You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s Communities: Elgin

As the “Echoes in Time” series continues its look at the bygone days of Scott County’s individual communities, we travel south this week to Elgin — the tiny map dot between Robbins and Glenmary, where U.S. Highway 27 and S.R. 52 meet along the Norfolk-Southern Railroad.

Originally known as Sedgemoor, this small railroad community came to life in the late 19th century as a place for new arrivals and visitors to the English colony of Rugby to disembark from trains on the Southern Railroad and begin their journey westward along the Rugby Road to the Victorian settlement, which was located between Clear Fork and White Oak Creek where Scott, Morgan, and Fentress counties adjoin.

With a population of 282 when the 2010 census was taken, Elgin has a population density of about 27 people per square mile today. It has its own zip code — 37732 — although it is tiny and is almost entirely enclosed by the 37852 (Robbins) zip code. The exception is a tiny portion on the southeastern side, which adjoins the 37872 (Sunbright) zip code.

POST OFFICES: Elgin was first served by the Sedgemoor Post Office, which opened in October 1880 with Walter S. Allen serving as postmaster. This was about the same time the first trains arrived on the newly-completed Southern Railroad. Sedgemoor closed in December 1881, with Craven Duncan serving as the last postmaster there.

The Elgin Post Office opened Jan. 14, 1891, with J. Thomas Guthrie serving as postmaster. Other postmasters through the years have included Rebecca A. Guthrie, William A. Miller, Craven Duncan, Isaac M. Shoemaker, Samuel J. Morris, Andrew J. Love, Louise M. Smith, Kathryn Cunningham, Alice E. Davis, Elsie M. Phillips, Zelma Smith, June B. Jeffers, Thelma A. Galloway, Dorthy C. Mathis, Lawrence Hill, and Christine M. Vespie.

SCHOOLS: Today, students who live in Elgin go to nearby Robbins School for grades K-8 and Scott High School for grades 9-12. That wasn’t always the case. Historical elementary schools in Elgin have included Rugby Road, which was located just west of the railroad, and Gum Branch, which was located further west near the Sheep Ranch community.

High school students traditionally went to Robbins High School, which opened in 1906. The high school closed in 1971, with the opening of the consolidated Scott High School.

CHURCHES: Elgin is one of the rare Scott County communities that does not have a Baptist church, although several are located nearby in West Robbins, East Robbins, and Robbins proper. Elgin does, however, have two churches: the Elgin Church of Christ, and Rugby Road Methodist Church.

BUSINESS & COMMERCE: Today, almost the only business in Elgin worth noting is Stop & Go, a convenience store just south of the U.S. 27 intersection with S.R. 52, which was originally owned by the Bertram family (specifically, Dickie Bertram).

However, that has not always been the case. A garage once stood at the 27/52 intersection, though it has been torn down. An old commercial building, now vacant, still stands across the highway from the intersection. Further south, at the intersection of U.S. 27 and High Street, is the abandoned commercial building that was once a hardware store owned by Ray Shoemaker (Ray Shoemaker & Son Hardware). He owned the store for 31 years until his death in 2000.

Further west on S.R. 52 are a pair of abandoned commercial buildings, one of which most recently housed Vickie’s Hair Fashions.

On Rugby School Road, which was the main road through the community before S.R. 52 was built, is an old commercial building that most recently housed a pizza parlor owned by Rowdie Epperson and an adjoining video rental store.

A relatively new business at the intersection of S.R. 52 and West Robbins Road is Bri’Obbies, a roadside food stand owned by Robbie and Bridget Muse.

There is a community-owned Elgin Community Center that was built in the 1990s and remains in operation. Mountain People’s Health Councils Inc. also maintains a medical clinic on S.R. 52, which offers sliding-scale fee rural health services. A helipad is located at the clinic.

On the opposite end of High Street, where it intersects with U.S. Highway 27, is a Dollar General. Several other businesses existed at that spot through the years, including a 1990s-era sporting goods store owned by a different branch of the Shoemaker family.

Although it isn’t part of Elgin, west on S.R. 52 is Thelma Frogge’s Grocery, one of Scott County’s last remaining community grocery stores.

ORIGINS: Elgin largely came to be with the construction of the Cincinnati & Southern Railroad, which linked Cincinnati in the North with Chattanooga in the South and passed through Scott County. Also, Elgin owes its existence to the establishment of Rugby Colony to the west. These two advancements occurred almost simultaneously around 1880.

Rugby was founded on the Scott-Morgan-Fentress county line by British author and reformer Thomas Hughes, who envisioned a utopian colony for “second sons” of English gentry. It was established in October 1880, just after the railroad was completed, on land originally purchased by the Boston Board of Land Aid. An ambitious beginning was largely doomed by a typhoid epidemic that swept through the village in 1881, followed by a series of fires and other unfortunate events. By the 1890s, the colony was largely in decline. Decades later, an effort to preserve the old village was launched as Historic Rugby, and a number of original homes and buildings remain.

Settlers migrating to Rugby would disembark from a train at Elgin and board wagons for the westward trip to the village. Thus, the old road heading west became known as “Rugby Road,” and that was the name given to the community that would eventually become Elgin. Southern Railroad engineers avoided using the word “Rugby Road” as the name of the railroad depot, however, because they didn’t want to confuse it with “Rockwood,” which was located further south in Roane County. Instead, they called it “Elgin.” The origination of the name is unclear.

There was originally an aspiration to build a railroad spur west from Elgin to Rugby, but it was never realized.

Sedgemoor was also an early name of the community, because that’s what the post office was called when it opened in 1880. That post office lasted only a little over a year before operations were discontinued. It was another decade before another post office opened and was called Elgin, after the name of the railroad depot.

In those early days, Rugby Road followed an east-to-west route from High Street to what is today an S-curve just west of Elgin, then followed the terrain further west to the Gum Branch area, then on to White Oak Creek, where it crossed the creek and began a gentle ascent to the English village. With the construction of S.R. 52, significant advances were made to the old Rugby Road route. Today, parts of the original route follow S.R. 52, while parts that were abandoned are secondary streets known as White Oak Creek Lane, Gum Branch Road, Sheep Ranch Road, Old Rugby Pike, and Rugby School Road. The original railroad crossing can still be seen but is no longer active. On the west end, part of the original road between White Oak Creek and the Rugby settlement is now a hiking trail. An old Warren pony truss bridge across White Oak Creek was first built in the 1920s and still stands, though it is no longer used.

One of the community’s first businesses was a store located on the Rugby Road and operated by William F. Lee, an early Scott County superintendent of schools who moved here from Overton County, Tenn., and married the sister of Scott County Sheriff John Goad, Ettie Tennessee Goad. After Ettie died in 1890, Lee and Goad went back into private life and ran a business together on the Rugby Road. Later, in 1916, Lee purchased a gasoline distributorship in Oneida, located at the corner of Depot Street and Alberta Street.

A final note on the history of Elgin: While it isn’t clear where the name Elgin came from, or the name Sedgemoor before that, the Elgin railroad depot was established in 1881 to serve the Rugby settlement founded by Thomas Hughes. One can’t help but wonder whether Hughes was responsible for christening the depot as Sedgemoor, which was a location in his native England, located in Somerset. Hughes was not from Somerset, but Somerset was not far from Uffington, Hughes’ home. It was the location of the famous Battle of Sedgemoor that occurred during the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685.

FIRST FAMILIES: No one has documented the first families to settle what is now Elgin. However, families of note through the years have included the Shoemakers, Todds, and others.

The Shoemakers: Lawrence Ray Shoemaker (1928-2000), who owned Ray Shoemaker & Son Hardware, was the son of Pharo Shoemaker (1907-1989) and Addie Mabel Brewster (1907-1995). Pharo Shoemaker was from Black Creek just northwest of Elgin, who married into the Brewster family that was prominent near Rugby in Morgan County (the area today known as Brewstertown). Pharo’s father, Isaac Marion “Ike” Shoemaker (1881-1948) was originally from Black Creek but eventually moved to the Elgin area, as well. Ike Shoemaker’s father, Bailey Columbus Shoemaker, was one of the first Shoemakers in southern Scott County. He and his wife, Lavada Slagle (1864-1939), had 13 children, and the Shoemaker family descended from them. The earliest generations of the Shoemaker family lived in the Black Creek and Black Creek Crossroads communities. Lavada Slagle was the daughter of Keelan Slagle, who died of wounds sustained in Kentucky during the Civil War.

The Todds: The Todd family predated the Shoemaker family at Elgin, and dates back to George Washington Todd (1846-1925) and his wives, Salina Morris (1845-1882) and Louisa Miller (1866-1920). George Todd’s mother was Hannah Lucinda Todd (1816-1886), who lived at Glenmary. Family genealogists speculate that his father was Andrew Russell Lewallen (1824-1896), a son of Andrew Leutian Lewallen and a grandson of Anderson Grant Lewallen, who was perhaps the first settler of the Glenmary area just south of Elgin. She had other children who settled along nearby Wolf Creek. George Todd had 17 children — eight with Salina and nine with Louisa, who he married two years after his first wife’s death. Tragically, multiple members of the Todd family were killed on the railroad. Hannah Lucinda Todd died while crossing the tracks at Elgin in 1886. Her youngest son, James Todd, was killed two years later in Jellico, working as a switchman for the L&N Railroad.

The Hawns: Another early Elgin family of note was the Hawn family, which was originally from the Mill Creek area in Morgan County. Jonathan N. Hawn (1840-1905) married Elizabeth Young (1842-1927) and they had seven children. Their oldest, daughter Emily Jane Hawn (1864-1938), married into the Todd family of Elgin, marrying Samuel M. Todd (1863-1953). Several of their other children moved to Elgin or surrounding areas, as well. Among them was William Henry Hawn (1873-1946), who married into the McCoy family that lived at Elgin, marrying Margaret Ann “Maggie” McCoy (1879-1946).

The McCoys: Maggie McCoy Hawn’s parents were Nathaniel McCoy and Louisa Young. Louisa was the daughter of Matthew Young, a prominent resident of Glenmary. Very little is known about the McCoy family, but Nathaniel’s father may have been a John McCoy. One of Nathaniel’s sons, George McCoy, was the first person buried at the Hawn & Shoemaker Cemetery in 1922.

The Henrys: Douglas Henry (1939-2002) married Wanda Henry and settled down off the Rugby Road in Elgin. He had five children: Scott, Chris, Eric, Pam Bradley, and Lisa Hughett. The Henrys were originally from Glenmary. Douglas’s parents were Hurstle Hugo Henry (1899-1975) and Georgia Young (1913-2010). Hurstle Hugo Henry had a total of 14 children. He was first married to Pauline Todd (1900-1929), one of the daughters of George Washington Todd and Salina Morris.

Other Families: These records do not account for any family that lived in the Elgin area prior to the time of the railroad and Rugby’s establishment in 1880. Clearly, settlement here predated the railroad. More research is needed to help determine these early families.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s communities: Buffalo

This week, we continue our “Echoes in time” series’ profiles of Scott County’s communities with a look at Buffalo — the fertile bottomlands of Buffalo Creek and Smith Creek, which housed one of this area’s earliest settlements.

It’s hard to know exactly when the first permanent white settlers cleared land and built cabins along the northern Cumberland Plateau’s waterways. All we have to go by are early tax lists and land deeds, and those are listed in other counties, since Scott County wasn’t formed until 1849. Traditionally, the Smokey Creek community is viewed as being Scott County’s truly first settlement, and there’s no concrete evidence to refute that. But Buffalo was certainly close behind, along with Brimstone, New River, No Business, and Black Wolf Creek (near Glenmary and Elgin).

This much is indisputable: To the first adventurers wandering through the Cumberland Gap and looking to stake out a livelihood in this frontier land, there was no better land to be found between the Cumberland Mountains and the Big South Fork River than Buffalo. The wide, fertile bottomlands were unmatched, and an old Indian trail followed the creek itself, serving as one of the earliest roads through the region.

In fact, Buffalo was perhaps the most prominent Scott County community at the time of the Civil War. And when Scott County was established a decade before the war, county leaders considered making Buffalo the county seat before they eventually settled on the area that we now know as Huntsville.

As a general rule, the Buffalo community can be described as the area between Pine Hill on the east end and Annadale on the west end. Buffalo Creek’s headwaters are located on the “back side” of Pine Hill, and the stream follows Buffalo Road to just east of Smith Creek, where it turns and flows through the Sugar Grove community before crossing S.R. 63 and flowing through mostly undeveloped land to New River near Winona. Besides Smith Creek, major tributaries include Stanley Creek and Rockhouse Fork.

Today, Buffalo remains much the same as it was when the first white men began to settle here more than 220 years ago. There are more homes now than there were then, and they’re fancier, the roads are paved and traveled by automobiles instead of horses, and the virgin timber is long gone while cleared farmlands cover most of the valley that isn’t marked by residences. The residents leave the valley to work jobs now, rather than living a lifestyle of subsistence off the land itself. But it’s still a quiet residential community that never developed into a full-fledged town.

SCHOOLS: Today, the Buffalo community is zoned for Huntsville Elementary School and Middle School, or Fairview Elementary School. Historically, however, several small schoolhouses dotted this landscape. There were schools at Smith Creek, Black Gum, and Sugar Grove, as well as Buffalo School, which was located near where Smith Creek empties into Buffalo Creek and stood until the early 2000s, when it was destroyed by fire. Further north were the Arches Creek School and Posey School.

BUSINESS & COMMERCE: There are no major businesses at Buffalo today, though there have been some smaller businesses located here through the years. Most notably, Civil War veteran John Fetterman — who marched through Scott County as part of Burnside’s invasion in 1863 — returned to Scott County in his latter years and settled on Smith Creek, where he established a factory that made wooden bowls. He opened the community’s first post office in the 1890s, and it was named “Bowl,” after his factory. The bowl factory was located near New Salem Baptist Church.

CHURCHES & CEMETERIES: There are a number of churches dotting the Buffalo community. Where Stanley Creek empties into Buffalo Creek is the Mt. Zion United Baptist Church. Further north, towards Pine Hill, is Salem Baptist Church. Although it isn’t traditionally considered part of the Buffalo community, Pine Hill United Baptist Church is located along Buffalo Road near the Pine Hill crossroads. At Smith Creek is the New Salem United Baptist Church. In the Sugar Grove neighborhood is the Sugar Grove Missionary Baptist Church. On the hill above it is Five Black Gums United Baptist Church. Finally, where Sugar Grove Road meets Old 63 is the Buffalo Bridge Missionary Baptist Church.

There are several small cemeteries throughout Buffalo. Most notable, perhaps, is the Lloyd Cemetery, which is located on the hill overlooking New Salem United Baptist Church, or the Laxton Cemetery, which is located closer to Annadale. However, there are many more, and each of them have rich history.

BUFFALO IN THE CIVIL WAR: As previously noted, Buffalo was perhaps Scott County’s most prominent community at the time of the Civil War, and it was a community that was indelibly changed by the war.

Smith Creek was home to Hiram Marcum, a Union loyalist who served as a pilot to help other loyalists from East Tennessee slip northward into Kentucky to join the federal army. For that, he was targeted by Confederate forces, and the result was the infamous skirmish at his Buffalo farm in September 1861. His 16-year-old daughter, Julia Marcum, lost an eye and a finger defending her family and her home in that fight. Some months later, in January 1862, Confederate troops returned to the Marcum farm, where they shot and killed Julia’s first cousin, George Marcum. He was enlisted in the Union army but was home on leave. The second incident prompted the Marcum family to flee Buffalo. Hiram joined the Union army, and his wife and children moved north into Kentucky. Hiram contracted smallpox and died in Nashville before the end of the war.

Later in the war, a regiment of Confederate pillagers murdered two Buffalo men and left their bodies hanging in a fruit orchard. Their victims were Larkin Cross and Ranson Vanover. Vanover was enlisted in the Union army, but Cross was not. A group of rebel Scott Countians who had helped to form the Scott County Rangers were indicted for the murders after the war, but they fled Scott County and never stood trial. Both Cross and George Marcum are buried at the Lloyd Cemetery near New Salem United Baptist Church.

Several other incidents occurred at Buffalo during the war, including the murder of a Confederate soldier who was attempting to return home after the war and was shot along the main road through the Rock House community, which continued east to Jacksboro.

