be Hayslope’s, nor does the porch behind him, but it’s quite possible he’s at one of the cottages.

Inside the house

I would say I’m saving the best for last, but I honestly couldn’t tell you which of these finds is truly the best. They’re all pretty terrific. But inside the walls of Hayslope, we’ve uncovered almost all of the original cabin’s logs. We now know that Roddye built a 14 x 18 foot cabin with a loft and later added the annex – which was stick framing.

He also cut a door from the original cabin into the annex, but it wasn’t the door we use now at the back of the house. The original door was right in the middle of that north wall, and it got covered when the stairs were added. Dakota found it when he began taking off the bead board on the stairs. The idea was to see if there were logs back there, and there were – yes, we have four walls of logs!

The door
Dowels

But Dakota also found what we initially thought was a window, until we started taking the covering off the wall from the annex side. That’s when we found it was a door, carefully cut into the logs and framed, with 1-inch wooden dowels attaching the frame to the logs. This was quite a discovery, and it changed how we’ll be doing the inside of the house, because we certainly want to showcase this early door.

So, the stairs will change, we’ll close off the door that’s been used to go from cabin to annex and this door will be the passage between the two. We had considerable discussion about whether this might be the original front door to the cabin, but it is not. The front door is still the front door.

Seeing entire walls of these beautiful logs is something else, I gotta say. A big surprise is that there are no windows (unless that door between the cabin and the annex was a window before the annex was built). We kept peeling off chestnut wall coverings expecting to find the elusive window, but there were none. Except high in the southwest corner of the cabin where we found a real live slot window. There may be a slot window on the northwest corner as well – well, there probably is, but the one on the southwest is quite obvious. These windows were used by the inhabitants to protect themselves from marauding Cherokees, who naturally were pretty unhappy with these new Americans setting up shop in what had been their land.

Slot window. We’ll open up the back side later on.

Another thing we found – etched into one of the chestnuts – sure looked to us like a drawing of the house:

What’s next?

Speaking of chestnuts, we’ve got those all secured off-premises now and have made arrangements for later to have them cleaned and planed for use in the house. Meanwhile, we’ve got lots going on.

Currently, the last of mounds of tree stumps and other bizarre things are being hauled off to the dump, and we’ve had a chimney sweep come in and take a look at our three stacks. Work on those will begin presently, starting with the weird little third chimney currently buried in the back addition – but precariously suspended above the kitchen ceiling. The first thing to do there is to secure that.

We’re going to have the big chimney dismantled – carefully, brick by brick – to get us to the original limestone, and then we’ll rebuild it while opening it on the inside. This particular part is very dear to me and I cannot wait to see it happen.

In the meantime, we’re getting very close to a final basic plan for the restoration, which is very exciting. A couple of modern conveniences, the original 1785 cabin, Rogan-era and Thomason-era additions will all be spotlighted in a careful way that doesn’t detract from the historicity of the place.

Lotta work. And I for one am loving it.

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Hayslope is coming alive

‘Twas a very short trip up to Hayslope last week, most of it spent painstakingly removing chestnut wall board from the logs in the main cabin room. But, boy, seeing those 237 year old logs out in the open again is somethin’ else.

The last of the junk outside the house was hauled off last week too, and the week before the inside got cleaned out. A big shoutout to Aaron at Rice Hauling and Junk Removal in Knoxville who took care of both those tasks smoothly and professionally.

The week before I got there, Dakota and Megan uncovered the fireplace header. And when I got there, Megan peered behind the mantle and could see that the fireplace opening appears to be rounded. We do plan to chip out the concrete and brick from the inside of that fireplace, and luckily, we learned that it’s only about six inches thick.

The cabin’s main room.

The big monster chimney you see outside the house isn’t original – it actually encases the original chimney. The smaller one on the other side also encases an older chimney. Our best guess for when that happened is the late 19th century, when the Rogans did some pretty extensive renovations and building for their resort.

