The following is a link to a March 1, 2001 article from Knoxville's "Metropulse" regarding the author Cormac McCarthy's local roots. It includes an interview with my father, Jerry A. Anderson, regarding their friendship as teenagers.
"He Felt At Home Here"
Knoxville gave Cormac McCarthy the raw material of his art. And he gave it back.
By Mike Gibson
Thursday, March 1, 2001
"Summer dusk had crept long and blue and shadows risen high upon the western building faces when he came up Gay Street. He went along the shopfronts like a misplaced poacher, his eyes squirreling about and his broken clown's sneakers flapping. At Lockett's he paused to admire dusty charlatan's props in the window, small boxes of sneeze powder, cigars laced with cordite, a stamped tin inkstain... Harrogate filled with admiration at such things. He stepped slightly back to note the merchant's name and then went on. Passing under the Comer's Sports Center sign, a steep stairwell and the muted clack of balls overhead. There it is, he said. Bigger'n life." —from Suttree More here- http://www.metropulse.com/news/2001/mar/01/he-felt-home-here/
Today I drove down to Elkmont, Alabama in hopes of locating the site of the battle of Sulphur Branch Trestle, where my 2nd and 3rd great grandfathers were both captured by Forrest's cavalry in September of 1864. Even though the area was hit just yesterday by what were likely the most devastating series of tornadoes in Alabama history, the day today was gorgeous- all blue skies and sunshine. The town of Elkmont was without power but otherwise undamaged, and I found the site with no problem, the former railroad tracks now converted into a hiking trail as part of the "Rails to Trails" project. The site is located about 1.5 miles below Elkmont, and the trestle has long since been replaced by a major earth-fill.
Sulphur Trestle was also the inspiration for one of my favorite short stories- "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" that was written by Ambrose Bierce when he was stationed at the site in 1862. The hike to the site is easy and beautiful.
Below is a summary I've put together of the battle itself. As always, if there are any errors or comments, please let me know-
In the fall of 1864, the war was going badly for the south. Atlanta had fallen to Sherman on September 2, and he was using the city as a staging point for his devastating campaign across Georgia that would later come to be known as his “March to the Sea”. Sherman relied heavily on southern rail lines to move men and supplies into Atlanta from points to the north. However, one southern cavalry regiment, commanded by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, continued to play havoc with the North’s crucial supply lines across southern Tennessee and northern Alabama and Mississippi. Throughout that fall and into the winter of 1865, Forrest, a prodigious military tactician whose cavalry movements were later studied and implemented by Rommel in the deserts of North Africa, seemed to be everywhere at once; attacking small garrisons and destroying prominent railroad lines.
One such railroad, the Decatur and Nashville line, was a major conduit for moving Union troops and supplies to Atlanta and to Union positions at Chattanooga. Heavy fortifications and blockhouses had therefore been built along its route to ensure safe passage for the trains. On September 24, 1964, Forrest and his cavalry moved against fortifications at Athens, Alabama and captured the entire garrison without much difficulty. His forces then moved north along the railway toward a strategic point in the line known locally as the Sulphur Branch Trestle, located a little over a mile below the town of Elkmont.
The trestle itself was 73 feet high and over 400 feet long, and spanned a deep gorge between two ridgelines through which flowed the small creek for which it was named. It was guarded by a large fortification roughly 300 feet squared at its southern terminus, as well as by two blockhouses at either end of the bridge. This gave the troops stationed there, most from the U.S. Colored Infantry, a commanding sweep of the entire valley.
As soon as Forrest's presence in the area became known, the 9th Indiana and 3rd Tennessee Cavalries arrived at Sulphur Branch Trestle to reinforce the garrison there. The 3rd Tennessee, comprised primarily of 300 mounted soldiers from East Tennessee, was under the command of Colonel Minnis. Two of the cavalrymen of the 3rd were Green Simpson and his son, John H. Simpson; my 3rd and 2nd great-grandfathers, respectively. They had mustered into the Union army together at Knoxville two years earlier.
Upon arriving at the trestle on the morning of the 25th, Forrest ordered his cavalry under Colonel Kelly to attack the outer pickets and skirmish lines of the Union troops to drive them back into the fortification. My great uncle, John Moore, recalled that John Simpson (his grandfather) used to talk about hearing the "awful rebel yell" of the confederates as they charged down the valley toward their picket lines. The Union lines were quickly overrun by the confederates, one of the horses stepping down on John Simpson and crushing his hip. He was summarily taken prisoner as many of his fellow soldiers were driven back up the hill toward the main fortification.