After the war, outlaws Jesse and Frank James visited Scott County under assumed names. It was said that the Marcum family that remained at Buffalo — Hiram’s brother, George Marcum, and his family — stabled the James brothers’ horses. A ravine along Marcum Creek, which empties into Smith Creek, has long been known to locals as “Horse Lot Hollow.” After George and his wife died, according to the historian Esther Sharp Sanderson, grave-robbers dug up their coffins, believing that gold given to them by the James brothers had been buried with them.

FIRST FAMILIES: In her book, County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote that the first two settlers to arrive at Buffalo were Isham Sharp and Thomas Chambers. The men “left their wagons at LaFollette and came through with their families and cattle and with horses carrying their belongings,” she wrote. “They made several trips back and forth before they finally got their meager possessions over the mountain trails to the present site of Buffalo.”

Thomas Laxton was another early settler of Buffalo. Sanderson wrote: “Thomas Laxton, with all his worldly possessions on his back, trudged on foot carrying two hound pups and some fruit trees to Smoky, from North Carolina. He later moved to Buffalo, where he married and reared a large family.”

The patriarch of the Chambers family at Buffalo was actually Thomas Chambers’ father, Revolutionary War veteran William Chambers (1750-1840). Family legend has it that he was captured by Indians during the war and taken to Arkansas, where he learned the customs of the natives and was accepted as one of them, and given the nickname “Walkingstick” (Da-Sti-Sti). The legend says that he married an Indian woman named Tar-Chee-See. They had five children, including Thomas, who married the daughter of another Revolutionary War veteran, Randolph Lawson. Thomas and Katie had at least 13 children. One of them, James Riley Chambers, was on the committee that chose Huntsville as the county seat after Scott County was established in 1849.

William, Thomas and Katie, and many other members of the Chambers family are buried at the Chambers Cemetery, which is located next to where the old Buffalo School once stood.

Isham Sharp may have accompanied the Chambers family when they moved to Buffalo, but the records are inconclusive. Sorting through the broken records trail, it appears that Isham Sharp was born in North Carolina in 1780, and married Sarah Martha Joyce in 1805. They had at least eight children. Making the move to Tennessee with Isham Sharp was likely his brother, James Sharp (1782-1843), and perhaps another brother, Richard Nicholas Sharp Jr. (~1775-1823). It has also been suggested that their parents, Richard Nicholas Sharp Sr. and Elizabeth Sharp, made the move to Buffalo with them.

James Sharp’s son, James L. Sharp (1816-1893), settled in Winfield and became Scott County’s third sheriff. James L.’s parents did not settle at Buffalo, but instead lived in the Buckeye area of Campbell County, near present-day Pioneer. His son, Nicholas Sharp, built the two-story motel in Winfield that became known as the Hines Motel. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to conclusively place the Sharp family at Buffalo, though Isham Sharp certainly lived in Scott County

Besides the Chambers family, one of the most prominent families at Buffalo through the years has been the Laxton family. Thomas Laxton (1795-1862), mentioned by Sanderson in her book, was the first to make the move, and was likely on the scene by 1814, when he enlisted in the East Tennessee Militia at Knoxville as a substitute for James Isom. Laxton married Elizabeth Goad (1800-1881) and they had several children, including Alfred (1821-1892), John “Jackie” (1830-1918), Thomas Jr. (1840-1923), Levi (1843-1864), and likely others.

Esau Laxton (1884-1956) was a Scott County sheriff in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a great-grandson of Thomas Laxton, the son of Isham “Sharp” Laxton (1865-1941). His son, Jack O. Laxton (1923-2002), also served as sheriff of Scott County. Jack Laxton’s son, Darryl Laxton, is a long-time chief of police in Oneida. He is a third-great-grandson of Thomas Laxton. Esau Laxton’s father, Isham Laxton, was called Sharp because that was his mother’s maiden name. John Jackson Laxton married Amanda “Millie” Sharp (1822-1914). She was the daughter of Isham Sharp and Sarah Joyce — providing the clearest evidence that Isham Sharp did, indeed, settle at Buffalo. The Laxton Cemetery at Buffalo contains more than 200 graves.

Then there are the Marcums. No examination of Buffalo’s first families would be complete without a study of the Marcum family, for whom Marcum Creek is named. Marcum Creek empties into Smith Creek. Hiram Marcum, the Buffalo farmer whose home was attacked by Confederate soldiers in 1861, was the son of Arthur Markham III (1757-1832) and Anna Bransgrove (1851). His parents had apparently already settled at Marcum Creek when Hiram was born in 1812. There are two branches of Marcums in Scott County, and both are descended from Arthur Markham III and Anna Bransgrove. John Arthur Marcum, Hiram’s brother, settled the Pine Creek area near Oneida. John Arthur’s son was George Marcum, Hiram’s nephew who was murdered by Confederate soldiers at the Marcum Creek farm in 1862.

Hiram and John Arthur also had another brother, also named George Marcum, who lived at Marcum Creek near Hiram. It was he and his wife, Mary Ann Hanks, who are said to have kept the horses of outlaws Jesse and Frank James when the James brothers were staying in Scott County under assumed names shortly after the Civil War.

It isn’t clear where Arthur Markham and his wife, Anna, are buried, but it may be in unmarked graves at the Marcum Cemetery on Marcum Creek. While descendants of the Chambers and Laxtons can still be found at Marcum Creek today, the Marcums left long ago.

Smith Creek, which empties into Buffalo Creek, takes its name from Drewry (or Drewery) Smith. Born 1794, he was the son of William Smith and Suzan Lampkin, and was a veteran of the War of 1812. Smith had several children, including: Drewery (or Drury) Smith Jr., Kisiah Smith, Jane Smith, Jackson G. Smith, William F. Smith, Henry C. Smith, and John Smith.

According to historian H. Clay Smith, a descendant, in his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, Drewery Smith and another Scott Countian, Sam Walker, participated in the movement of the Cherokee to Oklahoma, known as the “Trail of Tears.” At some point along the route, according to Smith, Drewery Smith and Walker became disgusted with the treatment of the Indians and began helping some of them escape.

Drury Smith Jr. lived at Smith Creek, along with other members of his family, during the Civil War. While Drury Smith was neutral, his nephew, Ewell Smith, was staunchly pro-Confederacy. He was a deputy sheriff in Scott County, and had served as postmaster at Straight Fork. His father, Drury Smith’s brother, John Lampkin Smith, had served as Scott County’s first circuit court clerk. John Smith’s wife was Keziah Gibson, and the Gibson family were strong Confederate sympathizers. Ewell Smith helped found the Scott County Rangers, a pro-Confederacy group, and was among the 17 men indicted by a grand jury for murdering Ranson Vanover and Larkin Cross at Buffalo in 1862.

The historian H. Clay Smith wrote that Ewell Smith’s brother, Callie Smith, was home on leave from the rebel army and was ambushed by the Scott County Home Guard, the pro-Union counterpart to the Scott County Rangers. As Smith attempted to reach Drury Smith’s home at Smith Creek, the historian wrote, he and others in his company encountered Vanover and Cross, and hanged them.

The Duncan family settled on Stanley Creek, which empties into Buffalo Creek just north of Smith Creek. The first to settle there was Civil War veteran Joshua J. Duncan (1833-1909). He was the son of Champion C. Duncan (1806-1904), and married Mary Sintha Cross (1831-1888). Later, following Mary’s death, he married Harriet Cross, the daughter of Larkin Cross, who was murdered during the Civil War.

Another of the Duncan clan was Oliver Duncan, who was present with Larkin Cross and Ranson Vanover when they were killed, but managed to escape. Duncan married Joshua J. Duncan’s sister, Rutha, who was his cousin. Larkin Cross married Oliver Duncan’s sister, Henrietta Clara Duncan.

Finally, the Cross family. Larkin Cross was the son of Louis Micajah Cross (1780-1846) and Lovis Duncan (1799-1887). Micajah and Lovis had at least six children. The oldest was Caswell Cross (1822-1893), whose farm was raided by Confederate soldiers the same day Larkin was killed. Micajah Cross was born in Maryland before the Cross family moved to Tennessee. His father, William Cross (1762-1833), made the move to Tennessee with his family. He settled in the Oak Ridge area of Anderson County. Exactly when the family moved to Tennessee isn’t certain, but it was probably between 1823 and 1825.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Manage Your Account
◼️ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, YouTube

Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s communities: Brimstone

Two weeks ago, the Independent Herald‘s “Echoes in Time” series profiled the Black Oak community in western Scott County. Continuing in alphabetical order, we shift southward this week to Brimstone.

Nestled in the Cumberland Mountain valleys along Brimstone Creek, this was long the coal-mining and logging hub of Scott County. It was originally known as Hughett, for the name of the first postmaster, Jasper Hughett. Another post office was located at what is now known as Lone Mountain, near the head of Brimstone Creek.

Generally speaking, Brimstone is considered to be everything along the creek from the “head of the creek” above Lone Mountain to the intersection of Brimstone Road and Low Gap Road at Mt. Pleasant. From there, Brimstone Creek follows Low Gap Road and the old Tennessee Railroad on to New River, while Brimstone Road turns west and winds out of the valley to U.S. Highway 27 at Robbins. Another major road in the community is Ridge Road, which exits Brimstone Road near Robbins and reconnects at Indian Fork, while also providing an exit to Black Wolf Creek.

Originally, settlement at Brimstone began in the creek valley and then spread to the mountaintops, including Round Mountain and Griffith Mountain. Today, settlement is limited to the creek valley.

Post Office: Today, the residents of Brimstone are served by the Robbins Post Office. Historically, there were two post offices located at Brimstone. There was Hughett, which was located near where Huntsville Branch and Indian Fork Creek empty into Brimstone Creek at Slick Rock, and Cortland, which was located near Lone Mountain.

Hughett opened in January 1887 and was named for its postmaster, Jasper Hughett, who would go on to become a prominent businessman at Robbins, owning a retail store and a share of the bank there.

Cortland opened in December 1892 with Eldridge Shannon serving as postmaster. It isn’t clear where the name originated.

In September 1935, Hughett post office closed and moved to Cortland. Its last postmaster was May Chambers. In December 1936, Cortland post office closed and moved to Robbins. Cassie Griffith was the last postmaster there.

Schools: A number of schools served the Brimstone community through the years. In 1935, there were no fewer than five elementary schools located along Brimstone Creek: Pemberton, which was located where Brimstone Road meets Low Gap Road at Mt. Pleasant; Slick Rock; Gilbert, located just south of Slick Rock; Lone Mountain; and Griffith, located on Indian Fork Creek in the vicinity of Griffith Mountain.

One by one, those schools gradually closed and students began traveling to Robbins for school. It was there that Jasper Hughett helped organize a high school in 1906. The first students graduated from the high school in 1915, and the first class to receive high school diplomas was in 1918. Robbins High School closed in 1971, when Scott County consolidated high schools in Robbins, Norma, and Huntsville, and opened Scott High School. The last principal at Robbins High School was Taskel Welch, who was also the first principal at Scott High.

Business & Commerce: There have never been much in the way of retail at Brimstone. Today, the only business on Brimstone Creek is Full Throttle Campground, which is located above Lone Mountain and caters to riders from Brimstone Recreation and the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.

Industry, however, is a different story. Brimstone was traditionally one of the chief hubs for coal-mining and timber-cutting in Scott County, dating back to shortly after the arrival of the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad, which included a depot at Robbins. Its opening in 1880 helped open lands throughout Scott County to natural resource exploitation by making coal and timber much easier to transport out of the rugged terrain.

The first railroad into Brimstone Creek was built in the 1880s. It was the Knoxville & New River Railroad, a narrow-gauge rail that left the Southern Railroad near where the Robbins Brick Yard would later be located, crossed the ridge, and reached Brimstone Creek in the vicinity of where Indian Fork Creek empties. From there, it followed Brimstone Creek to Lone Mountain. Its purpose was to reach the virgin stands of timber in the area of Lone Mountain. There were plans to extend the railroad over the mountains to Knoxville, but it was never completed.

Years later, the Brimstone Railroad was built, connecting with the Southern Railroad at New River and following Brimstone Creek from the river all the way to Lone Mountain. The purpose of the Brimstone Railroad was to assist the coal-mining industry.

As the 1900s progressed, several different coal-mining operations opened at Brimstone. There were two different tipples that served the coal industry, each with a side rail connecting to the main railroad. There was one at Huntsville Branch and another near Lone Mountain. Brimstone was home to two fatal mine explosions in the mid 20th century. The Phillips-West Mine Disaster killed nine men on March 23, 1959, and the Kline Mine Disaster killed five men on May 24, 1965.

Beginning in 1909, the Round Mountain Lumber Company began purchasing land in the mountains surrounding the Brimstone Creek valley. That company was purchased by the Payne family from Harrisburg, Penn., in the 1920s and was managed by Howard H. Baker Sr. The company became known as the Payne-Baker Company, and eventually became known as the Brimstone Land Company in the 1970s when it was purchased by Howard H. Baker Jr. and W.H. Swain. At one point, the Brimstone Company owned one-sixth of all the land in Scott County. It still holds some mineral rights near Brimstone, but much of the land has since been sold to other timber companies. In the 2000s, the State of Tennessee purchased much of the mountaintop areas around Lone Mountain and Slick Rock for the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.

Churches and Cemeteries: There are three churches on Brimstone Creek — Lone Mountain Baptist Church, Slick Rock Missionary Baptist Church, and Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church. The largest cemetery on Brimstone is the Lone Mountain Cemetery, adjacent to the church. Another large cemetery is Slick Rock Cemetery. A number of smaller cemeteries are found throughout the community, including the Rob Sexton Cemetery on Round Mountain that dates back to Revolutionary War veteran Timothy Sexton, and the Goad Cemetery near Slick Rock that dates back to Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Griffith. Other cemeteries include the Walker cemeteries on Indian Fork Creek, the Hughett Cemetery near Slick Rock, and the A.J. Robbins Cemetery near Slick Rock.

Origins: The Brimstone community is one of Scott County’s original settlements, though it was part of Anderson County at the time and later Morgan County. It dates back to when Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Griffith was granted land on Brimstone Creek and moved his family there after the war. He was a personal bodyguard to General George Washington when Washington accepted Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, ending the war.

Anderson County was formed in 1801 from portions of Knox and Grainger counties. In 1817, Morgan County was formed and included the Brimstone community. In 1849, Scott County was formed and included the Brimstone community.

It’s not clear where the name Brimstone originated. It’s commonly accepted that it was born of the “fire and brimstone” spoken of in the Bible, but the exact context is unknown.

First Families: Although the exact timeline of their migration to Brimstone Creek is unknown, the first families to settle Brimstone were the Griffith family and the Robbins family.

Pvt. Joseph Griffith served in the 7th Virginia Regiment under the command of Gen. George Washington, and saw action at several different battles. He married Phoebe Hudson in 1792. The exact location of their Brimstone farm is unknown, but it was likely in the vicinity of what is now Gib Griffith Lane near Slick Rock.

Joseph and Phoebe Griffith had several children, and all Griffiths in Scott County today are descended from them. Many of the people who still live at Brimstone are Griffiths or related to the Griffith family.

The Sexton family was also an early family to settle at Brimstone, including Revolutionary War veteran Timothy Sexton. His son, William Sexton, married Joseph Griffith’s daughter, Rhoda. Timothy Sexton was originally from New Jersey and married Esther Sisel, which some speculate may have been a derivative of the surname we know as Cecil. They married in South Carolina in 1782 and had as many as 14 children. They moved first to Georgia and then to present-day Scott County. A land survey shows that Timothy Sexton owned land on the west side of New River in 1808. He was living on Brimstone Creek in 1819. When he applied for a veteran’s pension in 1825, he owned 30 acres of land, a small cabin, and several livestock.

The Robbins family at Brimstone dates back to at least 1814, when 140 acres were surveyed on Brimstone Creek for Michael Robbins. However, he appeared on an Anderson County tax list in 1805, and may have lived at Brimstone then. He married Mary “Polly” Lewallen, the daughter of Anderson Grant Lewallen of Black Wolf Creek. One of their children was William Robbins, who was the first man to sign an oath of allegiance to the Scott County Home Guardduring the Civil War. Because of that, his home was targeted by Confederate soldiers at the Battle of Brimstone in April 1862. That battle was a victory for the Home Guard. His home was located near what is now Gib Griffith Lane.

It was for the Robbins family that the town of Robbins was later named.