But let’s go back to Colonel Roddye’s time. We’re now pretty certain that the original cabin was a one room with a loft/second floor (Megan is certain it was a fully second story, I’m still thinking it was more lofty) and was not the two-room wide house we see today. That became quite obvious when we found out that the north side of the house – what we’re calling the north annex – has no logs. None. Which kinda messed us up a little because of that photo I’d found in the Garden Study Club of Nashville’s 1936 book that was supposed to be Hayslope.

We studied a little closer and determined that it couldn’t be: The logs in the photo are too small (the logs on the house are 20-22 inches), the house in the photo is too close to the ground, and the north annex doesn’t have logs. Oh, and the kicker came last week as I was removing the chestnut boards from the inside front wall and found that the window that’s clearly seen in that photo doesn’t exist. It’s not Hayslope.

This isn’t Hayslope either, but it’s probably a good representation of what Roddye’s Red Door Tavern would have looked like in 1785.

But what about that north annex? It’s been there for quite some time, even if it wasn’t part of Roddye’s original cabin. It’s got a frame construction – pretty rare for the late 18th or early 19th centuries in our parts. We’d just about conceded that it was much later than we’d thought and probably wasn’t even built by Roddye at all when Megan made an amazing discovery.

The north annex is about five to six feet deeper than the original cabin – it’s what creates the front porch. Megan began taking off some of the wall boards there and found wooden pegs, hand-forged nails, hand sawn lumber – all indicating that, while the annex was a stick frame construction, it was built in the neighborhood of 1800, making it one of the oldest stick frame structures still standing in East Tennessee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEx6jvMarQo
Megan’s report on finding the 1800 stick framing

Whatever happened to Thomas Roddye?

I spent a day at the McClung Collection of the Knox Public Library last week. Since Thomas Roddye’s debt to Patrick Nenney landed the house in the hands of the Nenneys, I wanted to see if I could find some clues about who might have lived in it or what may have been done to it during the most mysterious period of the house’s history – from 1829 until the Rogans moved in in 1862. There wasn’t much. Hugh Graham’s will tells us he bought the property from Charles P. Nenney, who died in 1859, so he must have bought it before that time. But I found nothing to tell me anything about that. I plan to try again, and this time I’m gonna be looked at James Roddye’s purchases from the Bent Creek Store, operated by Patrick Nenney, to see if I can spot where he buys the lumber for the north annex.

The documents I looked through did give us some idea of what may have happened to Thomas Roddye, James’ son, after he signed over his father’s property to the Nenneys. It appears he and his wife Lydia went first to Rhea County, where several of his siblings already lived, and then in 1833 or 4 went to Carroll County, Georgia, perhaps chasing after gold. He went there with Needham Jarnagin, another fellow from our neck of the woods and who was married to Thomas’s wife’s sister, Margaret Nenney.

After that, no one seemed to know what happened to him. Lydia came back to the Russellville area, where she shows up in census records from 1850 until 1880. But Thomas? He disappears. There was some indication he may have died in about 1844, but no documentary evidence for anything, just a few notes from church records: Thomas is received at New Hope Baptist Church in Villa Rica, Georgia, by letter from Good Hope Church in Rhea County on February 22, 1834 (the letter was dated March 24, 1833). Lydia was received by letter at New Hope on March 22, 1834. In January 1837, Lydia was dismissed by letter from New Hope – meaning she intended to join another church somewhere else. And on August 25, 1837, Thomas was “excluded” from New Hope.

Then, while going through the Bent Creek store account books, Lydia Roddye’s name pops up in late 1837 and continues (she could appear earlier in the books, but alas, this collections starts in late 1837). The items she buys make it appear she might be taking in sewing. Lydia doesn’t show up in the 1840 census – but the listing for her mother, Lucy Nenney, shows another adult woman living with her and several children. That very well could be Lydia and her children.