During this initial cavalry attack, Forrest had moved his artillery to a number of heights that surrounded the garrison and subsequently began a devastating barrage on the Union fort. Because the fort sat at a lower point than the confederate artillery positions, the bombardment was tantamount to "shooting fish in a barrel". After the initial artillery attack was complete, over 200 Union troops lay dead within the walls of the garrison, with "relatively few wounded, so complete was the devastation". The fort's commander had been killed early on in the bombardment, and Colonel Minnis, gravely wounded himself, had assumed command and was now left to accept Forrest's terms. The trestle, blockhouses and fortifications were burned; the men taken prisoner. The officers were transferred for later parole; the enlisted men were sent south, most bound for internment at Cahaba prison camp (Castle Morgan) near Selma, Al. Probably the most disturbing element of the capitulation was that the surviving Union infantry, almost exclusively African American and most having likely been born as free men, were now sent south as slave labor to work on earthworks around Mobile.
Many of the men captured here and imprisoned at Cahaba would later perish in the explosion of the Sultana steamship on the Mississippi River in April, 1865. Even without the addition of these eventual losses, the battle of Sulphur Trestle remains the bloodiest battle of the war fought on Alabama soil.
Last night I watched the movie "Follow the River" on the Hallmark channel. This film held a particular interest for me, as I was already intimately familiar with the story that it told.
When I was young, my father served a church in the town of Radford, Virginia for nearly eight years. I essentially grew up there, as I was three when we arrived and had just turned eleven when my father later transferred to Cokesbury UMC here in Knoxville. Radford was a college town then as now, and each summer a number of the students were involved in a locally produced outdoor drama known as "The Long Way Home". The drama told the story of Mary Ingles Draper, a young woman from the New River Valley (the play was actually presented on the original site of the Drapers' farm) who, along with her two sons, was captured by Shawnee Indians, transported hundreds of miles overland to the Ohio River Valley and who later managed to escape captivity and miraculously find her way back to the New River and the Virginia settlement from which she was initially abducted.
The story of her arduous journey was vividly portrayed each night by the theater group, and the outdoor drama drew people from all over the southeast. When I was really young, I remember being particularly terrified of the gruesome characters representing the spectres of hunger and death that followed Mary throughout the latter portions of the production.
After her ordeal, Mary remained in the New River Valley with her husband and the family operated a ferry across the river, the remains of which could still be seen at the time I lived there. Mary was buried in the Radford town cemetery, which was located just adjacent to my elementary school. Her large memorial marker was constructed of the stones from the chimney of the original cabin, and I must have walked past it a hundred times on my way home, never realizing just what it was.
The movie last night was entertaining, if not entirely accurate. However, the true story of Mary Ingles Draper is as harrowing (and as interesting) as anything Hollywood could ever come up with. As for me, the version of the story that will always resonate the most holds with it memories of warm summer nights, of wild and exotic figures dancing on an outdoor stage and, just beyond, the sight of that ancient river meandering by, just as it had those 200 years earlier.
A couple of years back, there was a great article in the Metro Pulse by Knoxville historian Jack Neely. The article centered around a situation at one of the local high schools that had gained momentum and had suddenly, it seemed, become newsworthy. Apparently the African-American students at Maryville High School in Blount County had taken issue with the school's tradition of flying the "Stars and Bars" during local football games in keeping with the theme of the school's athletic program and mascot, the "Rebels". Black students described the display of the rebel flag as tantamount to the flying of a swastika, to which many white students responded by decrying the "Heritage not Hate" slogan. To them, they explained, the display of the rebel colors was simply a celebration of the heritage passed down by their forefathers. The problem, Mr. Neely noted in a wryly presented argument, was that during the American Civil War, the citizens of Blount County were overwhelmingly Unionist; by some accounts as much as 80% so.
So what made East Tennessee different? The answer is probably more topographical than ideological, at least at its root.
On June 8, 1861, just months after the fall of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the state of Tennessee, first by executive order of the pro-South governor and then subsequently by popular vote, followed many of its southern neighbors by officially declaring its independence from the United States. Mountainous eastern Tennessee, having little in common with the agrarian regions to the west and south, remained staunchly Republican and pro-Union. As the high ridges and rocky soil of the region were not conducive to the development of plantation society, the majority of the white population of eastern Tennessee (or East Tennessee, as it was officially referred to following secession) had little use for slavery. Whatever lofty ideals were assigned to the region later on by revisionist historians, the fact of the matter remains that the politics of East Tennessee, much like those of what was to become West Virginia, were forged first and foremost by the general topography of the land on which its people had settled. Following the example of western Virginia (or the State of West Virginia, as it would later be known), East Tennessee quickly moved to secede from its secessionist parent state. However, the subsequent occupation of the area by nearly 55,000 confederate troops precluded any attempt by pro-Union groups to organize.