Another of Michael Robbins’ children, Elizabeth Emily Robbins, married Joshua Goad Jr., a grandson of Revolutionary War veteran Abraham Goad, who lived on New River south of present-day Huntsville. Joshua and Emily established a farm near where Indian Fork Creek empties into Brimstone Creek — known as the Walker Farm today — making the Goads another of Brimstone’s first families. They had a son, Joshua Goad, who served as sheriff of Scott County. Their daughter, Etta Tennessee Goad, married Scott County School Superintendent William F. Lee. She was the grandmother of U.S. Congressman and Knoxville Mayor John J. Duncan Sr.

The Hughett family was another of the early Brimstone families, beginning with William Hughett. Originally from Virginia, his lineage isn’t completely clear, but it’s possible that he was a grandson of Abraham Goad (daughter of Elizabeth Goad, who married William E. Hughett). He married Jane “Jincy” Jeffers. They had eight children. One of them, John Hughett, was a justice of the peace for 44 years in the Robbins area. A grandson, Frank Hughett, served as Sheriff of Scott County. Another grandson, Jasper Hughett, was the first postmaster at Brimstone and later a prominent merchant at Robbins.

Not yet mentioned is the Overton family, which settled on Mill Creek near Lone Mountain. It dates back to John and Nancy Overton. Their descendants became quite a prominent family in the Lone Mountain area. Their son, William “Bill” Overton, was the first person buried at the Overton Cemetery on Mill Creek in 1920.

Finally, the Walker family became quite prominent at Brimstone in the latter part of the 19th century. Samuel Walker (1818-1907) married Mary Ann Elizabeth Hutson (1818-1910). They did not move from North Carolina to Indian Fork Creek until sometime after 1850. Daniel Walker, their son, was a Union soldier during the Civil War who was captured by Confederate forces, escaped, and made his way back to Brimstone Creek by subsisting on acorns and other woodland foods as he journeyed home. He married Almira Goad, the daughter of Joshua Goad and Elizabeth Emily Robbins, which is how the Goad Farm at Indian Fork Creek came to be known as the Walker Farm.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County communities: Black Oak

Which of Scott County’s communities came first?

That’s difficult to say without knowing exactly who was the first to settle Scott County — or, rather, the first to settle the lands that would eventually become Scott County, since they were a part of Campbell, Anderson and Morgan counties until 1849 (and some of the northern areas were originally considered part of Wayne County and even Pulaski County, Ky., in the earliest days).

Mikel Low is traditionally considered the first permanent white settler in Scott County, which would make Smokey Creek the first community. But other communities with claims of being first would include Chitwood (Winfield), New River, Brimstone, Buffalo, and Paint Rock. Between the years of 1806 and 1810, settlement had begun in earnest in these areas, almost always beginning with the fertile bottomlands along the streams.

Long before things had consolidated and Oneida grew into Scott County’s economic hub, with Huntsville as the county’s industrial hub, each community was largely self-sustainable, with mills, stores, schools, post offices, and more. They were connected by the main roads through this rugged plateau land, which mostly followed old Indian trails that had been used for ages before people of European descent stumbled upon the scene.

Over the next several weeks, the Independent Herald‘s “Echoes in Time” series will reflect on the history of these communities, drawing from the Encyclopedia of Scott County (www.ihoneida.com). Also, the Scott County Historical Society has a forthcoming book, “Communities of Scott County,” that will be available for purchase at their offices, located on the second floor of the old Scott County Courthouse in Huntsville (open Tuesday and Thursday mornings).

This series is not an attempt to profile Scott County’s communities in the order they were settled, which would likely be an exercise in futility. Rather, it is simply an alphabetical listing.

Black Oak

Located west of Oneida, Black Oak is a part of the 37841 zip code, and is sometimes called Possum Rock or Leatherwood. It is generally considered to be the S.R. 297 corridor from the intersection of Station Camp Road to Leatherwood Ford in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Some might also consider the Toomey Road area to be part of Black Oak, including the new Toomey Falls subdivision. Surrounding communities include Station Camp to the north, Coopertown and Verdun to the east, White Pine to the west, and Helenwood to the south.

Because there are no specific boundaries, there is no way to accurately measure the population of the Black Oak community.

Major streams that drain the Black Oak community include Anderson Branch and Bill Branch on the west side of S.R. 297, both of which empty into the Big South Fork River. Areas east of S.R. 297 drain into Pine Creek, with the help of Mill Branch, which heads up at Lake Arlie — named for Oneida businessman Arlie Lay, who built it and whose family still owns it.

Post Office: The Black Oak community is served by the Oneida post office today. Even in the days when post offices dotted the map in rural Scott County, there were never any post offices located in the Black Oak community. The closest rural post offices, outside Oneida, were Elva, Zena and Frona, all located in the Station Camp and No Business areas west of the Big South Fork River.

Schools: The only historical school in the Black Oak community was O’Possum Rock School, which was located at the intersection of S.R. 297 (Leatherwood Road) and Camp Road. A building that once housed the school still stands, though it is abandoned and in a serious state of disrepair. Today, Black Oak is served by Burchfield School for grades K-8 and Scott High School for grades 9-12.

Business & Commerce: Major businesses in the Black Oak community include Carson’s Truss, a family-owned builder of custom wooden trusses that is owned by Benny Carson, and Jet Machining Inc. One of the community’s longest-running businesses was Terry & Terry Store, located at the intersection of Coopertown, Leatherwood and Station Camp roads, but it closed with the death of its last surviving owner, Bertha Terry, in 2007. Her sister and the store’s co-owner, Dorothy Terry, died in 1993. Another old store, the Tom Payne Store, was owned by Thomas Miller Payne. The store closed after his death in 1959, but continued to be used as a voting precinct until it was destroyed by a tornado on April 3, 1974. It was located just east of where Leatherwood Baptist Church is located. In more recent years, there was a store called Last Chance, located just west of Leatherwood Baptist Church. The building that housed it is used today as a private residence.

Churches: There are two Baptist churches in the Black Oak community: Black Oak Baptist Church and Leatherwood Baptist Church (formerly known as O’Possum Rock Baptist Church). Black Oak Baptist was originally located next-door to Carson’s Truss Co. but later moved to its current location on Coopertown Road. O’Possum Rock Baptist changed its name and signage to match the nearby landmark in the Big South Fork NRRA.

Cemeteries: The largest cemetery in the community is the O’Possum Rock Cemetery, which is sometimes called the Black Oak Cemetery. The oldest cemetery is the largely forgotten Keeton Cemetery. There is also the Miller Family Cemetery, Ike Smith Cemetery, Trosper Cemetery, the Ovie Smith Cemetery, and the William Smith Cemetery.

Origins: Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information available about the history of the Black Oak community. It was not a major settlement in the early 19th century like other parts of Scott County. The river bottoms to the immediate west — including Station Camp, Parch Corn, and No Business — were earlier settlements than Black Oak.

Black Oak got its name for the black oaks and red oaks that once grew in abundance there, according to the historian H. Clay Smith. The original wagon road through the community followed roughly the same route that S.R. 297 now takes, although there were some variances. Additionally, the O’Possum Rock community, a bit further west towards Leatherwood, was once considered a separate community from Black Oak. Today, the name Black Oak generally incorporates both areas.

Adjoining the Black Oak community was a Welsh settlement in the mid 1800s known as Brynffynon, founded by Samuel Roberts. It extended from present-day Pistol Lane and across present-day Toomey Road. The Civil War spelled the end of the Brynffynon settlement, leaving its owners desolate.

First Families: The first family to permanently settle at Black Oak may have been the Thompson family, which lived where Old Litton Place is now located.

Lewis Thompson (1792-1863) is the oldest grave found at the Keeton Cemetery at Black Oak, though that cannot be conclusively proven. The stone is engraved only with the initials “L.T.” However, Thompson was known to have lived in the area. His first marriage was to Pheby Gray. He later married Mary “Polly” Brown (1826-1902) in 1849. He had at least 11 children.

Elzwick Thompson (1818-1904) is also buried at Keeton Cemetery. He was one of Lewis Thompson’s children. His wife, Nancy Brown (1827-1905), is buried at the cemetery, as well.

Another relatively early family of the Black Oak community was the Terry family, which eventually included sisters Bertha and Dorothy Terry, who married brothers and were the owners and operators of Terry & Terry Store.

One of the first members of the Terry family to live at Black Oak was Miles Terry (1848-1929), who married Artema “Artie” Coyle (1843-1911). Artie was one of the first people buried at O’Possum Rock Cemetery. She and Miles had eight children, and the extensive Terry family of the Black Oak community descended from them.

Miles Terry was the son of Martin Terry (1832-1890), and a grandson of Josiah Terry (1780-1868), the first settler of Oneida. Descendants of Miles Terry still have substantial landholdings in the Black Oak community today.

Although they weren’t the first family to live at Black Oak, there has been no family in the community more consequential than the Miller family. Originally from No Business, William J. Miller (1895-1980) and Ellen Burk (1893-1996) moved to Black Oak and established a farm during the Great Depression era, when they tired of flooding rains drowning their cornfields near the Big South Fork River.

Will Miller was the son of Francis Miller, who owned a store near the mouth of No Business Creek. Ellen Burk was the daughter of Lewis Burk and a great-granddaughter of Jonathan Burke, an early settler of the Parch Corn section of Big South Fork. It was at Jonathan Burke’s cabin that the Battle of No Business was fought in 1863. Francis Miller later purchased the cabin and moved it to No Business, and it was there that Will Miller was raised.

Will and Ellen’s children included Laura Boyatt (1919-2009), Hester Kidd (1921-1996), Lenord Miller (1924-2012), Eva Payne (1926-2019), Lorene Phillips (1929-2021), Elizabeth Harris (1933-2016), and Lillard Miller (1936-2023). Most of their children remained in the Black Oak area for their entire lives, and many of their descendants — Millers, Boyatts, Paynes, and Carsons — remain in the community today. It was Eva Payne’s father-in-law who owned Tom Payne Store at Black Oak, and it is Laura Boyatt’s son-in-law, Benny Carson, who owns Carson Truss Co.

Of course, no discussion of the early families of Black Oak would be complete without mentioning the Smith family, including the sons of Samuel and Sally Smith. One of them, William “Bill” Smith (1870-1931) and his wife, Sarah Slaven (1865-1933), are buried at the William Smith Cemetery at Old Litton Place, just a stone’s throw from the Keeton Cemetery. William’s better-known brother was John J. “Hawk” Smith, the noted Big South Fork resident who lived near what is Angel Falls Village today.

Samuel and John Hawk were the grandsons of Anderson Smith (1800-1890) and Sarah Slaven (1796-1888), who had a farm on Station Camp Creek. Sarah was a daughter of Richard Harve Slaven, who is believed to have been the Big South Fork region’s first permanent white settler.

Bill and Sarah had at least six children, and those children married into the Terry and Keeton families that lived at Black Oak.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering Scott County’s ‘forgotten’ school superintendent

It is well established that Scott County’s first superintendent of schools was J.C. Parker, the Helenwood attorney who would later be elected Scott County Judge. And it’s well established that the county’s third school superintendent was Laban Riseden, the Black Creek attorney whose daughter, Maude Hughett, would go on to be the first female graduate of the University of Tennessee’s College of Law. So, too, are all the school superintendents who have come since — appointed by county court until 1924, when they began to be elected by popular vote.

But Scott County’s second school superintendent has always been something of a mystery. He has traditionally been identified as Lafayette Spaule, and when the Scott County Retired Teachers Association presented the portraits of past school superintendents that still hang in the board room of the Central Office in Huntsville back in 1981, Spaule was the only one they did not have a picture for.

As the Independent Herald first reported in 2024, we can now reveal that Scott County’s second superintendent of schools was actually Dr. Lafayette Sproule — and he was tied to one of Scott County’s most famous 19th century families.

The identification of Sproule comes from an old hand-written document of the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau, which existed from 1865 to 1872 to deal with freedmen and property that had been abandoned or seized during the Civil War. That document lists the county school superintendents of Tennessee during the years of its operation. And for Scott County, it lists Dr. Lafayette Sproule, living in Huntsville.

Dr. Sproule, who was a physician, was married to Didama Marcum — sister of Civil War heroine Julia Marcum. Sixteen-year-old Julia, as we all know, successfully defended her family’s farm from rogue Confederate soldiers when they showed up intending to arrest and, perhaps, hang her father, a well-known guide who snuck Union loyalists from East Tennessee through the backwoods of Scott County and north into Kentucky, where they would enlist in the federal army.

Sproule grew up in Whitley County, Ky., the son of Hiram and Pheobie Sproule. He was one of at least eight children, though little is known about his upbringing or education. He was living in Whitley County when the 1860 census was taken, and married Didama Marcum in Pulaski County, Ky., on June 15, 1865.

Didama was Julia Marcum’s older sister. Despite the inspiring actions of Julia on a September night in 1861, the Marcum family’s story is one of tragedy. They lived in the Smith Creek area near Buffalo, and their farm was a prosperous one. But Hiram Marcum’s fierce loyalty to the Union made him a marked man. Julia lost an eye and a finger when the rebels showed up to capture Hiram, and was nearly killed. Four months later, her first cousin, George Marcum, was killed when Confederate soldiers returned to the farm. His nephew’s death was enough to convince Hiram Marcum to enlist in the Union army, while the rest of the family fled north into Kentucky, settling on the Green River in Casey County, Ky., before moving to Flat Lick Creek, near present-day Somerset in Pulaski County, Ky. They never saw Hiram again; he died of illness in Nashville before the war ended. And their mother, Permelia Huff Marcum, died in August 1865, just after the close of the war. The Marcum family never returned to their Smith Creek farm; it was sold by Scott County after the war ended to satisfy unpaid property taxes.

But Didama Marcum did come back. At some point after her marriage to Dr. Sproule, they moved back to Scott County, and Dr. Sproule was appointed by the Scott County Court — which we know today as Scott County Commission — to serve a two-year term as superintendent of schools.

We don’t know exactly when the Sproule family moved to Scott County. But Julia Marcum moved in with Didama and her husband after their mother’s death in August 1865. She wrote in her 1926 autobiography that she moved back to Tennessee to teach for 12 years after the Civil War.

The 1870 census lists Lafayette and Didama Sproule in Williamsburg, Ky., along with their children, Laura (age 4) and Charles (age 2), and Julia Marcum. However, at that point, Julia — by her own writing — was teaching in Scott County, and Lafayette Sproul — according to the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau — was serving as Scott County’s school superintendent.

It’s unclear how Sproule was elected school superintendent. He would have been an outsider who was relatively new to Scott County in 1869, and Scott Countians generally distrusted outsiders. It could be speculated that Julia Marcum’s heroic actions during the war, which were well-documented, played a role in that decision. It wasn’t just the Marcums who were fiercely loyal to the Union. Most Scott Countians sided with the North, and the county even declared its independence from Tennessee after Tennessee voted to secede in 1861.

By 1880, the Sproule family had moved to Casey County, Ky., and then back to Williamsburg, Ky., at some point between then and 1900. Julia Marcum moved to Williamsburg, as well. Didama Marcum Sproule died on Sept. 17, 1908, while Lafayette Sproule died on Oct. 10, 1912. Julia Marcum died on May 9, 1936. All t hree are buried at Highland Cemetery in Williamsburg.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

The growth of TCAT through the years

In July 1966, construction of the Oneida State Area Vocational-Technical School began at the corner of Eli Lane and Burchfield Avenue in Oneida.

Forty years later, TCAT Oneida/Huntsville — as the vocational school is known today — is celebrating the opening of its sixth building with a ribbon-cutting at the new Fentress County Higher Education Center on Monday.

Much has changed in four decades. When the original Oneida State Area Vocational-Technical School opened for classes in early 1967, only three programs were offered: Office Occupations, Welding, and Electronics. Today, that number has swelled to two dozen — and is still growing, with Telecommunications and Underground Construction Technology set to begin this fall, and Dental Assisting soon to follow.

The 26,000-square-foot Fentress County Higher Education Center, which is located in south Jamestown and is a shared space with Roane State Community College, gives TCAT Oneida/Huntsville a permanent home in Fentress County. Classes have previously been held at York Institute and Clarkrange High School — and some classes will continue to be held there.

Today, TCAT Oneida/Huntsville offers post-secondary programs in three counties: Scott, Fentress, and Morgan. It dual-enrolls high school students in six counties: those three, plus Campbell, Anderson, and Union. And its footprint continues to expand as Tennessee places increased importance on technical education.

The main campus has been located in Huntsville since 1997, when a 35,000-square-foot facility was built on the hill above Scott High School. That facility, which is named for the late Arvis Blakley, long-time president of TCAT Oneida/Huntsville, houses TCAT administration and student services. But the largest number of students can be found at the Oneida extension campus, as things have officially moved full circle.