But still, what of Thomas? Well, in February 1837 – after Lydia has left New Hope Church in Georgia – Needham Jarnagin writes to his brother-in-law, Charles P. Nenney, from St Augustine, Florida. Times are difficult, he doesn’t like the mosquitos and sand fleas in Florida, the fighting with “the Indians” continues. And then:

Letter from Needham Jarnigan to Charles P. Nenney, February 1837. The McClung Collection, Knox Public Library.

“I have had no news from Carroll since I wrote to Clementina (Nenney Hale, sister of Margaret and Lydia). I should not be surprised to hear that Roddy had become desperate and put an end to his life, but I will still hope for the best though I have but a sandy foundation to base my hopes upon, for it the report is true that he lost his money sporting, he would feel so much shame and disgrace that life would be a burden to him and from what I know of his character I believe he would not hesitate to rid himself of it at once. If this should be the case his family will be in a wretched condition for I fear there will not be property enough to pay the debts contracted since he came to Georgia.”

Letters to and from the Nenneys after that often include a note about providing money for Lydia. I’ve adjusted Thomas’s death date to 1837 and now believe, as Needham Jarnagin did, that he may well have killed himself, which would explain an exclusion from his church.

An illustrious visitor

Hayslope also hosted Wilhelmina Williams, president of the Earnest Fort House in Chuckey, last week. The fort house is a fascinating building built between 1779 and 1784 by Henry Earnest (born Heinrich Ernst in Switzerland). He and his family lived there until about 1800 when he built a larger house across the Nolichucky River on his farm there. Mrs Williams is quite the resource on this period in our history and I look forward to learning as much as possible from her – and to a visit to the fort house in the near future.

The Earnest Fort House
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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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I did a thing

After threatening to do it for a while, I did it. I wrote the book about Hayslope. It’s small, 61 pages, with a few pictures, but it tells you everything we know and don’t know about the house, the land, and the people who’ve lived there.

And it’s ready for purchase. “A Brief History of Hayslope and Its People” is $13, including shipping, and available here on the website. So if you’d like a copy, now’s the time. Shipping begins mid-week.

And thanks to all of you for supporting this project of love in all the ways you have!

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The week that was

This past week has been a productive one, to say the least. I started it by traveling up to Tennessee to get some things moving at the house. It was also my replacement vacation, since I canceled my beach trip a few weeks ago.

View from my cabin. Calf neighbors in field to right.

So – shout out to Linda and Vic at Mendin’ Fences in Rogersville, where I spent three very comfortable nights in a cabin next door to a couple calves and had coffee on the porch each morning watching the deer family and listening to pileated woodpeckers.

The business end of things went smoothly. I now have a key to the house – none of the ones my dad had worked! – and chatted with an electrician about how to go about rewiring the old girl.

Old History

Day 2 was super exciting. My friend Dakota of The Old History project took me to the Coffman House, which is about the same age as Hayslope and probably a little older. Had a wonderful chat with the current owner and toured the house and property.

The Coffman House was built by David Coffman, another of the Overmountain Men who fought at King’s Mountain and got a land grant from North Carolina for it. At one point in its history, the house was a dogtrot or breezeway home, built with an open breezeway through the center. That part has now been enclosed, but the renovators left the original, hand-hewn logs on the walls of the breezeway. I couldn’t stop looking at them! A couple of them were more than a foot square.

Inside the Coffman House

Outside, we walked the property, saw the home’s original spring, now on the front of the house. It was out back originally, because the main road – the old stage coach road – passed through the small valley on the other side, so what’s now the back of the house was at first the front. No turning this house around when the roads changed, like at the Nenney House where the Longstreet Museum now is – the Coffmans just started using the back as the front and vice versa.

We also wandered around the oldest barn in Hamblen County, and then out front sat on the large granite (? I guess … I don’t know my rocks) rocks that stretch all the way under the house and then under the highway – meaning we could feel the traffic passing by!

That afternoon, it was back to Hayslope to meet up with a home inspector to get some basics about what we’re looking at. Since we already know we’re redoing the electricity and tearing the addition off the back, he didn’t look closely at that part. Instead, he gave us a good look at the structure of the house – and as I was hoping, she’s pretty strong.

