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!
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: Glenmary
Today, Glenmary is hardly a dot on the map as you drive through Scott County. It’s easy to recognize when you’re driving through Oneida, Huntsville, Winfield, Robbins, and even Elgin. But Glenmary is largely forgotten, except for the simple green place sign along U.S. Highway 27 as you pass along the banks of Black Wolf Creek on the southern end of the county.
There was a time, though, thanks to the railroad and a burgeoning coal industry, that Glenmary was Scott County’s most happening place. It was home to hundreds of people who made their livelihood in the coke and coal industry, including a large number of immigrants who moved here to take jobs. The railroad is still there, but there’s no longer a depot. The coal mines and the sawmills that followed have long since closed up, and today there is little indication that this tiny map dot was once Scott County’s largest community.
It all started in the early 1800s, when a pioneer named Lewallen moved to Glenmary, put down roots on the banks of Wolf Creek, and raised his family.
Of course, Anderson Grant Lewallen didn’t live in Glenmary itself. He lived closer to what would later become known as Campground, beyond what became known as Coal Hill. But for all intents and purposes, these are all the same community. This is the story of Glenmary.
POST OFFICES: The first post office here opened in 1875 and was called Black Wolf. It was located a little north of where the town would soon be built, between Glenmary and Elgin. The first postmaster there was Newell H. Goff. In June 1878, the Redmond (or Redman) Post Office opened at Glenmary. It was named for its first postmaster, James R.T. Redman. The name changed to Glenmary in May 1880, after the Cincinnati Southern Railroad began operations. Black Wolf Post Office closed in 1898, with James C. Hamby serving as the last postmaster. Glenmary continued in operation until February 1972, when it closed and moved to Robbins. The last postmaster there was Bobby Lee Burton. Today, Glenmary is served by the Robbins and Sunbright post offices.
SCHOOLS: According to Maggie Barger’s history of Glenmary, which was published by the FNB Chronicle in 1989, the first school at Glenmary was also used by the community’s Baptist church. Later, a secondary academy was chartered in Glenmary in the early 1880s. A “colored school” operated from 1894 to 1908. After the Glenmary Presbyterian Church was built in 1907, it founded a private school. That same year, a school was built at Halfway, which was located between Glenmary and Coal Hill. In 1922, the town’s last school was built on the hill to the west of U.S. 27, adjacent to Red Hill. It was a four-room school that was used until the 1960s, when it was consolidated with Robbins. The area where the school once stood is now a privately-maintained park known as the Old Glenmary School Park. In 1935, schools in the Glenmary area included Glenmary, Wolf Creek, Coal Hill, and Campground. Today, students from the Glenmary area are zoned for Robbins School in grades K-8, and Scott High School.
CHURCHES: In 1907, the Glenmary Presbyterian Church was built on property donated by Lindsey Redman. It became a Congregational church in 1929. Two years after that, the Glenmary Baptist Church was built just down the hill from the Congregational church, on property purchased from Gatewood Pemberton, where the lumber company barn once stood.
COMMERCE & BUSINESS: While there are no businesses located in the Glenmary community today, this was once the industrial hub of Scott County. Historically, business activities at Glenmary centered around the coal and coke industry, as well as the timber industry. This began in the 1880s, after the construction of the railroad opened Scott County’s natural resource reserves to outside exploration.
The Crooke Coal Company began in 1880. The Glenmary Coal & Coke Company was established in 1884, and the first lumber mill was the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Company. It was used to process poplar, pine, and hemlock. In 1906, the lumber mill was transformed into a hardwood flooring mill.
At the peak of business activity in Glenmary, a new railroad was proposed that would connect the Southern Railroad to the city of Jamestown, west of Glenmary. The route would have roughly followed present-day Nydeck Road. The railroad was never constructed. Instead, the lumber company moved to Verdun near Hazel Valley, outside Oneida, and the Oneida & Western Railroad was built to Jamestown.
There was an assortment of stores, saloons and boarding houses located along Davis Creek, near the Glenmary railroad depot, to support the coal and lumber operations. The last store in Glenmary still stands on U.S. 27, an aging, two-story brick building owned by the Watts family.
ORIGINS: In its earliest days, before it was known as Glenmary, this community was part of Morgan County. It was not until 1849 that Scott County was established by the Tennessee General Assembly, and the areas of Glenmary, Coal Hill, and Campground were removed from Morgan County. By that time, several families lived in the greater Glenmary area, and it was in Glenmary that Scott County’s first sheriff, John Lewallen, was raised.
Glenmary’s real growth came with the construction of the Southern Railroad, which opened for business in 1880. The first coal mine at Coal Hill opened in 1878, founded by Jabe Crooke of Ohio and an immigrant from Great Britain named John Heaps.