The Unionist sentiments of the people of East Tennessee continued to flourish in the face of secessionist oppression, and Knoxville rapidly became, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the seat of a “unionist island in a sea of secessionism”.
As the conflict gained momentum, many of the men of East Tennessee were, regardless of conviction, pressed into service among the ranks of the Confederate Army. Others escaped under cover of night and made their way across the occupied Cumberland Mountains to join the Union Army in Kentucky. Edward Best, one of Blount County’s leading historians, tells of one young man from Morganton who, despite the fact that his family was pro-slavery, absconded in the middle of the night and crossed into Kentucky. His venture was funded in part by money secretly donated from among the family’s slaves.
While Knoxville and the highlands to the East were overwhelmingly Republican, the counties to the West became increasingly Democratic the farther one traveled from the mountainous regions. Some counties, such as Blount, Loudon, Monroe and McMinn spanned the topographical extremes and encompassed both jagged ridge and rolling farmland. As expected, the politics of these counties changed with the contours of the land, and to this day, though the principal ideologies of the parties have long since reversed themselves, the highland sections of the counties remain steadfastly Republican while the lowlands remain, with few exceptions, Democratic.
Our family in East Tennessee gave its fair share of young men to the conflict, the majority of whom mustered into the Union Army early in the war. The Andersons, Cryes, Simpsons, Moores, Flennikens, Edingtons and Pickens all produced soldiers for the Union, while the Kerrs, Wimberlys and a few of the McCammon line tended to support Secession. This war pitted brother against brother and father against son, and our family, like most others, broke down along lines of ideological conviction.
On the grounds of one of the facilities my office regulates in West Nashville lies a little family cemetery. The plot is not at all well maintained; many of the stones are down and many more have become nicked and broken by the large mowers used to keep the grounds cleared. The site has the potential to become completely obliterated within the next 10-20 years without some serious conservation efforts. I can't visit the facility each year without walking out to the little cemetery; if nothing else just to mark its ongoing deterioration.
Two years ago I was studying a few of the remaining intact gravestones and I noticed that several members of one family, from infants to older adults, had died within just a short period of time in the year 1878. Oddly, the groundskeeper, having similarly noted this occurrence, knew exactly why this was- in the year 1878 there was a yellow fever epidemic in the Southern United States that killed nearly 20,000 people, including, it would seem, most of the members of this one little family in West Nashville.
Since that time, I have become more keenly aware of noting common dates of death in cemeteries and comparing them with major epidemics in the United States. The most common, of course, is the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed nearly 500,000 people in the U.S. and 20 million worldwide. I've seen evidence of the heartache wrought by that particular outbreak in several cemeteries I've visited over the past couple of years.
I believe as a nation, we tend to forget that things like this happen; unfortunately often in relatively common cycles. Right now, faced by another potential pandemic, we are reminded that the world is an uncertain place- yellow fever, cholera, typhoid; even polio has recently made a reappearance. Hopefully, the swine flu epidemic will pass quickly and serve as nothing more than a sobering experience for our health care communities. Here's hoping, at least...
Recently I received this photo of what is widely held to be the pioneer cabin of Jesse Simpson, Sr.; early Knoxville settler, patriarch of the Simpson clan here and my 5th great grandfather. As the photo was taken by Ms. Edna Guilford, an impeccable researcher and an almost unimpeachable source for this line of the family, I have no real doubts that the photo is accurately identified. Ms. Guilford passed a way a few years ago, but her lifetime of research makes for a pretty incredible legacy. The following are the notes I wrote on Jesse Simpson, Sr. and his family a number of years ago.
“Jesse Simpson Sr. and family removed from near Saltville, Montgomery County, Virginia, early in 1800 settling in Knox County Tennessee on the south side of the French Broad River about five miles east of Knoxville.”
