I don’t even know where to start. The last two weeks, one up in Tennessee and another here in Georgia, have been … well, pretty darn fantastic. And also surprising.
First, let me tell you that I’ll be speaking on August 4 at the Hamblen County Genealogy Society meeting at the Morristown Senior Center about the house and its families. I’m super excited about it, and really delighted that they asked me. The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m., so hope to see you there!
Speaking of the genealogy society, I also traveled to Knoxville that week, to the East Tennessee Historical Society, where the society picked up an award for its Hamblen County Families book and our friend Dakota, AKA The Old History Project, won one for the incredible work he does on our area’s history.
Our county was well represented, as Mike Beck was also present to pick up the Dot Kelley Preservation Grant Award!
I started working on my talk when I came back to Georgia from Tennessee and had a first draft, but some of that has now changed, thanks to these past two weeks. So, what happened? Guess the best way to start is just to dive in!
A second dumpster
I had so hoped that 30-yard dumpster was gonna do the trick for the upstairs, but alas, it did not. So for the trip up, I ordered another dumpster – a 20-yard this time – for another week. The goal was to get the rest of the junk out of upstairs – the stuff that came out of the three closets.
I’m pleased to say that Dakota and I made it happen. I got a lot of it out myself – tossing stuff off that porch roof is kinda fun after all – and then Dakota came in for the larger and heavier stuff I couldn’t handle alone, including two more upstairs televisions, of the very old variety.
All that remains up there now are a few items I’m keeping (for now) and a couple boxes of books to donate.
Then I decided I wanted to try to clean out the carporty thing (more on that structure later), so I was tossing more crap into the dumpster from there when suddenly I remembered that my cousin Peggy Farmer – Uncle Escoe’s daughter – and her son Scott were coming over. While the upstairs had even been swept, the downstairs was still quite a mess, so I thought it might be a good idea to at least make a path for Peggy to walk.
So I bagged up some of the debris we left when we revealed some of the logs, dragged a box of something out and got it into the dumpster, and even moved a recliner out of the way. Dakota even got the sofa out! There’s still more in there, but we were able to create a clear path for moving around in there without fear of falling.
The gorilla cart came in handy as we rolled a few big items down to the road, where the county’s Claw will pick them up later on. Used to cart to clear a little bit more out of the carporty thing and some items out of the back yard (still a mess back there), but the result was a rather neater looking front, and just in time for Peggy to come by.
The bells are ringing
But before Peggy’s visit, Sandy Beesley and her husband dropped by. They had a very specific purpose – you see, a few weeks ago, Sandy told me she had Hayslope’s old dinner bell, having bought it several years ago at a sale at the house. Naturally, I asked if she’d sell it to me. She said she’d think about it.
A few weeks later, Sandy messaged and said no, she wouldn’t sell it to me, but if I could find her a comparable bell, she’d trade with me. Naturally, I immediately hunted one down.
So while I was in Tennessee, we made the trade there beneath the shade of the hemlock tree (more about that later too). I’m so tickled to have the bell, and Sandy was pleased with her replacement and to see the old bell come home too. I can’t even begin to say how appreciative I am.
The bell has gone to live in my storage unit in Morristown, because its home location will be in the way of some the construction and deconstruction we’ll be doing soon on the house. It’s an old bell – manufactured by Jenny & Manning in Washington Court House, Ohio – a company that only made bells in 1888 and 1889.
Harry and James
The Beesleys weren’t our only guests before Peggy and Scott came by. Martha and Tom Henard drove over from Rogersville to see the house too. Martha is a descendant of James Roddye through his son Jesse who moved to Rhea County, and boy did we have some fun swapping stories!
Martha and her mother did a lot, and I mean a LOT, of research about the Roddyes, and my favorite story of all that she told me is this: When she and her mother visited the colonel’s grave at Bent Creek cemetery some time ago, there was a docent there who helped them find the location of the grave (because the gravestone and been long since lost). Now, I want to know who this docent was, of course, but never mind. They located the grave, and it was Martha’s mother who later saw to it that the colonel got a new marker.