When the railroad was completed in 1880, a side track was built to the tipple at Glenmary. Four years later, in 1884, Crook sold his business interests in the mine to a group of businessmen from Lexington, Ky., and the Glenmary Coal & Coke Company was born. Coal production continued until 1904.
According to Barger, Glenmary got its name from a railroad official who had two daughters, Glenman and Mary.
Many of the early residents of Glenmary proper were immigrants from Europe who were working in the fledgling coal and coke industry. Their headstones can be found at the Coal Hill Cemetery. At its peak, there were 400 people living in Glenmary, and many more at Coal Hill, where the mining industry was centered. The lumber company built workers’ houses on what became known as Red Hill, just west of U.S. 27. There was a separate housing project located on Nydeck Road.
FIRST FAMILIES: The first families at Black Wolf Creek — before the area became known as Glenmary or Coal Hill — were the Lewallens, Davises, Hambys, Youngs, Pembertons and Peaks. The Redmans, McCartts and Webbs came later.
The Lewallens: Anderson Grant Lewallens (1764-1829) was probably the first settler of Glenmary. He was the son of Daniel Alexander Lewallen (1742-1785) and Mary Burkes (1743-1785) from Virginia. He married Lydia “Lucy” Rice (1766-1832) in 1784. They moved to present-day Glenmary sometime after that, settling along the headwaters of Black Wolf Creek, near the Campground community. They had a total of 16 children. One of those children was John Columbus Lewallen (1812-1896), the first sheriff of Scott County. Anderson and his wife are buried at the Old Lewallen Cemetery, deep in the Campground community.
The Hambys: The Hamby family came to the region in the early 1800s, with John Hamby (about 1775-1852) and his wife, Edy Webb (about 1785-1860), who were from North Carolina. They were married in North Carolina in 1803 and moved to the area sometime after that. Some of John Hamby’s siblings also made the move to the area, including Reuben Hamby (1779-1872) and Henry Hamby (about 1785-1848). Today, the Hamby family is perhaps best associated with northern Morgan County, but remains in southern Scott County, as well.
The Peaks: The Peak family included Revolutionary War veteran Abel Peak (1756-1852) of Virginia, who moved to the Glenmary area as one of more than a dozen Revolutionary War veterans who helped establish what we now know as Scott County. In an 1853 application for a widow’s pension, Peak’s wife, Lydia Jones, said that she had 17 children. Abel’s brother, Jacob Peak, married Lydia’s sister, Polly. Jacob and Polly, along with Polly’s and Lydia’s parents, moved to present-day Oak Ridge, settling at Gamble Valley. Abel and Lydia may have initially lived there, as well. In her 1853 pension application, Lydia stated that she had lived in Anderson County for six years before moving to Morgan County. However, in his 1832 pension application, Abel said that he had lived in Anderson County for six years before being “cut off” into Morgan County. Morgan County was created in 1817 from part of Anderson County, and included the area of Glenmary. Peak’s son, Lewis Peak, married Matilda Griffith, the granddaughter of Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Griffith of Brimstone.
The Youngs: Matthew Young (1815-1893) moved from Roane County to the Glenmary area and became one of the community’s most prominent residents. He married Elizabeth Lewallen, a granddaughter of Anderson Grant Lewallen. When she died, he married her sister, Rhoda Ann Lewallen. However, it was not marriage that brought Matthew to Glenmary. The Young family made the move in Matthew’s childhood. His parents, John Young (1779-1826) and Mary “Polly” Smith (1782-1820) moved to present-day Fentress County, settling in Poplar Cove, around 1808. They had 12 children, including Matthew, and later moved to the Black Wolf area.
The Pembertons: George Washington Pemberton (1824-1895) moved to this area from Wayne County, Ky. However, this may not have happened until late in his life. His first wife, Selva Phoebe Gregory, died in 1854 and is believed to be buried in Wayne County. George then married Mary Jane Davis. Among their children were several well-known residents of the community, including Churchwell Pemberton (1860-1940), Gatewood Pemberton (1863-1959), and Scott County School Superintendent Heywood Kingston Pemberton (1870-1954). George’s second wife, Mary Jane, was part of the Davis family that lived at Glenmary, and it was for her family that Davis Creek was named. Her parents were Matthew P. Davis and Sarah Bowman. Less is known about this family, even though they were the namesake of the creek that ran through the center of town.
The Redmans: The Redman family originally owned the farm along Nydeck Road that is now owned by the Kline family. The family dates back to Hinchea Gillum Redman (1809-1891) and his wife, Caroline Minor Fields (1829-1903). H.G. Redman was originally from North Carolina. His first marriage, to Lucinda Sallee, occurred in Wayne County, Ky. He then married Caroline in the Burrville community west of Glenmary in 1858. According to Barger, the land the Glenmary Presbyterian Church was built on was donated by Lindsey Redman, a descendant of H.G. Redman. The first postmaster at the Redman Post Office, which later became Glenmary Post Office, was James Rowsey Thomas Redman (1854-1937), one of the sons of H.G. Redman.