So begins Ms. Katherine Baker-Johnson’s brief narrative of the life of Jesse Simpson, Sr., the fourth great grandfather of Jerry A. Anderson.Despite the fact that Saltville, Virginia, is actually about one hundred miles southwest of MontgomeryCounty, and that several of the Simpson children were obviously born in Virginia six or seven years after the date she gives for the family’s arrival in Knox County, KBJ is relatively accurate in her introduction.It is true that Jesse Simpson, Sr., (born May 19, 1772; died May 20, 1850), and his wife, Mary Griffin, (born February 10, 1772, died August 20, 1841) were the first of our Simpson line to reside in KnoxCounty.However, there is a great deal of discrepancy over when the family actually arrived in KnoxCounty.KBJ gives the year as 1800,the published obituary for Jesse Simpson, Jr., states that the family arrived here in 1818, and information contained in the 1850 US census indicates anything from 1806-1807to 1817. Edna G. Simpson (who has written the most exhaustive compilation on the Simpson family) sets the date of arrival sometime between 1817 and 1819.I am therefore assuming that the family probably did arrive here sometime around 1817-1819.The first real estate transaction involving Jesse Simpson did not take place until 1831, so the KnoxCounty deeds do not lend any real clarification on the subject.
There is also some confusion regarding the family’s location prior to settling in KnoxCounty.Based on the wills and deeds of Montgomery County, Virginia, it is obvious that Jesse’s father, John Simpson, lived in MontgomeryCounty for a time with his family.However, according to Edna Simpson, Jesse and his family were living in Pittsylvania County, Virginia at the time John Simpson’s will was probated.(Pittsylvania County is about thirty miles southeast of Roanoke, which is a good ways from Montgomery County.)Both Edna Simpson and KBJ state that Jesse and his family moved from near Saltville in Montgomery County, but, as I have previously stated, this is very much an either/or situation.As Saltville is a pretty specific location, I would assume that, in all likelihood, this is where the family removed from just prior to settling in KnoxCounty.(KBJ may very well just have assumed that Saltville was in MontgomeryCounty.Saltville is actually in SmythCounty, about an hour’s drive from the Tennessee border.)All of that said, the following is the extent of the information I have on Jesse and Mary G. Simpson that is reasonably reliable.
Jesse Simpson was the son of John and Hannah Simpson of Montgomery County, Virginia. KBJ claims that this John Simpson is probably the one who married Hannah Roberts in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 1862.John reportedly died in Montgomery County in 1786, but his will was not probated until January 31, 1800.The actual deed was presented in Halifax County, and bore the signatures of John’s eleven children as well as that of their mother, Hannah Simpson.ed)
Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee, KnoxCounty Edition, page 1050, states that this family of Simpsons came to Virginia from New England, but KBJ refutes this assertion.She does not, however, offer her own conclusions regarding the origin of the family, other than those already mentioned.
On December 22, 1791, Jesse married Mary Griffin in Halifax County, Virginia.This county lies just to the east of Pittsylvania County, where the family was apparently living at the time John Simpson’s will was probated.Seven of the couple’s ten children were born in Virginia, prior to the family’s relocation to the Tennessee frontier.
The Simpsons were apparently in KnoxCounty by 1819, and did settle on the south side of the French BroadRiver, in relative proximity to the present-day Island Home Community in Knoxville.Jesse’s land holdings appear to have been fairly substantial.The family attended Lebanon Presbyterian Church, which was, prior to its accidental destruction by fire in the early 1900’s, situated just a few hundred yards northeast of the “fork” of the Tennessee River (actually the confluence of the French Broad and Holston Rivers), and is the oldest church in Knox County.According to family tradition, Jesse feared for his children and their families having to cross the river in all types of weather to attend the church (Lebanon was the only Presbyterian church in the area at the time), and therefore donated a tract of his land south of the river for the chartering of a new church, New Prospect Presbyterian.I have not been able to find anything in New Prospect’s records or in the Knox County wills and deeds to irrefutably substantiate this claim, but, as at least two of Jesse’s sons, Matthew and Deamarcus, were, along with their families, charter members at New Prospect, and, as the church was originally located in close proximity to the Simpsons’ homestead, I have no reason to doubt that this is the case, or that I will be able to substantiate this claim in the future.Information contained in the historical compilation “Faith of Our Fathers, Living Still: New Prospect Presbyterian Church” reflects that the church was chartered in response to an incident in which several parishioners of Lebanon Church were drowned when their boat capsized in a storm while crossing the Tennessee River on their way to services.This account seems to at least partially substantiate the claims by the family regarding Jesse’s involvement in the chartering of this particular house of worship.
Jesse died May 20, 1850, in Knox County.The 1850 Mortality Schedule lists his cause of death as “unknown”.Jesse was interred alongside his beloved wife, Mary, and their marker still stands in the little churchyard as a testament of their life together.The subsequent estate settlement, dated July, 1850 and currently on file at the Knox County Archives essentially identifies Jesse’s son, Matthew, as the administrator of the estate. The actual record is nearly indecipherable due to the penmanship of the clerk and the age of the document, but I have included a copy of this document elsewhere in this compilation.