After sitting nearly empty for the better part of a decade after the opening of the Huntsville campus in 1997, the Oneida campus was revitalized by President Dwight Murphy, who retired earlier this year after more than 20 years at the helm of the college. Also this year, two brand-new buildings were officially opened on the Oneida campus, significantly expanding the campus’s capacity.

With the move of Practical Nursing and Allied Health from Huntsville to Oneida, all of TCAT Oneida/Huntsville’s health-related programs are now under the same roof. The list includes Pharmacy Technology, a Nursing Aide program for high school students, and will soon include Dental Assisting.

Also offered at Oneida are the Power Line Construction and Maintenance program, Diesel-Powered Equipment Technology, Building Technology, Truck Driving, Criminal Justice: Correctional Officer, and another new program, Aviation Maintenance Technology.

Programs that are still offered at Huntsville include Computer Information Technology, Cosmetology, Automotive Technology, Machine Tool Technology, and Welding Technology. With the move of the LPN and Allied Health programs to Oneida, there are two empty spaces at Huntsville — with new programs already in the works to eventually occupy those spots.

At the Fentress County Higher Education Center, meanwhile, Practical Nursing is already underway and the brand-new Telecommunications program is soon to follow. Later, Industrial Maintenance, Building Construction Technology, and Allied Health will be added. York Institute will continue to house evening programs for Welding, Farming Operations Technology, and Automotive Technology.

Not yet mentioned are Clarkrange High School and the Morgan County Career and Technical Center. At Clarkrange, evening classes are offered in Cosmetology and Culinary Arts. Morgan County’s facility, located in Wartburg, houses evening programs for Culinary Arts and Farming Operations Technology.

TCAT Oneida/Huntsville also offers several options for correctional inmates. Through a partnership with the TN Dept. of Corrections, five different programs are offered at the Morgan County Correctional Complex: Digital Graphics Design, Building Construction Technology, Truck Driving, Welding, and Culinary Arts. And, through a partnership with the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, two evening programs are offered for jail inmates at the Huntsville campus: Automotive Technology and Welding Technology.

From its modest beginnings in 1967, the vocational school moved under the guidance of the Tennessee Board of Regents in 1983. The name changed to the Tennessee Technology Center Oneida/Huntsville in the 1990s, and to Tennessee College of Applied Technology Oneida/Huntsville in 2013.

The only original program that has survived for 60 years is Welding Technology. However, several other programs have been around for most of the college’s history: Machine Tool Technology began in 1968, and Practical Nursing was added in 1970. Automotive Technology began in 1976, as did Building Construction Technology.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Manage Your Account
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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering Scott County’s public education pioneer, Ovia Cross

Ovia Cross was a man of many firsts.

He was Scott County’s first school superintendent to be popularly elected by the people of the county. He was also the first (and, to date, the only) person to serve as superintendent of schools on two separate occasions.

But his impact on education in Scott County extended beyond those notable achievements. He also organized the first four-year high school in Scott County, and coached the county’s first high school basketball team.

Born in 1889, Ovia Cross was the son of Rev. Harrison Maynard Cross and Cordelia Adkins. His paternal grandfather was Caswell Cross, whose Buffalo farm was raided by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. That same day, his great-uncle, Larkin Cross, was murdered in the Buffalo area. He was a second cousin to Bailey Cross, who served as Scott County School Superintendent in the 1970s. He was part of the Cross family that lived on Jellico Creek east of Winfield.

Cross graduated from Huntsville High School, then attended Maryville College and East Tennessee State Normal, which is now East Tennessee State University.

After college, Cross married Barbara Evelyn Terry (1897-1959). Their children were Ira Lee Cross and William Maynard Cross.

Back home after college, Cross landed a job teaching in the Oneida Special School District. It was there that he helped organize the first basketball team in Scott County’s history.

In 1924, Cross was elected superintendent of schools, at the age of 35. He wasn’t the county’s first school superintendent; seventeen different men had served as school superintendent before him. However, each of those men had been appointed by the Scott County Quarterly Court — a precursor to what we know as Scott County Commission today. In 1924, a state law change allowed the voters of each county to elect their school superintendent.

The term in those days was just two years, and Cross was succeeded in 1926 by O.E. Jeffers. He ran for election again in 1928 and won, becoming the only person in Scott County’s history to serve as school superintendent on two separate occasions. This time, he served until 1930, when he was replaced by O. Earl Byrd.

Cross is credited with organizing the first three four-year high schools in Scott County: Huntsville, Norma, and Robbins. All three continued to be used until 1971, when Scott High School was built and the county consolidated its high school classes.

Following his second stint as school superintendent, Cross returned to the classroom, and spent 28 years in the Oneida Special School District before retiring in 1960.

Cross died on March 20, 1980, at Scott County Hospital. He was 91. He was buried at Litton Cemetery in Oneida.

Echoes in Time is published each Tuesday by the Independent Herald.

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s last vote for a Democratic presidential candidate

Only once in Scott County’s 177-year history has its people supported a Democrat for president. And only three times have a majority of the voters here not supported the Republican nominee for president. And there’s a reason behind that.

To find the only time a majority of Scott Countians voted for a Democrat for president, you have to go back to 1856, when the county’s voters narrowly supported Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan over New York Know Nothing party nominee Millard Fillmore.

That year was the first presidential election for the newly-formed Republican Party, which had been born in Wisconsin with opposition to the expansion of slavery at its core. Its candidate, John C. Frémont, was not on the ballot in Tennessee.

Buchanan, who won a narrow majority of the vote in Scott County in 1856, had originally been a member of the Federalist Party. During his five-term tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, he had aligned himself with Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party. He was generally supportive of slavery — the issue that was tearing at the fabric of the union of states even by 1856 — and intervened in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision after winning the election (but before taking office).

Officially, Scott County is one of three in Tennessee that have not supported a Democrat for president since 1856. The other two are Hancock County and Washington County. However, voters in both Hancock and Washington supported Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge in the 1860 election, after the Democratic Party had fractured. This leaves Scott County as the only county in Tennessee that has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1856.

What happened?

The same thing that led Scott County to defy Nashville and declare its independence from Tennessee in 1861: the secession crisis and the civil war that followed.

In 1852, the first presidential election after Scott County was formed, Scott Countians voted for Whig candidate Winfield Scott — the county’s namesake — in his race against Democrat Franklin Pierce. In fact, this area had routinely supported the Whig Party prior to 1856. In 1848, Campbell County, Anderson County and Morgan County — the counties that Scott County would be formed from the following year — voted for Zachary Taylor, the Whig from Louisiana. Four years before that, they voted for Whig Henry Clay over Tennessee’s own James K. Polk.

But the 1856 election showed that Scott County would also support a Democrat. Jehu Phillips, a prominent Scott Countian who was deeply involved in local politics, would later write that Scott County was evenly divided between Whigs and Democrats prior to the Civil War.

Then came 1860, and everything changed.

That year, the still-new Republican Party created a firestorm by nominating Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln for president. Lincoln — a rough-around-the-edges frontier lawyer — had emerged as a national political figure because of his stance against the expansion of slavery. The South was convinced that his election would mean the end of slavery, and Tennessee’s governor, Isham Harris, had already threatened secession — as had other Southern political leaders.

Lincoln was not on the ballot in Tennessee that year, though he received a single vote in Scott County from Shade Lewallen — presumably a write-in vote. Instead, Scott County joined the rest of the state in supporting Constitutional Union party candidate John Bell — a native of Tennessee — over Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, who was Buchanan’s vice president.

Fentress and Morgan counties supported Breckinridge. Campbell and Anderson counties voted the same way Scott County did.

In Scott County, more than 60% of the voters cast their ballots for Bell. Only one voter was for Stephen Douglas, the Democrat nominee who had risen to fame through his debates with Lincoln.

Despite not being on the ballot in the South, Lincoln won the election. The South was incensed, and secession followed. Tennessee’s first secession vote, held just three months after the 1860 election, failed. But Harris forced a second secession vote, and Middle Tennesseans — influenced by the events at Fort Sumter that had started the war — switched their support from pro-Union to pro-secession.

The secession vote incensed East Tennessee, which remained strongly unionist. Representatives from counties throughout the region met in Knoxville and Greeneville and voted to petition the state to allow a split, with East Tennessee becoming its own state. When Nashville said “no,” Scott Countians decided to put rhetoric into action. In December 1861 — at least, that was the theory of Independent Herald founder and historian Paul Roy; the official records were lost or destroyed during the war so no one knows the exact date — Scott County Court voted to secede from Tennessee and form the Free & Independent State of Scott.

The Unionist stance in Scott County was complicated. Unlike the plantations of West Tennessee and the expansive farms in Middle Tennessee, the rocky soil of the Cumberland Plateau did not make commercial farming much of an option here. As such, the farms were largely subsistence operations — supporting single families, and not generating anything more than what the family needed to survive. Slaves were nearly non-existent. There were fewer slaves owned in Scott County — only 59 when the 1860 census was taken — than in any other county in Tennessee.

With slavery a moot issue here, Scott Countians were deeply opposed to secession — not because they favored abolishing slavery, but because most of the people who lived here were descendants of Revolutionary War veterans who were deeply keen of the sacrifices that had been made by the nation’s founding generation and believed strongly that the Union was worth saving.

“East Tennesseans stood their ground. They proved to the overwhelming majority of Tennesseans their loyalty to the Union. East Tennesseans had played important roles in helping to make the United States; they were not going to be a party to its destruction — no never!” historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote in her book, County Scott and Its Mountain Folk.

This view was exactly opposite of men like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, who opposed secession but ultimately believed that loyalty to state was more important than the Union because — in their view — the Union was built on the explicit consent of the states.

Writing for the Cumberland Chronicle in 1904, Jehu Phillips said: “I was raised a Democrat, but after the war nearly every citizen in this county voted the Republican ticket and have been doing so in this county since that time.”

The war forever changed the politics of Scott County. When Abraham Lincoln ran for re-election in 1864, he won Scott County, although the votes didn’t count because Tennessee had not been readmitted to the Union. And every Republican candidate since has carried Scott County — almost always by overwhelming margins.

In 1872, when Ulysses S. Grant ran for re-election, Scott Countians supported him by the largest margin of any county in Tennessee.

Four years later, in the presidential election of 1876 that resulted in a constitutional crisis and a premature end to Reconstruction, Scott Countians voted for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes by the largest margin of any county in Tennessee.

Throughout the remainder of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, Middle Tennessee and much of West Tennessee generally voted for the Democratic candidate for president, while East Tennessee — where secession had soured the people who were mostly Union loyalists — generally voted for the Republican candidate.

And, in each election, voters in Scott County and Sevier County consistently voted for the Republican candidate by larger margins than almost any other county in the state. This continued until 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt — who had easily carried Scott County eight years earlier — switched to the Progressive Party and much of East Tennessee cast its support to him. (Scott and Sevier counties voted for Roosevelt by a larger margin than any other county in Tennessee.)

For more than a century after the Civil War, secession and the war shaped the politics of Tennessee. East Tennessee always supported the Republican Party — viewing the Democrats as the party that had pulled them into a war they hadn’t wanted to fight. But West Tennessee (and, for the most part, Middle Tennessee) usually supported the Democrat Party — associating Republicans with the deeply unpopular Reconstruction policies.

In time, the impact of the Civil War on Tennessee’s presidential votes faded. But in Scott County, it has remained strong. In 2016, Scott Countians voted for Republican Donald Trump by the second-largest margin of any county in the state. In 2020, nearly 90% of Scott Countians voted for Trump — the largest margin of any county in the state. In 2024, an even larger margin of Scott Countians voted for Trump, again the largest of any county in the state.

Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrat president who helped guide the nation through the Great Depression, couldn’t flip Scott County. He made deep inroads in East Tennessee, flipping 22 counties (including Pickett and Campbell counties) from red to blue. In his 1936 re-election bid, he won Morgan and Anderson counties, as well.

But Scott Countians never voted for Roosevelt. And in 1944, East Tennessee shifted back to the Republican side, favoring Thomas E. Dewey over Roosevelt.

In 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson was winning Morgan, Campbell and Anderson counties, Scott County again bucked its neighbors, supporting Republican Barry Goldwater by a slim majority.

And in 1968, as the civil rights turmoil roiled the region and caused many voters to switch their support to George Wallace, Scott Countians voted for Richard Nixon. (The rest of East Tennessee also voted for Nixon.)

Jimmy Carter was just the second Democrat presidential candidate since secession to make serious inroads in East Tennessee. He carried the vote in every county adjoining Scott County except Pickett County. But he didn’t win Scott County; voters here narrowly supported Republican Gerald Ford. It was the closest Scott County had come to voting for a Democrat for president since the Civil War, but Ford won 51.4% of the vote here.

In 1992, Bill Clinton became the third Democrat since secession to gain major support in East Tennessee. He won every county adjoining Scott County — but, like his predecessors, he didn’t win Scott County. Scott Countians voted for George H.W. Bush (though it was the first time since the Civil War, with the exception of Roosevelt’s third-party bid in 1912, that fewer than 50% of Scott Countians voted for the Republican candidate, with Ross Perot gaining nearly 10% of the vote here).

Scott County’s neighbors continued to support Clinton in 1996, but a majority of the voters here cast their ballots for Republican Bob Dole — though, again, Dole got less than 50% of the vote in Scott County due to Perot’s presence on the ballot. Dole received 46.9% of the vote in Scott County that year, while Clinton received 44.5% of the vote. It was the closest a Democrat has come to winning Scott County since the Civil War.

The last time a Republican candidate received less than 60% of the vote in Scott County was in 2004, when George W. Bush received 59.1% of the vote and John Kerry captured 40.5%.

Here is the presidential candidate Scott Countians have supported by year:

1852: Winfield Scott, Whig
1856: James Buchanan, Democrat
1860: John Bell, Constitution
1864: Abraham Lincoln, Republican
1868: Ulysses S. Grant, Republican
1872: Ulysses S. Grant, Republican
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican
1880: James A. Garfield, Republican
1884: James G. Blaine, Republican
1888: Benjamin Harrison, Republican
1892: Benjamin Harrison, Republican
1896: William McKinley, Republican
1900: William McKinley, Republican
1904: Theodore Roosevelt, Republican
1908: William Howard Taft, Republican
1912: Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive
1916: Charles Evan Hughes, Republican
1920: Warren G. Harding, Republican
1924: Calvin Coolidge, Republican
1928: Herbert Hoover, Republican
1932: Herbert Hoover, Republican
1936: Alf Landon, Republican
1940: Wendell Willkie, Republican
1944: Thomas E. Dewey, Republican
1948: Thomas E. Dewey, Republican
1952: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican
1956: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican
1960: Richard Nixon, Republican
1964: Barry Goldwater, Republican
1968: Richard Nixon, Republican
1972: Richard Nixon, Republican
1976: Gerald Ford, Republican
1980: Ronald Reagan, Republican
1984: Ronald Reagan, Republican
1988: George H.W. Bush, Republican
1992: George H.W. Bush, Republican
1996: Bob Dole, Republican
2000: George W. Bush, Republican
2004: George W. Bush, Republican
2008: John McCain, Republican
2012: Mitt Romney, Republican
2016: Donald J. Trump, Republican
2020: Donald J. Trump, Republican
2024: Donald J. Trump, Republican

Echoes in Time is published by the Independent Herald each week on Tuesday.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s sheriffs through the years

It’s not a term that’s as common as it once was, but you’ll still find a few old-timers in far-flung parts of Scott County who make reference to the “high sheriff.” It was once common terminology, carried over from the “old country” — England, Wales, and Northern Ireland — where the “high sheriff” was the top peace officer and the undersheriffs were his deputies.

“High sheriff” has never been an official title in Scott County — or anywhere else in Tennessee. Around here, the official title has always been, simply, “sheriff.” And his deputies are called just that — “deputies,” though their official title is “deputy sheriff.” There are a few states where the office of “high sheriff” exists. In Rhode Island, for example, there’s a statewide sheriff’s department, and its top official is called the “executive high sheriff.” Hawaii also has a high sheriff. And in Rhode Island, each county has a “high sheriff” that has police powers throughout the state.

Later this week, Scott Countians will go to the polls to select a sheriff for the next four years. Brian Keeton, the first-term incumbent, will be seeking another term in office, and is being contested by two veteran law enforcement officers: Dennis Chambers and Kris Lewallen.