The McCartts: The McCartt family came to Glenmary with Pleasant McCartt (1822-1863). He was the only son of Elizabeth McCartt (1800-1880) and married Adaline Elizabeth Hamby (born about 1823), the daughter of Henry Hamby and Sarah Cross. Elizabeth McCartt was originally from Kentucky, but her family moved to the Emory River area near Wartburg in the early 1800s. She was blind and never married. It was her son, Pleasant, who moved to Glenmary sometime after his marriage to Adeline Hamby. They had eight children. One of them, daughter Lydia Clementine, married into the Pemberton family. Alice Cooper, the rock-n-roll legend, is descended from Glenmary’s McCartt family. Samuel Wesley McCartt (1885-1968), a lifelong resident of Scott County, is Cooper’s grandfather. Ella McCartt, who was born in Glenmary, was Alice Cooper’s mother. Sam W. McCartt was a grandson of Pleasant McCartt, making Pleasant McCartt Alice Cooper’s second-great-grandfather.
The Webbs: The Webb family dates back to Willis W. Webb (1819-1890). His parents, John Webb (1785-1848) and Nancy Hall (1787-1857), moved from North Carolina to the Emory River near Wartburg in the early 1800s. From there, Willis Webb married Margarette Ann Stewart (1828-1912) in 1841 and moved to present-day Scott County. They had 12 children.
The Watts: George Renaugh Watts (1882-1958) came to Glenmary much later, but his family is notable because it was he who built the brick structure that still stands along U.S. 27, one of the last remaining buildings of original Glenmary. George was the son of Daniel “Renaugh” Watts and Cynthia Freeland. The Watts family moved to Morgan County from Georgia with George’s grandfather, Joseph Watts (1805-1871), after the Civil War. Renaugh, the youngest of eight children, and his wife, Cynthia, purchased 170 acres in the Glenmary area in 1887. They had seven children, the youngest of whom was George. The brick building he built in 1931 served as the town’s post office and also housed a general store. He married Florence Walker, the daughter of Joe Walker and Almira Robbins of Glenmary, and their only surviving son was Wilbur Watts. Wilbur’s children, retired educators Gary Watts and Janet Shoemaker, own the nearby homes that were built in 1900, 1905, and 1915. These three homes and the Watts building, together with the old Glenmary Presbyterian Church (built in 1907) and the Glenmary Missionary Baptist Church (built in 1931), are all that remains of the original buildings in old Glenmary.
DECLINE: The coal played out at Coal Hill in 1904. The virgin timber had mostly been cut by the same time, and the lumber mill was transformed into a hardwood flooring mill. However, the Hagemeyer brothers who ran the mill sold the operation and moved to the Verdun area outside Oneida, where they were instrumental in the construction of the O&W Railroad. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1927 and was not rebuilt. Two years later, the great flood of 1929 destroyed some of the remaining buildings along Davis Creek, along with a pond that had been created by damming the creek to provide water for coke production. The stock market crash occurred soon thereafter, leading to the Great Depression. Glenmary never recovered.
Long after the businesses had faded away, Glenmary remained a watering hole for the steam engines traveling the rails of the Southern Railroad. However, those steam engines were replaced by diesel engines in 1953, and the water tank was town down after that.
Mariston Chapman’s “The Happy Mountain,” published in 1928, described Glenmary like this: “Sunk between Craig (Coal Hill) and Red Hill, Glen Hazard (Glenmary) had the look of being dropped in the hollow by four winds. The General Store, The Company Store, the Hotel and two or three sagging warehouses made up the town, but it seemed crowded owing to the stacked lumber surrounding it on all sides and bounding its black cinder streets. The trains had but just room to get through it and the Hardwood Lumber Mill, belching smoke and steam beyond the depot and covering the town with grime almost equal to a city’s blocked the low valley to the north. The bridge over the creek narrowed down traffic to the company store and the four legs of the water tank took up some space. The townsmen lived in box huts hung up on the sides of the two big hills that shut in the town from east and west; while on the south, where the railroad tracks snaked through the gap to the outland places, the deserted trestles and dumps of a worked-out coal mine spread their black skeletons. By the time saddle horses had been hitched in the town’s center and wagon teams slung to trees up the slopes, there was no more than free walking space in Glen Hazard.”
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)
There’s a Pemberton Cemetery on sawmill Road that my wife and I care for ( maintain ) that we would b interested in hearing about.