"This was the orchard road, red and quiet in the early sun, winding from the mountain's spine with apple trees here along the road and shading it, gnarled and bitten trees yet retaining still a kept look and no weeds growing where they grew. Farther up was a side road that went off among the trees, shade-dappled, with grass as fine as silk in the ruts. It went to the spray pit, a concrete tank set in the ground that had once been used to mix insecticide. This six years past, it had served as a crypt which the old man kept and guarded. Passing it now he remembered how he had been coming up from the hollow with a gallon bucket, when a boy and a girl, neither much more than waist high to him, had rounded the curve. The stopped when they saw him and it took him a while, coming toward them with his pail, to see that they were scared, huge-eyed and winded with running. They looked ready to bolt so he smiled, said Howdy to them, that it was a pretty day. And them, there in the road, balanced and poised for flight like two wild things, the little girl's legs brightly veined with briar scratches and both their mouths blue with berry stain. As he came past, she began to whimper and the boy, holding her hand, jerked at her to be still, he standing very straight in his overall pants and striped jersey. They edged to the side of the road and turned, watching him go by.
He started past, then half-turned and said: You'ns find where the good berries is at?
The boy looked up at him as though he hadn't been watching him all the time and said something which cracked in his voice and which the old man couldn't make out. The girl gave up and wailed openly and so he said:
Well now, what's wrong with your little sister? You all right, honey? Did you'ns lose your berry bucket? He talked to them like that. After a while the boy began to blubber too a little and was telling him about back in the pit. For a few minutes he couldn't figure out what was the pit and then it came to him and he said:
Well, come on and show me. I reckon it ain't all this bad whatever it is. So they started up the road, although it was pretty plain they didn't want to go and when they turned down the road to the spray-pit, the boy stopped, still holding the little girl's hand and not crying anymore but just watching the man. He said he didn't want to go, but for him, the old man, to go on and see. So he told them to wait right there and it wasn't nothing.
He saw the berry pails first, one of them turned over and the blackberries spilled out in the grass. A few feet beyond was the concrete pit, and and even before he go to it he caught a trace of odor, sour...a little like bad milk. He stepped onto the cracked rim of the pit and looked down into the water, the furred green top of it quiet and touched with light. Sticks and brush poked up at one corner. The smell was stronger but other than that there was nothing. He walked along the edge of the pit. Down the slope, among the apples, some jays were screaming and flashing in the trees. The morning was well on and it was getting warm. He walked halfway around catching his step along the narrow sandy concrete. Coming back, he glanced down at the water again. The thing seemed to leap at him, the green face leering and coming up through the lucent rotting water with eyeless sockets and green fleshless grin, the hair dark and ebbing like seaweed.
He tottered for a moment on the brink of the pit then staggered off with a low groan and locked his arms about a tree trying to fight down the coiling in his stomach. He didn't go back to look again. He got the berry pails and went back to the road, but the children weren't there...."
The passage above is from Cormac McCarthy's 1965 novel, "The Orchard Keeper". The book, McCarthy's first published work, tells the story of an old recluse living on the south side of Brown's Mountain in South Knox County. The scene above describes the old man's discovery of a rotting corpse mired in a concrete pit in some woods near the orchard road. This scenario may have been particularly easy for McCarthy to put to paper, as it was based on an actual event.
Cormac (Charlie at the time) was friends with my father growing up in South Knoxville, and my father often told me the story of how early one evening, after an afternoon spent squirrel hunting on the south side of the mountain, he and Cormac and two other boys were crossing the ridge heading back home when they smelled something putrid. As they walked on through the gathering dusk, they came to an old concrete pit at the end of a pull-off from the main orchard road. It quickly became apparent that this was the source of the smell, and as they peered down in the half light of the gathering dusk, they could just make out a set of white ribs poking up through the fetid water at the bottom. My father said that once they realized what they had discovered, the boys became terrified and ran all the way home.
The following day curiosity got the best of my father and the others and they returned to the scene to look again at their gruesome discovery. When they got to the pit, they immediately realized the "corpse" they had seen the night before was not human, but rather the carcass of an unfortunate pig that had either fallen or been thrown down into the pit and, having obviously starved to death, had been decomposing there for some time.