Keeton is the 33rd person to serve as Scott County Sheriff. Here’s a look at the others through the years:

Scott County’s first sheriff was John Lewallen (sometimes spelled Llewellyn). He was elected in 1850, in the county’s first election, and served until 1858. He was part of the Lewallen family from the Glenmary area. His father, Anderson Grant Lewallen, was the first settler in that part of what would eventually become Scott County.

Bailey Buttram, of New River, was Scott County’s second sheriff. He was elected in 1858 and served until 1964. He had the distinction of being the person who certified Scott County’s vote against secession. He carried the results to Nashville on horseback, and his handwritten note relating Scott County’s 521-19 vote against secession is still preserved in the state archives. (Interestingly, Buttram’s parents were Scott County’s most prominent slaveholders, but Bailey and his family were loyal to the Union. He had two sons who fought for the federal army and were captured at the Battle of Rogersville in 1863. One of them, Iradel, died in a Confederate prison camp. The other, Joel, survived, but died at a young age, likely as a result of illness he contracted while imprisoned. Buttram’s son-in-law, Beaty Cecil, also served in the Union army, riding to Nashville to enlist. He would later serve as Scott County Sheriff in his own right.

In addition to Lewallen (Glenmary) and Buttram (New River), most of Scott County’s early sheriffs were from the southern part of the county. James Sharp, the third sheriff, was from Winfield, and Milton Terry, the fifth sheriff, was the son of Oneida’s first settler, Josiah Terry.

Reuben Hurtt, the county’s seventh sheriff, was from New River, as was Cecil, the eighth sheriff. Frank Hughett, who served as sheriff on two different occasions, was from Brimstone. So was his successor, John Goad. The two men were related by marriage, and Goad served as sheriff in between Hughett’s two terms.

In between those men from the southern end of the county, Fowler Hatfield — a farmer from Bull Creek — served a single term as sheriff in the 1870s.

There was a time when the office of county sheriff was term-limited in Tennessee. Each person was limited to three terms in office, and terms in those days consisted of only two years. So after a maximum of six years, a sheriff had to sit out at least two years before being eligible to return to office.

Among the sheriffs who were term limited were Buttram, Sharp, Hurtt, and Hughett. Hughett was the first sheriff to return to office. After sitting out two years while his cousin-in-law, Goad, served a term as sheriff, he was elected again in 1898. He only served one term the second time around, and was unsuccessful in election attempts after that.

Speaking of Goad, he has the distinction of being the only sheriff from Scott County to ever legally hang a man. That man was Mike King, a Winfield resident who was convicted of murdering a school teacher. The duty bothered Goad so much that he considered resigning — King famously told him to stay on as sheriff and carry out the duty — and he did not run for a second term. Instead, he ran for other elected offices.

Other sheriffs who were term-limited through the years included Gilbert Sexton, Frank Butler, Dorsey Rosser, and Jack Laxton.

Richard Ellis would have been term-limited, as well, but he was assassinated in office in 1925. He was a Baptist preacher who campaigned on a promise of cracking down on Scott County’s moonshine problem. It was the Prohibition era, and illicit liquor was rampant in the county’s remote hills and hollers. The 1920s proved to be the most violent era in the county’s history for law enforcement, as a full-scale moonshine war unfolded. Multiple people were killed, including Oneida Chief of Police Johnny Acres, who served as one of Ellis’s deputies.

On Aug. 11, 1925, Ellis was shot dead on the steps of the old county jail in Huntsville as he escorted a prisoner inside. The killers shot him from ambush, and it was never conclusively proven who was responsible, although several arrests were made.

Ellis was not the last person to die in office. In fact, his successor, Isham Chambers of Buffalo, died of the flu in 1929. Many years later, Mike Cross died of cancer in 2013.

Another sheriff, Butler, almost died in office. He was severely wounded during a gun battle outside a Winfield tavern in 1947.

Two other sheriffs were assassinated shortly after their terms in office. Hughett was killed from ambush in the Smokey Junction area in 1910 after leading a posse that had killed Riley Low. He was a candidate for election at the time of his death. And William J. West — who had famously helped three black murder suspects charged with killing a supervisor at the Robbins Brickyard escape lynching by leading them out of Scott County under the cover of darkness — had been shot from ambush outside his home in the New Light area near Winfield in 1909.

Hughett had been the first sheriff to serve on multiple occasions, first from 1888 to 1894 and then from 1898 to 1900. The second to do so was Esau Laxton, who replaced Isham Chambers after Chambers died of illness in 1929. Laxton served until 1934, and then from 1936 to 1938.

Laxton was also part of the first — and, to date, only — father-and-son team to serve as sheriffs. His son, Jack Laxton, was first elected sheriff in 1962, and later served as sheriff from 1986 to 1994.

The 1940s saw an interesting political rivalry unfold between Frank Butler and Dorsey Rosser. Butler served as sheriff for six years before being term-limited in 1944. Then, after Rosser served as sheriff for two years, Butler beat him in 1946 to take the job back. After being wounded in the Winfield shootout, Butler did not run in 1948 while he recovered, and Rosser won again. But Butler was elected again in 1950, serving six more years before again being term-limited in 1956. Rosser then took office in 1956 and served until 1962, when Laxton was elected.

Butler and Jack Laxton were Scott County’s longest-tenured sheriffs, each serving a total of 14 years in the office. The longest anyone has served consecutively is Jim Carson, who served 12 years, from 1994 to 2006. His brother, Marion Carson, would have served at least 12 years, but was indicted by federal authorities in 1986. He was one of nine current or former sheriffs in East Tennessee indicted by the FBI as part of “Mach Tenn,” a lengthy undercover investigation. Federal agents posed as cocaine smugglers and worked their way into Carson’s trust before asking him to aid their efforts. Carson pleaded guilty and resigned his office. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but died of cancer a few years later.

Carson had been one of the most popular sheriffs in Scott County’s history prior to his arrest. He and Jack Laxton developed a fiercely competitive political rivalry in the 1970s that was much the same as the Frank Butler-Dorsey Rosser battles of the 1940s. Laxton had been term-limited in 1968 and replaced by Bernard Brummet. Later, when Julius Lewallen was elected sheriff in 1972, Carson served as one of his deputies. When Lewallen opted against seeking re-election to a third term in 1976, Carson ran. So did Laxton. Only a few votes separated the two, with Carson winning. They squared off again in 1978 and again Carson won narrowly.

When Carson resigned his office, his chief deputy, Chester Sexton, was appointed by County Commission to fulfill the remainder of his term. Sexton did so, serving as acting sheriff until Laxton won the 1986 election.

Laxton then served two more four-year terms before losing to Jim Carson — Marion’s brother — in 1994. Jim Carson served three terms before Anthony Lay won the 2006 election to become the youngest sheriff in the county’s history. Lay resigned near the end of his first term to take a job with the U.S. Marshal Service, and Mike Cross — then the Oneida chief of police — was elected to replace him. Following Cross’s death, his chief deputy, Ronnie Phillips, was appointed by County Commission to fill the remainder of his term. Phillips was elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, serving a total of nine years in office before Brian Keeton — who had lost to Cross in the 2010 campaign — won election in 2022.

The first sheriff in Scott County who killed a man was John Goad, who hanged Mike King as part of his official duties. A decade later, Frank Hughett killed Riley Low while executing an arrest warrant, and was assassinated as an act of revenge a few months later. Gilbert Sexton had been accused of gunning down Riley Cecil in 1883 — along with his brothers — as part of the Cecil-West-Smith feud, though that was well before he became sheriff. Richard Ellis was part of a moonshine still raid that killed Filmore Sexton in 1924, though it isn’t clear who fired the fatal shot. Herbert Bilbrey was present when game warden Lindsay Phillips was killed in 1936. In fact, Phillips was there to serve a warrant on Bilbrey. Bilbrey was not implicated in Phillips’ death. However, one of the men who was, Dorsey Rosser, would later serve as sheriff on multiple occasions.

Echoes in Time is published by the Independent Herald each Tuesday.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Manage Your Account
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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering Adelbert Doisy and the Huntsville Supply Store

Adelbert Doisy came to Scott County on a hunting expedition. He fell in love with the community, fell in love with one of its young ladies, and wound up spending the rest of his life here as one of the most influential business owners in Huntsville’s history. This is the story of the man behind the old Huntsville Supply Company.

Born Oct. 3, 1862, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Adelbert Henry Doisy was the son of Adelbert Edward Doisy (1837-1931) and Mary Neal Kennedy (1842-1925). In some ways, he was behind the times. Scott County — or, rather, the area that would become Scott County, since the county wasn’t actually established until 1849 — was originally settled by longhunters, men who came here on long hunting expeditions and decided to stay. These longhunters first ventured onto the northern Cumberland Plateau in the mid to late 18th century (the earliest written record is of a “station camp” along what we now know as Station Camp Creek in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area in the 1760s). After returning to the East to fight in the Revolutionary War, some of the longhunters returned to this frontierland and settled down permanently in the 1800s and 1810s.

By the time Bert Doisy came along, in the 1880s, there were thousands of people living here, many of whom were third- and fourth-generation descendants of the original longhunters. Scott County was still rugged and remote, but it was no longer the frontierland that the earlier longhunters had encountered.

The Doisy family was well-established in Cincinnati, and had been for generations. Bert’s mother’s family — the Kennedys — had also been well-established there for several generations. Bert had no intention of leaving Cincinnati permanently when he hopped a train on the brand-new railroad to Scott County for a hunting trip. But then he met Lina Belle West.

Born April 20, 1876, Lena was the daughter of Jeremiah West (1843-1890) and Malissan Sexton (1844-1893). As much a fixture as Bert’s family was in Cincinnati, Lina’s was in Scott County. Her father had served in the Civil War, and was part of the expansive West family of Helenwood. Her mother was a descendant of Revolutionary War veteran Timothy Sexton, and was part of the Sexton family that had also settled in Helenwood.

Exactly when Bert and Lena met and began courting is not clear. She was, after all, 14 years younger than he was. When the 1900 census was taken, Bert was boarding with James F. Baker (his business partner), and Lena was still living with her parents. The couple were married in 1906 in Boone County, Ky. — near Bert’s native hometown. In 1910, the couple were living in Scott County, and their daughter, Mary Helen, was two.

Bert is best-known, of course, as the owner-operator of the Huntsville Supply Co. store that dominated the retail scene in the county seat for many years. He and James F. Baker, a Huntsville attorney who was the father of Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr., opened the store together in 1897.

Baker’s family played its own indelible role in Scott County’s growth. Everyone is familiar with the story of James’s son and grandson, of course. Both served in Congress, and the latter became one of the most powerful men in Washington as Senate Majority Leader and later as White House Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan. But Baker’s wife was Helen Blanche Keen. Her father, Alderson Thompson Keen, was a major in the Union army during the Civil War. It was he who convinced Gen. Ambrose Burnside to march the Army of the Ohio through Scott County en route to seize Knoxville and liberate East Tennessee from the Confederacy in 1863. Keen had become familiar with the area after leading a scouting party of 50 men through the region. He later moved his family to Scott County in the late 1880s.

Burnside’s successful march through Scott County helped to cement the city of Cincinnati’s decision to follow a similar route when it built a railroad linking itself to Chattanooga in the decade after the war ended. It was aboard a train on that railroad that Bert Doisy traveled from Cincinnati to Helenwood in the 1880s, and wound up linking up with Maj. Keen’s son-in-law.

The Huntsville Supply Co. store became a sort of commerce and social hub in Huntsville. Nat Hancock, a former slave who remained in Scott County after gaining his freedom in the early 1860s, was a familiar figure at the store, playing checkers and entertaining the other townsfolk who stopped in to trade or just to socialize.

The historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote of Bert Doisy: “Since Huntsville was the county seat and centrally located, people came from all sections of the county to do their trading. Mr. Doisy made many warm and lasting friends due to his jovial disposition and his congenial personality. He was a diligent, efficient businessman and the long years of successful operation of the Huntsville Supply Store can be attributed, in large measure, to his honesty, integrity, and keen business judgment. People from all walks of life felt free to come to him for advice and favors. He was prudent in his business, but he was never known to refuse an honest man a favor.”

As for the store itself, “He bought every kind of produce from the farmers who were glad to exchange them for ‘store boughten’ things. He always paid the highest possible prices for hides, tallow pelts, molasses honey, chickens, eggs, feathers, wool, mountain herbs, gin sang, yellow root, sassafras, sarsaparilla and numerous other things.”

Sanderson wrote that on court days, the store “would be packed to overflowing. Since there was not a restaurant in town, and it was impossible for the hotels to feed the large crowds, the long counters in the store were used to serve food to the public. The bill of fare consisted of cheese and crackers, sardines, salmons, and peaches and tomatoes ‘fixed up’ in a bowl with spoon and crackers.”

Bert and Lina built what would become known as the “Doisy House” that set just off the courthouse square in Huntsville. The home was later owned by Howard H. Baker Jr. and donated to the Scott County Historical Society, serving as the organization’s headquarters for many years. Today it’s owned by Eric Blakley, the son of Huntsville attorney Mark Blakley, who grew up next door.

The Doisys had one surviving child, Mary Helen, born in 1908. (A second daughter, born earlier, died as a baby.) Mary Helen married Daniel Boone Walker in the 1930s. They had two children: Louise Doisy Walker and Daniel Adelbert “Bert” Walker.

Lina died on April 10, 1952, at age 75. Bert died on Feb. 1, 1962. Both are buried at the Buttram Cemetery across from White Rock Baptist Church in Huntsville.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

The man who laid out Huntsville

In 1850, Wayne White-Cotton was charged with engineering the design of the seat of government for Tennessee’s newest county.

Scott County had been formed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1849. The legislature carved out parts of Anderson, Campbell, Morgan and Fentress counties to create the new county, which was named for War of 1812 hero Gen. Winfield Scott. The reason for the new county: settlers in the areas of Oneida, Helenwood, and Huntsville (though the towns weren’t known by those names at the time) had to travel too far through the mountains or across the river to reach county seats in Jamestown or Jacksboro. And, so, Scott County came to be.

One of the first decisions that had to be made when Scott County was formed was where to place the county’s seat of government. A committee was appointed, and they considered three different possibilities — a farm on Buffalo Creek, a farm on Paint Rock Creek, and the site we now know as Huntsville.

Ultimately, the committee chose Huntsville. There was a natural spring that flowed heartily, providing a good source of drinking water. The land was relatively flat. And it was centrally located.

That job complete, another committee was appointed to acquire the land. Those men were John L. Smith (the county’s first circuit court clerk), Allen McDonald (the first county clerk), John Lewallen (the first sheriff), Isaac Reed (the first trustee), and Riley Chambers (the first registrar). The committee purchased 25 acres of land owned by George McDonald and Emanuel Phillips.

Once the land was purchased, it needed to be surveyed, and that’s where Whitecotton came in. He engineered the survey team, plotting the town into 49 lots — beginning with the county’s first courthouse, and the lots that would surround it.

And the Town of Huntsville was born.

Born William Wayne Whitecotton on Feb. 4, 1811, Whitecotton was the son of Aaron Whitecotton (1780-1870) and Nancy Ann Hatfield (1786-1870). He had several siblings: Keziah Thompson, Elizabeth “Betty” Chitwood, Nancy Ann Smith, Dorcas Pennington, Helen Mary O’Dell, Elvira Murrill, and Smith Whitecotton.

Wayne’s mother, Nancy Ann, was the daughter of Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Hatfield who later settled in what would become Scott County. His father, Aaron, was the son of James Whitecotton and Ruth Newton. He was originally from Virginia, but the family moved to Kentucky, and he married Nancy in Wayne County in 1807.

Around 1844, Aaron Whitecotton moved his family from present-day Scott County to Missouri. They also changed their name; Aaron adopted “White” as his middle name and left his last name as “Cotton.”

Several of Wayne’s siblings moved to Missouri with their parents. However, Wayne remained in Scott County, and played the role in the Town of Huntsville’s creation a few years later. He had just married at the time his parents moved, to Mary “Polly” Owens (1821-1885), the daughter of William Solomon Owens and Nancy Chambers of Buffalo Creek.

Wayne and Polly had seven children: Celina, Martha, China, Tasmon, French, and Walker. (Wayne may have also fathered a child, Elizabeth, with Sarah Lee West, who later married Johnathin “Egg” Phillips.)

The Whitecottons who moved to Missouri were noted supporters of the Confederacy during the Civil War. An 1865 Union report listed Wayne’s sister, Keziah Whitecotton Thompson, as a “notorious rebel family.” She and her son, George Washington “Wash” Thompson, took food to rebel soldiers who were encamped on their farm. (Her husband, Henry Thompson, was a grandson of Revolutionary War veteran Randolph Lawson of Scott County.) And Wayne’s only brother, Smith, served in the Confederate army.

