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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!