When I was a child, my father and I would often climb Brown's Mountain and he would point out the various places from all the boyhood stories he frequently shared with me at bedtime. One of my favorite destinations was always the pit. I remember feeling a particular sense of dread as we neared its edge, as if it were completely plausible that something much more disturbing than the carcass of a pig might actually be lurking there, peering up at us with rheumy eyes from down in the mire.
This past weekend, my oldest daughter and I climbed Brown's Mountain with Dr. Wes Morgan, a preeminent local authority on McCarthy and his work, for the purpose of helping him locate and map the location of the pit. After arriving at the crest, we bushwhacked through undergrowth and brambles for what seemed like an hour in what I was sure had been the general vicinity of the site. Finally Dr. Morgan himself managed to stumble upon it.
The pit was much as I remembered it, only much drier in the bottom now that a majority of the tree cover around it has disappeared. An irregular concrete shelf on one side immediately brought back a vision of box turtles lined up above the muck, each resigned to live the remainder of its days in its new, and suddenly very limited, green and fetid world.
After all of that climbing and bushwhacking, it might have been a pretty anti-climactic discovery- an old insecticide pit, all of seven feet deep, dappled in sunshine and slowly eroding back into the Tennessee red clay. But for just a moment as I watched my own daughter fearlessly walking along the rim, I was an eight year old boy again, holding my father's hand as I stepped out onto the edge of the concrete wall for a glance down; staring deep into the abyss of my own childhood fears.
This past Sunday, my oldest daughter and I decided to drive down to Blount County and attend services at Williamson's Chapel United Methodist Church. The church is small, and its current congregation appears to be a fraction of what it once might have been, but the people were gracious and kind, and the service really warmed our hearts. Part of what made the service so meaningful, at least to me, was that this was the same church my 3rd great grandfather, Allen Anderson, began attending with his family in the early 1840's. His oldest son, Thomas, grew up and fell in love with the daughter of another family within the church, and they eventually married and raised their own family while members there. There's something particularly poignant about being able to worship, not just alongside good people, but also among the echoes of those who shared a common faith and whose hearts beat with a common blood nearly 170 years ago.
Last October, my daughter and I were driving down Martin Mill Pike and as we passed the almost imperceptible break in foliage that represented the McCarthys' old driveway, we paused for just a moment; debating as we often had, about parking and sneaking onto the property to have a look. However, it was going on dusk (and we didn't have a camera) and so we passed. I guess we'll never again get that opportunity.
It's ironic that the old McCarthy home was just recently listed among Knox Heritage's "Fragile 15" endangered historical homes. The cause of the blaze is still unknown, but is likely attributed to indigent folks living on the property.
Back in college, I was challenged by a literature professor I really admired to find some epic piece of literature whose prose seemed almost unreadable, and then suffer my way through it from beginning to end. The merits of such an exercise have been lost to time (at least in my mind) but I assumed at the time that it was the literary equivalent of learning to drive on a straight-shift car. The piece I settled on was James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". Aside from the requisite arcane prose, I was attracted to the work by Walker Evan's striking photographs of depression-era migrant families.
Agee's erudite writing offers an interesting juxtaposition with the subject matter; those considered least in an already thoroughly-damaged American society. I devoured the book, reading and re-reading some pages to ensure I understood exactly what Agee was trying to convey to my young mind. Agee's prose, like Cormac McCarthy's, like James Fennimore Cooper's, like Fyodor Dostoevsky's... makes the reader sweat for those pearls of wisdom it contains, but the effort is never wasted. Such a book is as much a glimpse into the mind of a brilliant soul as it is a treatise on the subject matter itself. Recently I picked up a new edition of the book and began to read it over again. Twenty years later, the book still holds profound magic, for which I'm thankful.
Last night, I was invited by a friend to go to a private screening of Ross Spear's 1980 documentary Agee, which traces Agee's life from the sudden death of his father here in Knoxville when he was six years old (later chronicled in his post-humously published autobiography "A Death in the Family") up through his career as a film critic and contributing editor to Fortune and Time magazines, to his authoring of the script for "The African Queen" just before his death. The documentary, still on the original 16 mm film reels, was premiered at the Bijou theater upon its release in 1980, and hasn't been shown publicly since that year. Presenting the film last night was David Shepard, owner of Blackhawk Films and founding member of the American Film Institute. It was an intense experience.