But Wayne was a Union loyalist, like most other Scott Countians. When Col. William T. Clift of Chattanooga traveled to Scott County and formed the 7th Tennessee Infantry in Huntsville, Whitecotton enlisted. He mustered into service on June 14, 1862. A few months later, when Confederate forces marched on Huntsville and engaged the entrenched 7th Tennessee along River Road in September 1862 at the Battle of Huntsville, Whitecotton was captured and taken prisoner. He remained in rebel captivity until Nov. 8, 1862, when he was released in a prisoner exchange at Richmond, Va.

The 7th Tennessee had been routed at the Battle of Huntsville, and many of its men — who were untrained Scott County farmers, not career military men — simply went home. They were considered deserters, and once Whitecotton had been released from rebel captivity, Col. Clift hired him to round up the deserters.

It was on his second excursion back to Scott County to find the deserted men and coerce them back into service that Whitecotton fell ill with smallpox. He died at his home on April 21, 1863, at the age of 52. He is buried somewhere on Paint Rock Creek, though no one is sure where.

Polly lived until April 13, 1885. It’s also unclear where she was buried.

One of Wayne and Polly’s children, China, married John Marion Cordell. He was elected Scott County Judge in the 1870s and went on to the state legislature in Nashville.

Meanwhile, Wayne Whitecotton wasn’t the only person involved with the formation of Huntsville who died in the service of the Union during the Civil War.

Allen McDonald, who had been elected the county’s first court clerk and served on the committee to lay out Huntsville, served in the 7th Tennessee Infantry with Whitecotton. And, like Whitecotton, he was taken captive by rebel forces at the Battle of Huntsville. He was paroled or escaped — no one is sure which — but was suffering from camp fever when he arrived back in Scott County from Knoxville in November 1862. He died at the home of Andrew Lawson. His burial location is unknown.

And Emanuel Phillips, the man who provided the property where Huntsville was located, enlisted in the Union army at Chitwood (Winfield) on June 7, 1862, assigned to the 8th Tennessee Volunteers. He died of smallpox in Knoxville on Feb. 12, 1864, and is buried at Knoxville National Cemetery.

Emanuel Phillips was a grandson of Revolutionary War veteran Abraham Goad of Scott County.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering Judge William A. Terry

Before it was called Scott County Mayor, and before it was called Scott County Executive, the county’s top executive officer was termed the County Judge. And one of the men to hold that title, more than 100 years ago, was William A. Terry.

William Abner Terry was born May 8, 1873, the son of Milton Terry (1834-1904) and Jane Thomas (1830-1908).

The Terry family figured prominently in the early days of Scott County. William’s paternal grandfather — Milton’s father — was Josiah Terry, who lived about where Hardee’s is now located in Oneida and was said to be the town’s first permanent settler. A plaque outside city hall recognizes him as such. Josiah had a brother, Elijah Terry, who lived about where Burchfield School is now located before moving to Parch Corn Creek in what is now the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Together, the Terry brothers owned most of present-day Oneida. Josiah’s land holdings stretched from about Grape Rough Road to about where the Scott Farmers Co-Op is currently located.

Josiah Terry had been dead for five years by the time William Abner Terry was born in 1873. Meanwhile, his maternal grandfather was Abner Wiley Thomas, who owned the land around what is now Dexter Laxton Road on the east side of town. (William was named after him.)

William grew up and married Rosetta “Rosa” Litton (1872-1965), the daughter of Cornelius “Neal” Litton (1828-1890) and Eliza Ann Chitwood (1831-1909). Her father’s family was the Littons who settled the area that is now Litton Road, west of the Oak Grove intersection. Her mother was descended from Revolutionary War veteran James Chitwood, who founded Winfield.

All in all, you could say that William and Rosa’s folks were a sort of who’s who of the Oneida and Winfield pioneer days.

William and Rosa had seven children: Ethel Chester, born in 1894; Evelyn Barbara, born in 1898; Edgar, born in 1900; William Elso, born in 1902; Estele, born in 1904; Elbert Aubrey, born in 1906; and Virginia (Jennie), born in 1913.

Terry was extensively involved in public life. He served as a county court clerk and was the city recorder for Oneida. He also taught school and was a rural mail carrier. At various points in his adult life, he also farmed, mined, and owned a mercantile store.

Terry was active in the Scott County Republican Party, and in both the First Baptist Church of Oneida and Bethlehem Baptist Church. He served as Sunday school superintendent at both churches.

As for elected politics, Terry was elected justice of the peace to represent Oneida on the county court (what we now know as county commissioner), and in 1934 was elected Scott County Judge, replacing Mitt Robbins.

Terry was re-elected County Judge in 1938, serving a total of eight years before being replaced by C.W. Wright in the contested election of 1942.

Terry had a nephew, William Claude Terry, who served as mayor of Oneida in the 1920s. His cousin, Inman Terry, was the town’s mayor in the 1930s.

Terry’s brother, Milt, shot and killed a man — Thomas Phillips — in 1935, after Phillips entered Milt’s restaurant north of Oneida with a gun after Milt refused to sell him beer. Milt was seriously wounded, and his 17-year-old daughter was also wounded.

Terry died at his home in Oneida on Feb. 27, 1967, at the age of 93. A funeral service was held at Oneida Funeral Home with Rev. Roy Blevins and Rev. Philip Kazee officiating. He was buried at Litton Cemetery, where his wife had also been buried several months earlier.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering Oneida Mayor Bob Carson

Since the earliest days of Oneida, the Carson family has been one of the town’s most prominent, first settling the Tunnel Hill area east of town, then spreading into the Ponderosa and Cherry Fork areas, and eventually beyond.

In the 1970s, one of the family, Robert “Bob” Carson, was elected mayor of Oneida, serving three terms (for a total of six years) and overseeing significant growth of the town.

This week’s “Echoes in Time” remembers the tenure of Bob Carson, the educator-turned-mayor of Oneida.

Born July 23, 1908, Robert Lee Carson was the son of James Monroe Carson (1872-1934) and Nancy Cecil (1874-1948).

Robert Carson was from the branch of Carsons that settled on Cherry Fork. The Cecil family was well-established there by the time his father and mother were married. Nancy was the daughter of William Riley Cecil (1828-1903) and Nancy West (1833-1900). Her brothers included John Wesley Cecil, Reason Burl Cecil and William Riley Cecil Jr., all of whom were killed in the Cecil-West-Smith feud of the 1880s, as well as Rev. George Washington Cecil, who would become one of the best-known ministers in Scott County’s history. James Monroe Carson was the son of Samuel Carson (1838-1925) and Emily Reed (1849-1917). Emily was descended from the Reed family at New River that dated back to Revolutionary War veteran John Reed — her great-grandfather. Samuel Carson was the son of John Linn Carson and Jane Triplett, the first generation of Carsons to settle in what would become Scott County.

Robert Carson graduated from Oneida High School and then attended Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in Cookeville, which we know today as Tennessee Tech University. There, he obtained his teaching license and returned to Scott County to enjoy a notable career as an educator — teaching for 43 years at Huntsville High School, Oneida High School, and various other schools, including schools at Low Gap, Sulfur Springs (near Helenwood) and Annadell.

Carson was civic-minded, and eventually entered the field of politics. He was elected to the Scott County Quarterly Court for two terms as a squire (which we know today as County Commissioner), and also served on the board of directors for the Scott County Hospital.

It was in 1973 that Carson made his first run for mayor of Oneida. He won that election, replacing William N. Proctor. He won the election on Nov. 7 by a count of 310 votes to 282 for Carson. (Robert Blevins received 69 votes.) Carson was re-elected in 1975 and 1977 without opposition.

Carson oversaw a period of notable growth as the mayor of Oneida. It was during his tenure as mayor that the current Oneida Municipal Services Building was constructed at the corner of Alberta Street and Municipal Drive on what we now know as the “Four Lane.” The new building housed the town’s administrative offices, police department and jail, fire department, city court, street department, and water department. Previously, city hall and the town’s jail were located on North Main Street, where the Scott County Senior Citizens Center is now located.

Carson’s tenure also saw Oneida City Park established. The park has grown to become recognized as one of the best small-town municipal parks in Tennessee. And it was during his time in office that construction began on the railroad overpass on Paint Rock Road, which allowed the highway to bypass the Tibbals wood flooring plant. Prior to the overpass, which was completed after Carson left office, traffic traveling to or from Paint Rock into the downtown area had to stop for passing trains, then travel through the heavily industrialized area where Tibbals was located.

Finally, Carson’s tenure saw Oneida expand west into the Coopertown area, with the annexation of the Green Hills and Skyline subdivisions.

Although not directly impacted by the mayor’s office, Carson was in office when the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area was established by Congress in 1974, and while it was being developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He said in 1978 that the town is “optimistic” aobut the BSF, adding that “we’ll be ready when the visitors come.”

The most colorful part of Carson’s tenure as mayor came in 1977, amid a feud with businessman George Taylor, who chaired the Oneida Planning Commission. By that time, Carson was in his 70s, and he was accused of punching the 41-year-old Taylor during an argument, resulting in a black eye. The incident made headlines in Knoxville, but Taylor opted not to press charges. “He has my sympathies because he has a tough job,” Taylor said, and added that the incident was “unfortunate.”

The two had been arguing over a proposed youth shelter, which had proven to be a controversial topic. Taylor was for the shelter, and the mayor (along with the city council) was opposed to it.

Carson was succeeded as mayor by Rodney West.

Carson married Alta Gibson (1913-1955), and they had two sons: Robert L. “Robby” Carson Jr., and Anthony “Tony” Carson.

Robby Carson, who later served as chief detective under his cousin, Scott County Sheriff Jim Carson, was Oneida’s municpal judge for a period of time after his father was the town’s mayor.

Bob Carson died in 2009, at age 100. He is buried at Cecil Cemetery in the Cherry Fork community.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company

It’s been many years since the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company existed. But its impact is still felt strongly in Scott County today, with remnants of this once-major industrial enterprise felt throughout the community.

Paint Rock Coal & Coke was one of Scott County’s first major industries — perhaps the first, although it’s tough to nail down the exact timeline of the rapid industrial growth of the 1880s and 1890s. But one thing is for sure: it gave rise to the county’s first short-line railroad, which would become a defining artery of Scott County’s coal and timber economy, and the future of which is being debated as we speak. And the name “Almy,” still remembered fondly by long-time residents of Paint Rock, came from one of the land procurement agents for that railroad.

Today, the Paint Rock community is loosely described as everything between where S.R. 456 (Paint Rock Road) descends into the valley east of Oneida until it leaves it again at Annadale, near Huntsville. Paint Rock Creek itself actually turns away from the highway at the old coal mining community’s hub of Almy. The western part of the Paint Rock valley is drained by Stanley Creek, which empties into Paint Rock Creek near Almy — or, as it was originally known — Morning Glory. Paint Rock Creek then follows Tunnel Hill Road into the gently rolling hills south of the valley. From just a trickle near Tunnel Hill, Paint Rock Creek rolls through Sugar Camp Hollow, merges with Cherry Fork Creek, and then with Stanley Creek to become a major stream before flowing on to New River at a place the locals once called River Junction. It was in those rolling hills south of the valley, between Cherry Fork and Tunnel Hill, that coal was first discovered.

The story of the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company begins with the arrival of the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad through Scott County in the 1870s and 1880s. Prior to the railroad, most Scott Countians lived a subsistence lifestyle — which is to say that they still literally lived off the land. There were a few folks who were employed, usually self-employed with small general stores or mills or blacksmith shops. But for the most part, there was no organized industry here. The railroad changed that.

When the railroad came, outsiders who were intimately familiar with the coal and timber industries arrived on the scene and discovered the vast natural resources that had been right under our noses the entire time. Perhaps there were Scott Countians who were well aware of the value of those resources but didn’t want to alter the landscape, which looked remarkably different back then, around 1880, than it does today. But as organized industry sprang up to extract the resources, jobs became available for the first time. It was an era that fundamentally changed Scott County — not just because there were paychecks to be had, but because competition for the jobs placed a much higher value on education.

In time, seven different short-line railroads would spring up in Scott County — more than in any other county along the Southern Railroad route. There was the Oneida & Western, the Brimstone, the Kentucky & Tennessee, the short-lived Knoxville & New River, short spur lines at Helenwood and Glenmary, and the Tennessee Railroad, though it was known back then as the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company Railroad. And that is where the story begins.

Among those who came to survey the Southern Railroad route was a man recorded in local historical records only as “Dr. Gruno.” He was described as a Union physician during the Civil War who later worked as a railroad surveyor. Efforts to further identify him have proven futile.

During his survey work, Gruno discovered large coal deposits along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek, east of Oneida. He returned to Cincinnati and brought several investors to Scott County, including a W.M. Appleby (or Applebee) and Robert Hibbler. Together, they formed the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company.

At about the same time the Paint Rock company was being formed in 1889, major mining operations were springing up in Helenwood and Glenmary. Like the one at Paint Rock, these would be relatively short-lived, but each of them gave rise to a community that has long out-lasted the mining days.

Almost immediately after Gruno, Appleby and Hibbler founded the Paint Rock company, they began building a short-line railroad from the Oneida station on the Southern Railroad to Morning Glory, which would come to be known as Stanley Junction. The railroad was the essential first step. Without it, any coal extracted from the Paint Rock headwaters could not be moved to market at viable cost.

But the aspiring entrepreneurs faced a huge obstacle: a large hill along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek. It stood between Oneida and the coal-bearing valleys below. The company’s construction crews resolved the problem by tunneling directly through the hillside, cutting a 402-foot-long passage lined with timbers. It became the fourth railroad tunnel in Scott County (the other three were along the Southern Railroad in the New River area), and it gave the Tunnel Hill community a name that endures to this day, although the roof of the tunnel was taken off more than 50 years ago.

Beyond Tunnel Hill, the grade into the valley descended at 3.6% at its steepest point — a gradient severe enough to fundamentally shape the economics and operations of every railroad that would subsequently use the line. The grade so limited the number of loaded coal cars that engines could pull up the hill that it was estimated to have doubled the railroad’s operating expenses. A dedicated “hill run” engine was later stationed at Stanley Junction specifically to pull loaded trains up the steep climb to Oneida.

In the decades that followed, railroad engineers periodically revisited the problem, considering alternate routes that would have linked to the Knoxville & Ohio Railroad in Jellico via a massive tunnel through the Cumberland Mountains, or crossed Fork Mountain south of Brimstone to connect with the Harriman & Northeastern Railroad. Both were ultimately deemed cost-prohibitive.

In the fertile valley near where Stanley Creek emptied into Paint Rock Creek, the mining community took shape with miners’ houses, a commissary, and coal tipples — where the extracted coal was weighed and loaded onto rail cars.

In September 1890, a man named Adrian Almy opened a post office there, and the community became known as “Almy.” It was later the site of Almy School. The road across the mountain that we know today as Huntsville Hill Road was originally called Old Almy Road.

The largest mines at Paint Rock were known as the Cornbread Mines. Caswell Sexton — part of the large Sexton family that lived at Paint Rock before the mining operations began — served as a check weighman at the Cornbread Tip House. He was elected by his coworkers as a sort of ombudsman, checking against the company’s weigh master to ensure accurate measurement of the output. In other words: he made sure the miners were getting paid for the proper amount of coal they extracted; that the company didn’t short them. He remained in that position until the Paint Rock company went out of business.

The Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company mined the bituminous seams of coal underlying the ridges along Paint Rock Creek’s headwaters, and also converted raw coal into metallurgical coke through a process of high-heat carbonization in beehive-style ovens. Coke was a critical industrial commodity during that era, serving as the primary fuel for iron and steel blast furnaces throughout the industrial South and Midwest. Unlike the coke ovens at the much larger coke operation in Glenmary, the ones at Paint Rock do not still exist.

In 1902, the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company was sold to investors from New Rork. Letcher Sexton, the son of Caswell Sexton who provided a deep history of the Paint Rock community, indicated in his oral recordings that a Colonel Roberts took over the operations.

As part of the reorganization, the railroad began expanding. From the Cornbread Tip House, where it formerly ended, it was extended about two miles to just below Jake’s Branch.

In 1905, the railroad sold again, this time to Samuel Spencer, who was president of the Southern Railroad. It was Spencer who reorganized it as the Tennessee Railroad, a name that would stick for the remainder of the railroad’s existence.

