Tag: Thomasons

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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Well, I kinda feel like I hit the historical document jackpot anyway.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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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!