Forever haunted by the sudden, tragic loss of his father at such a young age, Agee spent his life walking a fine line between obsession and suicide. He ultimately died of a heart attack in a New York cab at the age of 45. The Pulitzer Prize was awarded posthumously to "A Death in the Family", a distinction Agee now shares with fellow Knoxvillians Paul Y. Anderson, whose writings exposed the Teapot Dome scandal (and who was similarly haunted by the tragic death of his father at a young age and who ultimately committed suicide at age 45) and Cormac McCarthy, who fortunately does not seem to share this bent toward self-destruction, and who we therefore hope to have around for a long time to come.
Took this photo of the old Samuel McCammon House on Riverside Drive yesterday. Samuel served as the sheriff for Knox County from 1838 through 1850. During his tenure as sheriff, the family reportedly resided in a space either above or adjacent to the county jail. This federal style home was built around the time he left that office, and is located on what was earlier the site of James White's second Knoxville home. Samuel later served several years in the Tennessee state legislature, representing Knox and Sevier Counties.
Samuel was the son of Thomas McCammon, who immigrated from Northern Ireland around the turn of the nineteenth century. Thomas married Samuel's mother, Sarah Pickens, around 1805 in Sevier County, Tn. (Samuel's sister, Letitia McCammon, was my 3rd great grandmother.)
Contrary to information contained on the Knox County Sheriff's website, Samuel died in Nashville on April 1, 1865 of a bowel obstruction. He was returned to Knoxville and buried at the old Dunn Cemetery. An article written several years ago in the Knoxville News Sentinel (which I have cut out but can't find in the archives online to link to) alleges the house on Riverside Drive, now the site of the Knoxville Gas Company, is actually haunted, presumably by Samuel's ghost.
Samuel, and his wife, Martha Boyd Cowan, are both buried at the Dunn Cemetery, along with Samuel's parents and a number of other members of the McCammon family. The cemetery itself is in terrible shape, and is in grave danger of disappearing altogether.
The following are notes I took regarding the cemetery in 1999 and again in 2005:
This cemetery, alternately referred to as either the “Dunn” or “McCammon” cemetery, is located in South Knoxville, just off of Sevierville Pike in the KimberlinHeights section.The cemetery was originally affiliated with the “Old Salem Presbyterian Church” which has long since disappeared.The cemetery itself is in deplorable shape; overgrown with weeds with many of the headstones broken or missing.
Interred at this site are Thomas McCammon and his wife, Sarah Pickens.Thomas was, according to existing records, born June 12, 1768 in Ireland, and is the first of the old McCammon line to reside in South Knoxville.Sarah Pickens, the daughter of John and Letitia Hannah Pickens, was born December 11, 1784 in Virginia, and died in February of 1877.Thomas and Sarah were the parents of Letitia McCammon Anderson, who married Allen G. Anderson in KnoxCounty in 1835.They are my third great grandparents.
Also interred at this site are Samuel McCammon and his wife, Martha Boyd Cowan.Samuel was the youngest son of Thomas and Sarah McCammon.He was born May 9, 1808 and died April 1, 1865.Martha died November 4, 1876.Samuel was sheriff of KnoxCounty from 1838-1850, and his old family manse still stands on the north side of the Tennessee River at 1715 Riverside Drive.
Directions to the Cemetery:
Driving south on Chapman Highway, pass under the John Sevier Highway overpass and drive approximately one mile to Kimberlin Heights road on the left.Turn left and follow KimberlinHeights for about half a mile until you reach the intersection with Sevierville Pike.(This used to be the only road heading south into SevierCounty from Knoxville).Turn left onto Sevierville Pike and drive about ¾ of a mile until you see Rollen road on your left.Turn left onto Rollen and then immediately right onto Deadrick road.The cemetery is located in a patch of woods immediately to the left on Deadrick after the turn.(There is a run-down home with some very vicious-looking dogs just to the left of the cemetery.)
The last time I visited this site, the cemetery still had a sign on its dilapidated old gate that read “DunnCemetery” and immediately below that one another which read “McCammonCemetery”.The graves for Thomas and Sarah are located to the left after passing through the gate, right next to a big tree that's split up the middle.The headstone for Thomas is down, and was recently (April, 2005) located about 20 feet from the grave.The footstone bearing the initials “T M” is still standing.Sarah’s grave is marked with a field stone which has become unreadable. The graves for Samuel and Martha McCammon are located just to the right of Thomas and Sarah’s, and are still clearly marked.
Note- On April 14, 2005, I revisited this site; nearly 7 years after my last visit.While the cemetery “gate” is no longer there, the condition of the cemetery itself has thankfully changed very little.During this visit, I managed not only to locate the graves of Samuel and Martha Cowan McCammon but also the headstone of Thomas McCammon himself, which was down and partially covered by undergrowth a ways from the original grave, but still intact.The dates on the tombstone match the written record of Thomas’ dates of birth and death.