Spencer realized that the New River Lumber Company, which had recently established a band mill at Norma and was sitting on nearly half a billion board feet of standing timber in the Bird Lands, would need a rail outlet to the Southern Railroad connection to Oneida. So he continued expanding the Tennessee Railroad toward Norma, following Paint Rock Creek to New River, then following the river south to Norma. His son, Henry B. Spencer, continued that vision after his father was killed in a Thanksgiving train crash in Virginia in 1906. By 1912, the railroad had made it past Smokey Junction to the Scott-Campbell county line. Finally, in 1925, it reached its terminus at Devonia in Anderson County.

The Almy Post Office, which had given the community its name, closed in August 1909, and postal operations moved to Oneida. In time, the “Almy” designation faded from common use and was gradually replaced by the more descriptive name, “Paint Rock.”

It has been more than 120 years since the original coal mines played out on Paint Rock Creek. Later strip mining operations would extract more coal from the headwaters of the valley, but it was that original operation, between 1889 and 1905, that defined — and continues to define — the Paint Rock community.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Manage Your Account
◼️ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, YouTube

Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Fifty years ago: The Independent Herald’s first edition

Paul Roy was never particularly comfortable with accolades.

If he were still with us today, a couple of things would probably be true:

One, the Independent Herald would still be publishing print editions each week; he would’ve been too stubborn to have abandoned print, and too good a salesman to not allow print to be profitable — or, at least, pay the bills, which has always been the economic reality for small-town newspapers in the United States.

And, two, he would’ve been immensely proud to have accomplished 50 years of publication, but you would’ve never known it. It would’ve been business as usual.

Roy — a Vietnam War veteran who was just as much a historian as he was a journalist — never accepted praise. In fact, he shied away from it. When someone tried to commend him for starting and running a hometown newspaper, he’d often say, “I’m just a paper boy.”

Roy always knew he wanted to be a “paper boy” — from the days when he actually was a “paper boy,” walking a daily delivery route to sell Grit newspapers door-to-door, to his high school years when he started an Oneida High School newspaper that lasted exactly one issue before it was shut down by school administrators as an unauthorized activity.

It was during his days in the U.S. Navy that Roy — who was raised in Scott County and studied journalism at Tennessee Tech University — decided to return to his hometown and start his own paper. He later said that his shipmates would poke fun at the hometown paper that he received in the mail, pointing out that big news was the installation of a new traffic light in town. (“All these years later,” Roy said late in his life, “a new traffic light is often the biggest news of the week.”)

After stints with the Cookeville Herald-Citizen newspaper, the Cleveland Daily Banner and The Morning Sun, Roy returned to Oneida in 1976 and started the Independent Herald. He later said that it was during his tenure at The Morning Sun, a Cleveland start-up newspaper, that he learned how not to run a paper.

When Roy began soliciting investors to join his effort to establish a second newspaper, three of them signed on board: John Litton, owner of Big John’s Foodette; Jack M. Lay, manager of Lay’s Oneida Furniture Co.; and Bill R. Duncan, owner of Duncan & Sons Insurance. Jan Jeffers, who would later establish Mrs. Winner’s Chicken & Biscuits, became an early stockholder, as well.

The investors founded Liberty Press Inc., and the first edition of the Independent Herald was printed on June 17, 1976. America was in the midst of celebrating its bicentennial — which led to the newspaper’s tag line, “Founded in America’s 200th Year, in the Spirit of ‘76.”

“Our cause will not be to crusade, but to act as a means of furthering the people’s right to know,” Roy wrote in that first edition. As an explanation of the newspaper’s name, he said: “It is our desire to stand alone in an attempt to be as objective in our reporting as possible.”

For more than 39 years, until his health forced him to take a step back, Roy never missed an issue of the newspaper. He worked on more than 2,000 consecutive issues of the Independent Herald, writing news and feature stories, photographing events within the community, and compiling advertising. He often worked 24 hours and even 36 hours straight to meet the newspaper’s weekly press deadlines.

It’s easy to forget just how good a journalist Roy was. He was viewed as controversial in some circles — which is precisely because he was a good journalist. One of the first issues he tackled was illegal roadside dump sites, which doesn’t seem too controversial today but actually was then because it was such a common practice. He also exposed illegal cock fighting that was taking place in Scott County, which earned him a bullet through the window of the Independent Herald'‘s first office downtown. No one was ever charged.

The Independent Herald quickly became recognized as an award-winning newspaper. Through the years, the newspaper was a frequent winner in the annual Tennessee newspaper awards contest co-sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association and the University of Tennessee, and earned several first place awards for the best education reporting in the state. The awards culminated with the newspaper winning the prestigious “General Excellence” award as the state’s best newspaper in its circulation class in 2015.

Roy was a newspaper publisher through a tidal wave of changes within the industry. When he began publishing the Independent Herald in 1976, newspapers were composed using typewriters, wax machines and paste-up boards. By the time he oversaw his final issue of the newspaper, the production process had transformed to digital pagination, eliminating the need to drive an hour or more through the pre-dawn darkness to deliver the paper to the printing press.

Through the years, Roy remained true to the guiding principles that led to the establishment of the newspaper. He developed a reputation of unwavering impartiality: stubborn, but fair. With his wife, Debbie, working alongside him — and often with at least some of their three kids in the office — more than 2,000 issues of the Independent Herald were churned out, one page at a time and one story at a time.

Besides being a “paper boy,” Roy was also a student of history. Perhaps his biggest accomplishments were his contributions to the Scott County Historical Society. He didn’t start the historical society; in fact, he never served as its president. But without him, the historical society would likely have folded. He was instrumental in the reactivation of the society in the early 1980s. He spent years documenting Scott County’s families and historical events, devoting thousands of hours to work on projects, including typesetting books and compiling a quarterly newsletter. Later, he served on the board of directors for the Museum of Scott County.

He had a special interest in Scott County’s military veterans. He collected photos and wrote hundreds of articles about military veterans, maintaining a database of thousands of Scott Countians who served in the armed forces through the years. He spent several years researching Scott County’s Civil War veterans, and wrote an exhaustive book entitled “Scott County in the Civil War,” which he donated to the historical society to be published in 2001. The book remains the foremost source of information about Scott County’s involvement in the Civil War.

Roy earned the respect and admiration of U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., who was a native of Huntsville. Baker invited Roy to the White House during his tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff, and many years later encouraged Roy to take over the lead role at the historical society following the death of his cousin-in-law, Irene Sobodoski Baker. Roy declined, choosing instead to continue his life’s work at the Independent Herald.

Roy was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014. He died at his Huntsville home on Oct. 6, 2015, at the age of 67. He was interred at Mossop Cemetery in Huntsville — the same cemetery where Sen. Baker, who he greatly admired, is buried.

Roy was inducted into the Scott County Hall of Fame in September 2015, just one week before his death. Months later, he was recognized for his life’s work and accomplishments by the Tennessee General Assembly. A resolution honoring him was authorized by state Sen. Ken Yager and signed by Gov. Bill Haslam.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

The short life of prominent attorney H. Clay James

Mention the name “H. Clay” in Scott County, and most people will immediately think of the historian H. Clay Smith, author of Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past.

But there was another H. Clay in Scott County’s past who might have been immensely more prominent had his life not been cut short by illness just as he was reaching his prime.

Look through newspaper archives out of Knoxville, and you’ll see one name appear over and over whenever court cases from Scott County are mentioned: H. Clay James. He wasn’t just an attorney from Scott County in the 1900s; he was the attorney from Scott County — the one who both tried accused criminals and defended them, the one who captivated courtrooms and demanded attention when he spoke.

Perhaps the only reason H. Clay James didn’t go down in history as one of the most prominent Scott Countians who ever lived is because his life was so short. He died in 1906 at the age of just 37, befelled by a mysterious illness that kept getting worse and worse until it finally claimed him. That was the same year that Scott County’s other H. Clay — H.C. Smith, the historian — was born.

Henry Clay James was born May 1, 1869, in Virginia. Unfortunately, his early life is a complete mystery — perhaps because he died so young, before the narrative of his childhood could fully be recorded. There’s no written record of who his parents were, and the only background information comes from an obituary that was printed in a Knoxville newspaper when he died, mentioning that he was born in Wythe County, Va. While there were a number of Jameses living in Wythe County in 1870, H. Clay James is found in neither the 1870 or the 1880 census. There is an 1870 census record for a Henry James living in Memphis, who was born in Virginia in 1869, but he was listed as black. Scott County’s H. Clay James was white.

H. Clay James came onto the scene in the 1890s, when he married Bettie Walker (1873-1944) from Crossville, Tenn. She was the daughter of John Monroe Beaty Walker and Mary Adeline Frost. They had four children: Virginia White Walker James, born in 1895, Mary Elizabeth James, born in 1899, Charles Clay James, born in 1901, and Bettie James, born in 1906.

H. Clay moved his family to Scott County for work. The first record of him living here was in 1895, when he was appointed the postmaster of the Huntsville Post Office.

So who was this mysterious young attorney? Where did he come from? He may have been one of the very few Scott Countians who was Harvard-educated. An old Harvard University student roll in Massachusetts from 1890 shows that a 20-year-old H. Clay James was enrolled there. Before that, it is as if he simply didn’t exist. There’s no record of him anywhere.

Later records show that he entered the law profession in Wartburg, employed by attorney Will H. Wright, who would later serve as district attorney general. He was admitted to the bar when he was in his mid 20s, and entered a partnership with W.H. Potter in Huntsville. Potter served as a state prosecutor, was elected Scott County Judge, and was later elected to the state legislature.

In a county that was predominantly Republican, and had been since the Civil War, James was a prominent Democrat. That, perhaps, made him an unlikely partner for Potter, who was a staunch Republican and was elected to the state senate as the GOP’s nominee from this area. But the partnership worked, and the two men found plenty of success in the field of law by working together.

James quickly became one of the most prominent attorneys in Scott County. Newspaper records from the first five years of the 1900s bear witness to the many cases he was involved in — both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. Most murder and manslaughter cases from that era involved James on one side or the other.

In 1905, when the state’s 2nd Judicial District became overburdened by its large case load, the Tennessee General Assembly created a temporary circuit court. Governor John I. Cox appointed James as the judge of the temporary court.

At the time of his death, the Journal & Tribune newspaper in Knoxville noted: “As a judge he was quite able for a new man and a man of his experience as a lawyer. He was popular with member of the bar and had bright prospects in his profession when his career was cut short by death. As an attorney he was employed by a number of corporations in Scott County, representing the C., N. O. & T. P. railway and being general attorney for the Robinson interests. He was just reaching a point in life when he could accomplish most.”

In August 1906, while holding court at the Fentress County Courthouse in Jamestown, James fell ill. He battled the illness for several weeks, but then it became serious. He was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a form of kidney disease. It quickly became clear that he would not survive the illness. He died on Oct. 1, 1906, at the age of 37. He was buried at his wife’s family cemetery, the Frost Cemetery, in Crossville. His wife and her parents are also buried there.

Bettie Walker James and her children left Scott County after H. Clay’s death. Charles “Clay” James followed in his father’s footsteps as both an attorney and a Democrat. He served on Knoxville city council in the 1940s and was a candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District. He was single until near the time of his death, and shared a home with his sister, Virginia. He died of a heart attack in Knoxville in 1964.

H. Clay James’ last surviving child, Bettie James Sowell, died in 2003 and was buried at Frost Cemetery.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Man asked to stay in jail to avoid the cold

Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” He was actually paraphrasing Lord Byron, who wrote in his 1823 epic poem Don Juan: “Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction...”

In 1911, one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments arose when a Scott County man was released from jail … and refused to leave!

The Knoxville Sentinel recorded the incident in its Jan. 9, 1911, edition, headlining the story: “Wanted To Stay In Jail; Too Cold To Go Outside.”

The story involved John Potter, a 63-year-old man from New River, who had been arrested in Scott County on charges of violating the internal revenue laws.

Potter was transported to Knoxville to appear in federal court. He apparently pleaded guilty, and was fined $100 and sentenced to six months’ confinement in the Scott County Jail. However, the sentence was delayed for six months due to Potter’s health condition, and he was ordered released from jail.

The newspaper reported that when the court dismissed him, he returned to the jail and asked the jailer to go into his cell and get some clothing that he had left behind, and to “see the boys,” a reference to the prisoners he had shared a cell with.

But once he was inside the jail cell, Potter refused to come out. He told the jailer “that he wasn’t coming out in the cold … that he had no money with which to secure a room for the night.”

National Weather Service records show that the temperature in Knoxville got up to only 33° that day, and dropped to 14° at night.

Newspapers were quite different in 1911 than they are today. There was no gossip that was deemed unfit to print, and the newspapers pulled no punches. They could make a good man sound like the devil … or a scoundrel sound like a saint, depending on which angle the writers chose to take.

In any event, records show that John Potter and his wife, Mary, were still living at New River in 1920, and were raising their teenage granddaughter, also named Mary. She later married Clarence Chambers.

John Potter didn’t stay in jail long. After one night, he was ready to go home. The newspaper reported: “Saturday morning after getting his breakfast the old man called to the jailer to let him out as he was now ready to go home to see the ‘old lady.’”

There are plenty of old stories about men from Scott County who tried their darnedest to avoid going to jail, but this appears to be the only time on record that a man from Scott County tried to avoid leaving jail.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Scott County’s first historian: Jehu Phillips

Before H. Clay Smith wrote Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, and before Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, Jehu Phillips gave an early account of Scott County in the Cumberland Chronicle newspaper. Republished many years later by the FNB Chronicle, these remembrances — which were told by Phillips near the end of his life — provide an invaluable glimpse at the early community structure and lifestyles of Scott County during its pioneer era.

The Cumberland Chronicle was published in Huntsville from 1889 to 1917, and was one of Scott County’s earliest newspapers. It was in 1904 that Phillips — then an 84-year-old man — provided a series of reminisces. These writings were later compiled into a two-part series by the FNB Chronicle in the 1990s.

Phillips was the son of one of Scott County’s earliest families, an early elected official of Scott County, and a Civil War veteran.

Born Sept. 14, 1821, he was the son of Joseph Phillips (1787-1881) and Elizabeth “Millie” Lawson (1786-1838), and grew up in the Bull Creek area south of Huntsville.

Both of Jehu’s grandfathers were Revolutionary War veterans. His paternal grandfather, Tobias Phillips Sr., was a plantation owner in Virginia. His maternal grandfather, Randolph Lawson, was one of four Lawson brothers who served in the war and later moved to what is now Scott County. Randolph Lawson settled near the mouth of Paint Rock Creek. Randolph and his wife, Susannah Cross, had eight children. However, they left Tennessee after a short time, and most of their children did, as well. The only two who spent their entire lives here were Millie and her sister, Catherine Lakey Chambers, who married Thomas Chambers, son of Revolutionary War veteran William Chambers of Buffalo.

Jehu’s father, Joseph Phillips, was just 15 years old when he moved to Tennessee in the early 1800s. He came with his brother, Thomas Phillips, who was married to Abraham Goad’s daughter, Mary Goad. Abraham was a Revolutionary War veteran from Virginia who led a caravan to present-day Scott County sometime between 1803 and 1807, settling on New River at what is now known as the Vanderpool Place south of Huntsville.

Shortly thereafter, Joseph married Millie Lawson. The Lawson family was Abraham Goad’s “next-door” neighbors on the river. Joseph and Millie moved up the river to Bull Creek, which is where they established their family. Jehu was their third-born child.

Jehu grew up to marry Rebecca Sexton (1823-1905), the daughter of Moses Sexton and Leander “Laura” Hatfield, in 1841. Rebecca was also descended from Revolutionary War veterans. Her grandfathers were Timothy Sexton and Joseph Hatfield, both of whom moved to present-day Scott County after the war.

Jehu and Rebecca had 11 children. Among them: Fountain (1842-1911), Riley (1843-1910), Almira, Melvina, Jane Thomas (1853-1926), Martha Hughett (1868-1955), James, Harvy, Olive, Mildred (1865-1937), and Caldonia.

Given his family’s strong Revolutionary War heritage, it isn’t surprising that Jehu Phillips enlisted in the Union army during the Civil War. At that time, Scott County’s population was mostly descended from about 16 Revolutionary War veterans, and was strongly pro-Union. Hundreds of Scott County men signed up to fight with the federal army. Jehu was 40 years old when the war began, and did not initially join the fight. However, when Gen. Ambrose Burnside marched his Army of the Ohio through Scott County in 1863, Phillips was one of many Scott Countians who joined the march. He was assigned to Co. C of the 1st East Tennessee National Guard, and quickly promoted to sergeant. He and his unit traveled in advance of the main army, clearing roads for the 12,000 men and their cannons and supply wagons.