Gerald crawled up under the front part of the house – and told us that while the original structure is good, the supports under the front porch, which were added in the 1930s like the back add-on, just aren’t salvageable. The front porch has to come off. Then into the cellar, where we found a poured concrete wall about 3 1/2 feet high all the way around and topped by bricks. This was great. Gerald found no signs of water ever having been down in there, which doesn’t surprise me – our man Roddye set this house in the perfect spot for water to drain everywhere EXCEPT into the house.

Beneath the original part of the house

The house is built on stone pilings, which are in good shape. There is termite and powderpost beetle damage in some of the original beams – but not all. We know at least one of those beams is gonna have to be replaced, while others will be ok with repair. The worst damage was of course in the 1930s add-on, which is gonna all come off.

There was also some termite damage in the ceiling beams on the first floor – either from downstairs or the back add-on. While some of the termite damage was old, there were some new spots. The termites are active, so we have termite treatment coming sooner rather than later.

The chimneys aren’t bad, considering. There’s a couple cracks that need repair and the tops obviously need work. Recommend capping them to keep water out until they’re repaired.

Gerald also did a mold test – waiting on the lab to send those results.

Speaking of barns …

After a quick run to Greeneville to pick up a couple books I bought from an estate sale, it was back to Russellville to join a tour of the Longstreet Museum with the good folks of the Grainger County Historical Society. The museum’s Mike Beck – whose dad worked with my mom at the electric coop for years – was pretty amazing telling the story of the Civil War in the Russellville area – a story that’s often glossed over or just ignored completely in the history books. I enjoyed connecting with the museum folks and am really looking forward to how Hayslope and the museum and coordinate to tell our stories.

While there, I spotted a photo I’d never seen before on one of their interpretive panels inside. It was labeled as showing the Russellville depot, but it just didn’t look like anything I recognized – and apparently some at the museum agreed. So the next day I went over to the spot where the photo would have been taken – if it really showed what it said it did – and I came away convinced that it does indeed show the depot. And the Hayslope barn. I’d been wondering where the barn would have been, and if I’m right here, then it was in the same spot where my grandfather’s barn stood years later.

The Russellville depot is nearly dead center in the photo. Because there’s a drop off on this side of the tracks, the depot is built on stilts. In the foreground is a sawmill. I remember the frame house to the left of the depot when I was young. And on the far left – with a barn cupola – is, I believe, the Hayslope barn.

I went from comparing current landscapes with 100 year old photos to the county register’s office, where Becky patiently helped me find all the deeds transferring Hayslope farm property to the individual children of Theo and Louisa Rogan.

When Theo died in 1904, his will left the property to Louisa. Louisa died six years later without a will. So Hugh, Griff, Cassie, Ellen, and Maggie divided the farm into five lots and divvied it up between them. Ellen, as we already knew, got the 28 acres that I now own. And it was Griff, not Hugh as I previously thought, who got the property directly south, where the two-story house and several cabins from the resort were. Hugh’s property was south of that, then Maggie’s and then Cassie’s.

I’m hoping to use all this information to eventually reconstruct Roddye’s original property, since I know that was 467 acres in 1829, and several people have asked about it. There’s a lot more to tell about all this land, but we’ll save that for when I firm up the info.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

And after all that, I got to spend some time yakking with my cousin and her daughter-in-law before loading up the car with the last of my dad’s things that had been stored at her house. Then it was back to Rogersville. On the way, the Hunter’s Moon coming over the hills in its brilliant orange simply took my breath away. By the time it came over the hills at the cabin (where my camera was), it was no longer that beautiful orange, but I got some shots anyway.

Moon over Rogersville

I left Rogersville in the rain the following day to return to Georgia, but the productive week wasn’t over just yet.

This morning, we got notification from the IRS that our application for 501(c)(3) status had been approved. We’re officially tax exempt and tax deductible!

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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!