They also notice a depression in the ground next to Roddye and asked who might possibly be buried next to him (since his wife Lydia is buried in Rhea County in what’s now called the Mynatt Cemetery but was previously known as the Washington Cemetery). The docent leaned in and conspiratorially said that the story is that Harry is buried next to James.
Who’s Harry? Harry was Roddye’s “manservant,” his slave. In his will, Roddye freed him and told his sons William and Thomas, who inherited Roddye’s Russellville properties, to make sure Harry was cared for as long as he lived. The story is that James and Harry had known one another from childhood and, as much as can be possible in a white man-Black man relationship in the 18th century, were very, very close. I had wondered where Harry might have been buried, since he survived the colonel. I’m not sure if we can prove this, either, but we know there are other Black people buried at Bent Creek, and that in its early days, the church itself welcomed Black members. This is another instance for more research.
Tom was also a huge help. For one, he identified the large tree in the middle of the front yard, the one where Ralph the Buzzard sits almost every day, as a hemlock, not a cedar as I (embarrassingly) assumed. Tom also told me what to do to protect it from the wooly something-or-others that are swooping down into the south in a bold attempt to kill all the hemlocks. Naturally, I ran right out and took care of that.
I also decided that that hemlock is gonna be part of our logo. Tom said he guesses it to be 100-150 years old, not as old as the house, but the hemlock is an important tree for our area. Plus, I’ve lived on Hemlock Drive in Georgia for more than 20 years.
Homecoming
Before even the Beesleys and the Henards came by, I gave a tour of the house to Daniel, the termite technician from East Tennessee Pest Control who came by to check the termite baits. Daniel had been one of two to install the baits earlier this year, and it was pretty clear he was interested in the house. This time he came alone and told me that he’d had to take the long way around because a train was stopped on the tracks – and if it hadn’t been this particular house, he would’ve just skipped it and noted he couldn’t get to the house. But Daniel is another history buff and was pretty taken by the logs and amazing history of Hayslope.
And then it was time for Peggy and Scott, and Scott’s son Josh. It was an honor to show them around the place, to hear Peggy’s remembrances of living there as a young girl. And she brought pictures!
First though – Peggy confirmed that this structure above was, indeed, a pond, and that the bricks we can see beneath the fallen tree were part of an outdoor grill. Then she told us about riding her wagon across the back yard’s gentle slope, long enough to get a little speed but not so long as to get out of control – sort of, anyway. She told us she distinctly recalls once missing her turning point and crashing headlong into the pond! Maybe when we dig it out and refill it with water, we can get her to recreate the ride for us!
Peggy also told us that she didn’t recall the carporty thing being there, first because nobody used carports then. After what I’ve learned this week, I may know why. But that’s later.
The most amazing photo, though, was one that showed Hayslope from an angle I’d never seen before – the back. Here we see the familiar giant chimney on the south side of the house, but with a double porch across the back! And an addition on the north side on the back that is almost certainly the dining room built by the Rogans in 1898.
These photos are so tantalizing, not just because of what we can see, but because of what we can’t see – or what we can ALMOST see. In this one, we can see stairs on the back porch connecting the two levels and what just might be that mystery chimney we found in the closet of Uncle Escoe’s cedar room, which Peggy told us was her brother Bobby’s bedroom.
Another thing we can almost see in the photo is the front roofline, which appears to slope more steeply than the rear roof, down over the front porch that Anne Kendrick Walker described as “boxed” in her story about the Rogans’ 50th wedding anniversary party. Here, also, the chimney is still outside the roof line rather than going through it as it does now and is in this next photo, which Peggy sent to me. The upper part of the chimney also appears somewhat larger in the above photo – indicating they may have slimmed it down to fit through the roof.
Peggy didn’t know a date for the back of the house photo, but it must be before Escoe’s renovation work, when the dormers on the back came along, the porch disappeared (as did the addition), and a kitchen was added to the back (with a bathroom, Bobby’s bedroom, and a cedar closet upstairs).
And what I didn’t know was that I was about to see another photo that would change all my ideas about what happened to the house when, even as it made a lot of sense after seeing this one.
But I’m gonna save that for next time, because this is quite long enough already. Now that I’ve written this much, it shouldn’t be too long before I start telling you that story.
James Roddye was my 5th great grandfather.
Very cool! Come visit us sometime!