Two of Phillips’ sons also served in the Union army. Fountain Phillips was 18 when he enlisted on Oct. 26, 1861. He was among the Union soldiers captured at the Battle of Rogersville, Tenn., in November 1863. Unlike many of his comrades, he survived the Confederate prison at Belle Isle in Richmond, Va.

Riley Phillips was also 18 when he enlisted on June 1, 1862. He developed a lung disease while training at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky.

Jehu was a well-known Scott Countian by the time of the Civil War. He was a Baptist preacher, a chain carrier, and he had served on the survey team that helped mark Scott County’s original boundary lines in 1849. The survey team walked the mountaintops, establishing the line that separated Scott County from Campbell and Anderson counties.

Phillips was the first Scott County Trustee elected after the Civil War ended and life began to return to normal. He served in that capacity for six years.

By far, Phillips’ most lasting contribution to Scott County’s past was his remembrances in the Cumberland Chronicle in 1904. This series provides invaluable insight into what Scott County was like prior to the Civil War.

On Indians: “I can remember seeing Indians in this country. There were two families living up New River near the mouth of Bull Creek and one family lived near where the town of New River now stands. There was an old Indian trail leading by where the town of New River now stands and on up the river. The Indians wore, both summer and winter, caps made of fox skins, with tails hanging down behind and they also wore moccasins. I have talked with Indians in this county who said that they had never eaten bread made from corn ground on a water mill. The Indians had what was called a sweep cole with which to beat the corn. They also had sifters made out of a hide and would split the crushed corn through these and then crush again.”

On early education: “I suppose the first school house in what is now Scott County, was built about the year 1826 at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. It was a one room log house. The first teacher was a man named Brawhill who came here from Virginia. I never went to school a day in my life and yet was elected the first Trustee of Scott County after the Civil War of 1861-65. I held this office for six years.”

On early religion and health care: “When I was a boy there were no doctors in this country, and I never saw a doctor until I was grown. There were no preachers living here then. Occasionally a few preachers would come from Powell’s Valley and stay three or four days. I remember going to meeting in a log house which did not have the cracks stopped and which had no floor or door. I have been to many a meeting where the seats were just split logs which did not even have legs in them. In those days the preachers were all Baptist. I suppose the first preacher raised in this county was a man named Cutbearth (Cuthbert) Webb who lived on Brimstone Creek.”

On early commerce: “Perhaps the first store in the county was put up by a man named Jim Williams. When I was a boy he had a store on Buffalo Creek near where Alec Chambers now lives. When I was about 10 years old I went with father to this store and Williams had a few men’s shoes (but no boy’s shoes), some calico and a few other dried goods. I believe John L. Smith was the first merchant in Huntsville. About the year 1852 or 1853 he put up a store where Dan Chambers now lives. He only had a few dry goods and shoes and bought them from a retail merchant at Jacksboro. He bought and sold home made jeans and linsey … I remember that when the Civil War broke out there were three stores in Huntsville and they were owned by Carland, Cain, and John L. Smith. There were also three saloons here and they were run by Abe Hatfield, Jim McDonald, and Looper.”

On early entertainment: “Before the Civil War the people in this county had many interesting and exciting horse races. There used to be a race track where Allen McDonald now lives about two miles south of Huntsville and another track where Rob Sexton now lives near Brimstone. The tracks were straight and about one-fourth of a mile long. Only two horses could run at the same time. The horses used in the races were a breed of small horses called Brenens. You never see that kind of horse here now. The women attended the races as well as the men. The men could often bed saddles, bridles, hats and clothing as well as money on their favorite horse and often the races were very exciting … When I was a young man, it was the custom to have log rollings, house railings and corn shuckings. These would always be followed at night by a frolic and I tell you the people used to have some good old times in those days. At the frolics there was always one or more fiddles. The fiddles were home made but I tell you they were good ones … Let a fiddle start and I tell you somebody was out dancing. I never saw a banjo until I was grown. I never saw a drunk rowdy man at a frolic or log rolling. People always had peach brandy which was home made and it was fine.”

Jehu Phillips died on June 2, 1910, at age 88. He was buried at Huntsville Cemetery. His wife, Rebecca, died in 1905 and was also buried at the cemetery.

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
◼️ Subscribe • Sponsor • Manage Your Account
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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now

You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

Subscribe now

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

Remembering the Helenwood Devil

Reuben Caruso “Crusie” Sexton created quite a stir in Summer 1921 when he “unearthed” a giant devil in an abandoned coal mine east of Helenwood. The Devil of Scott County — also called the Helenwood Devil — made newspaper headlines throughout the region, brought scores of tourists to Helenwood by train to catch a glimpse of it, and wound up being displayed at the World’s Fair.

Of course, the real story was that Sexton didn’t “discover” the devil at all. He made it, out of clay. It was entirely a work of art. But it looked real enough to deceive many, and it made Sexton a nice chunk of money in the process.

To understand why so many people fell for the devil — which was allegedly a 6-foot-4 petrified being with four-inch horns protruding from its skull and wings stretching out of its shoulders, a chain binding one of its arms to one of its legs — you have to understand Helenwood in 1921.

Originally established as Homestead in the 1850s, Helenwood grew up with the opening of the Southern Railroad in 1880, and exploded when coal was discovered nearby along Sulpher Creek. As the town grew, so did the saloons. And as the saloons grew, so did the town’s reputation as a place that bordered on lawlessness. There were more killings in Helenwood from the 1880s to the 1920s than in any other part of Scott County. Many folks said it got its name from “Hell in the Woods.”

Little wonder, then, that folks believed Crusie Sexton had really found Satan himself.

The truth is that Crusie Sexton — the son of Bill Sexton (1869-1912) and Eldora Jeffers (1876-1965) — had been stationed in China during his time in the U.S. Army (he was a World War I veteran and was even held captive as a prisoner of war). There, he observed giant statues and decided to make one of his own when he returned home.

Crusie was a 26-years-old when he worked on his devil that summer. Every day, he would steal off to the old coal mine, where he was carefully crafting the being out of bed clay. When he finished, the creature was larger than the average man and reportedly weighed over a ton.

The devil’s features were so lifelike that it is said that Sexton scared himself while he was inside the dark mine working on the creature.

Sexton’s mother, Eldora, became concerned that her son was slipping off to the coal mine every day. She convinced herself that he was cooking moonshine. One day she followed him to see what he was up to. When she entered the mine and saw the devil, she was nearly scared to death. From there, word began to spread.

Sexton moved the devil to the home of his relative, Jerry Smith, who lived close to the railroad in Helenwood. As word spread that there was a giant devil in the man’s backyard, trains began to carry people to see it. The tale spread through railroad communities from Cincinnati to Florida, and folks would pay a quarter to look at the devil for 20 minutes. Like the tale of a caught fish, the story became bigger and bigger as it spread further and further. Some folks who traveled to Helenwood to see the devil reportedly fainted at the sight of it.

By August, there was so much notoriety surrounding Crusie’s devil that the New York Times wrote two stories about it.

In September, J.C. Pemberton, an Oneida resident, paid $2,000 for the devil and put it on display at the Somerset Fair in Pulaski County, Ky. It was the top draw at the fair. Pemberton placed iron bands around the box, put four padlocks on the box, and drove nails into the lid. He stationed a guard with the box, and hired a professor from an “Eastern school” to claim that the statue was an idol from an early race. Crusie signed an affidavit stating that the statue was authentic.

The devil was later sold again, and was shown at the Chicago’s World Fair of 1923. It would never come back to Scott County, but no one is quite sure what ever happened to it. Some believe that it is in a museum “up north” somewhere, though there’s no evidence of that. Others believe the clay simply disintegrated.

In recent years, the story of the Helenwood Devil has generated renewed interest online, and some devout fans even insist that it might have been real.

As for Crusie Sexton, he married Sibyl Robinson on Dec. 30, 1921, shortly after selling his devil to Pemberton. They divorced in Michigan a few years later. He later married Stella Craig, an Anderson County woman, in 1934. He died on June 16, 1936, at age 41. The cause of death was undetermined; Dr. M.E. Thompson wrote on the death certificate that Crusie was unconscious when he arrived. Crusie was buried at Sexton Memorial Cemetery in the Paint Rock community.

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You’re reading “Echoes in Time,” a weekly newsletter by the Independent Herald that focuses on stories of years gone by in order to paint a portrait of Scott County and its people. “Echoes in Time” is one of six weekly newsletters published by the IH. You can adjust your subscription settings to include as many or as few of these newsletters as you want. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider doing so. It’s free!

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Scott County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1954, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce has advocated for a strong community by supporting stronger infrastructure and leadership.

The dynamite blast that rattled Helenwood in 1935

On April 16, 1935, the peaceful town of Helenwood was rattled by a dynamite blast that destroyed several buildings, damaged others, but miraculously killed no one. It is an event that is still remembered today, more than 90 years later.

To set the scene: Helenwood sprang up as a railroad town, thanks in large part to the coal mines along Sulpher Creek to the east. Helenwood dates back as far as the late 1850s. On July 27, 1859, the town of Homestead was surveyed and laid out in 50-ft. by 200-ft. lots, according to Kathleen West Robbins. Ninety of those spots were sold. Among the plots were designated locations for a school, a church, and a town square.

For one reason or another, the town of Homestead never took off as it was envisioned. But things changed when the railroad was built in the late 1870s. Helenwood became an important depot on the Cincinnati & Southern Railroad.

It started merely as a siding when the railroad was built. But then coal was discovered along Sulpher Creek, and a new town was born. A rail spur was built across from about where Cumberland Wood Products is located today, traveling along the old Paint Rock Road (which is today Sulpher Creek Road) and up Sulpher Creek itself to the mines.

The Helenwood post office opened in 1880, and the town’s first store — owned by Ike Shoemaker — opened that same year. The town was the site of Scott County’s first newspaper, The Scott County Call, and was connected to the county seat at Huntsville by a narrow pike that was Scott County’s best road at that time. We know it today as Monticello Pike. A Presbyterian church was established in 1883, and the Baptist church that remains in the center of town soon followed.

As buildings sprang up around the railroad depot, several saloons opened, and Helenwood gained a reputation as a wild and woolly barroom town. A number of murders took place there — more than in any other location in Scott County, though several of them were considered justified killings for one reason or another and were never prosected.

In time, the coal played out and things quietened down around Helenwood. The mines closed for a period of time, and the old Campbell Coal Company buildings were used to start the Treat School for Boys in 1910. However, the mines were reopened by Church Pemberton and James Baker, who founded the Ridgeway Sprinkle Co. But in the 1920s, the mines closed for good.

The old dynamite, though, continued to be stored in an abandoned warehouse building in town. The commissary had closed, with the top story of the building being used as a Masonic hall for Helenwood Lodge 570 F & AM.

“Most of the people living in this small town knew that (the warehouse) was being used for storing ‘bootleg’ powder and dynamite,” Kathleen West Robbins wrote for the FNB Chronicle in 1989. “Some of the townspeople had brought charges against the man, George T. Webb, who had been selling this powder and dynamite and he had been ordered to move it out of town on several occasions. But the ones who lived nearby had seen and heard him unloading more of it into the building at night sometime in the early part of the Spring of 1935. They knew it now contained more of this material. They were aware that it was a dangerous situation but they had not gotten around to doing anything about it.”

Robbins, the daughter of Lawrence and Florence West, lived in a home about 500 feet from the warehouse. On the morning of April 16, 1935, Lawrence West left for the rock quarry in Glenmary, where he worked, and Kathleen and her brother, Kenneth, left for school. Florence West was home alone when the explosion occurred.

“She heard several shorts fired from a gun, some loud hollering, etc.,” Robbins wrote. “When she went to the window to see what was happening she saw the smoke.”

A fire had broken out in the warehouse. Reason Cecil, who owned a store nearby, had fired the gun to warn the townspeople. He was yelling for everyone to get as far out of town as possible.

It was later determined that a child who lived next to the warehouse had climbed onto a cabinet in his home — the Burdette Keeton residence — and pulled it over. It fell onto a wood-burning stove, knocking the pipe down and setting fire to the kitchen.

Burdette Keeton’s widow, Sarah, lived with her five children. She had left to go to Oneida for a job, leaving the five children at home alone. According to an article written at the time by Anna O’Connor, wife of the railroad agent, James O’Connor, one of the children — Anvilee Keeton — ran to her home to let her know the fire was spreading to the nearby mine supply store operated by Webb. It was O’Connor who alerted Reason Cecil, who in turn alerted the rest of the townspeople. Together, they likely saved many lives that day.

“I yelled to him to get his gun and shoot it, to attract people’s attention,” O’Connor told the Knoxville newspaper. “And took out across the road, shouting to everyone to run for their lives.”

O’Connor’s last stop was her own home, where she rounded up her five children and sent them out of town.

“All that running nearly finished me,” she said. “I don’t know how I did it. I have not been well since January, when I had the flu and pneumonia right after my baby was born. But somehow I kept going, and I’m sure glad I could. These people would have been killed if they hadn’t got out of town before that explosion, and I knew it.”

Cecil herded his family, including nine children, into a storm cellar to escape the blast.

“The debris could be seen in the air for miles around — and such a loud noise and concussion!” Robbins wrote. “After everything had settled down and an inventory taken, it was found that no one was killed, a few were injured but lots of damage was done to surrounding buildings.”

Most buildings within a half-mile radius were damaged or destroyed. Among the buildings damaged beyond repair was the commissary and the Masonic hall above it.

“I don’t know what the people are going to do,” O’Connor wrote. “I have my little child in the car, outside the depot, now. And we may spend the night in it. The town is wrecked.”

The American Red Cross sent a team of volunteers to Helenwood and set up a command post for residents who had lost everything they owned in the blast. For the next few weeks, the townspeople cleaned up the mess and repaired the buildings that weren’t too badly damaged. The West home was able to be repaired, and Lawrence and his family continued living in Helenwood. However, Kathleen wrote that one of the walls in her bedroom had been knocked down onto her bed. “Had it happened in the night and not been discovered in time, I probably wouldn’t have been here to write this story,” she said.

The blast made headlines throughout the South. The Chattanooga Daily Times wrote that the explosion “all but destroyed the mountain town of Helenwood.”

One man, John Young Phillips, led his family out of town and then realized he had forgotten his cow. He rushed back to save the cow, but the blast occurred, and both Phillips and the cow were “thrown violently to the street,” according to the Chattanooga newspaper. Phillips suffered broken ribs. As the cow fled the scene, “just in the nick of time, Phillips grabbed onto her tail and both ‘took to the woods',” the newspaper wrote.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that 250 kegs of blasting powder and 20 cases of dynamite were stored in the building at the time of the blast. The newspaper quoted Ed M. Gillenwaters, as saying former state fire prevention commissioner, as saying that the explosives were illegally stored.

For many years, the dynamite blast was referred to as “The Webb Explosion,” after the man who purportedly stored the explosives in the old warehouse. Today, though, it is generally known as “The Helenwood Explosion.”

On the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area’s website, the National Park Service says that it was this dynamite blast that gave Helenwood its name, for “Hell in the Woods.” However, the town was called Helenwood long before the dynamite blast. No one is sure where the name came from — it is said by some that a “Captain Wood” had a daughter named Helen, while Robbins theorized in a separate article for the FNB Chronicle that it came from the saloon days (“Hell in the Woods”). Either way, newspaper records show that the town was called Helenwood as far back as Dec. 25, 1881, when the Chattanooga Daily Times reported on the opening salvo of the Cecil-West-Smith Feud that occurred there.

George Webb, the man who owned the mine supply store, was killed in an airplane crash at the Glenmary landing strip in 1941. The Keeton family moved to Ohio. The O’Connors moved first to Robbins, then to Rockwood. Reason Cecil remained in Helenwood. His nephew and great-nephews, Virgil Cecil and Virgil’s sons, Milford and Roger, were long-time pastors of Helenwood Baptist Church.

Read More: The Helenwood Explosion of 1935 — Encyclopedia of Scott County

Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be Threads of Life tomorrow. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!

◼️ About the IH • IH Sports Network • The Encyclopedia of Scott County
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Our Newsletters:
• Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
• Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
• Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
• Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
• Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
• Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)

Subscribe now