Also interred at this site is (moving right from the graves of Thomas and Sarah) Mary McCammon, born December 3, 1831 and died March 9, 1832.Mary was an infant daughter of Samuel and Martha C. McCammon.Two other children, Samuel H. McCammon and Thomas J. McCammon, are buried side by side just a few feet away.The graves of Samuel McCammon and Martha Cowan McCammon are at the extreme right of the line, very close to the road.
This past week, I received an e-mail from a family friend stating that TVA was doing repair work on the embankments along the Chilhowee Dam, and the agency had lowered the level of Chilhowee Lake down to an unprecedented level; the lowest since the reservoir's impoundment in 1957.
Chilhowee is the third in a series of reservoirs daisy-chaining down what was once the Little Tennessee River Valley. The "Little T" drained the northwestern portion of the Smoky Mountains, and its valley, once home to Woodland Indians and wooly mammoth, would become the seat of the Cherokee Nation, then a thriving pioneer river economy and finally (sadly) host to a series of gated lakefront communities.
The Little Tennessee River didn't die of natural causes; it was strangled by a series of dams, beginning near its headwaters with the huge Fontana reservoir and then slowly proceeding downstream, both chronologically and topographically, along the valley. The final death knell sounded in 1978, with the political maneuverings that ultimately authorized the completion of the Tellico Project at the mouth of the river.
The Chilhowee Reservoir itself was impounded in 1957. My father, who had fly-fished the area for years, used to talk about how he and my mother would take my older siblings up above the dam on weekends to watch the water level slowly progress upstream, to finally inundate the beautiful valley. By the time I came along and was old enough to fish Chilhowee, the still waters of the lake had defined the area for well over 20 years.
To me, the lake was always striking, with long steep ridges flanking both sides of the valley from the Caulderwood Dam all the way down to Chilhowee. The reservoir, while not a particularly wide or deep one in comparison to some others in the region, was a lake nonetheless and my father and I fished it regularly in my grandfather's old motorboat.
When we would drive along its northern shore toward our favorite boatramp at the upper end of the lake, my father would sometimes stop the car and stare out across the waters, quietly humming to himself as his mind traveled back to days long past; days spent wading the former river's icy waters as a young man in search of elusive mountain trout. He would point to a spot about midway across the lake from the boat ramp and talk about how, in the summer of 1952, he had hooked and then chased a huge rainbow trout downstream across a series of shoals before ultimately landing the monster a few hundred yards below. He would always describe that struggle as a pinnacle moment in a lifetime of avid fly-fishing, and the tale would never fail to prime me for a long day on the water.
Today, we took the girls and drove up to have a look at the lake. The day was flawless, the October sky bright and blue; the weather balanced precariously between summer warmth and autumn cool. We stopped first just below the mouth of Abram's Creek, also the former site of the Cherokee town of Chilhowee (for which the dam and lake are named). The reservoir level was substantially lowered and the waters had receded toward the center of the valley, although the calm surface still very much resembled a lake. As we descended an adjacent boat ramp, we soon found ourselves standing on ground that, at least until these last few weeks, had not been trodden upon in over 50 years. My wife and daughters had a great time picking through a cross-section of trash spanning five decades, and exploring the formerly submerged foundations of several old buildings. One such site, clearly a former gas station, still sported an impressive mound of bottle caps out back, thousands of them, with mid-20th century versions of Coke, Pepsi, Fanta and other company logos still clearly visible beneath the rust.
We then drove northward along the river, following the route my father and I had driven so often when I was a boy. As we progressed up the valley and the terrain steepened, the water level began to drop markedly. When we finally arrived at the old boat ramp on the upper end of the lake, the water was clearly confined to the original river bed. The girls and I again descended using the ramp for access, and soon found ourselves traversing a wide field of cracked and drying lake mud. We crossed the former road bed and passed an old fence row (still standing) both formerly buried beneath 25 feet of water. Closer to the river, we began to see green grass sprouting from the mud, even though the area had been exposed to air and sunlight for only a few short weeks.
And then, a miraculous thing happened- having slogged through the dried silt and mud for a couple of hundred yards we were suddenly standing on the former banks of the river, looking out over a crystal clear mountain stream and the long shoals my father had so poignantly described to me when I was a boy. When I looked at the clear cool waters, the bottom strewn with the same round stones one would find in any Smoky Mountain trout stream, I felt realization and elation dawning on me simultaneously. The river wasn't dead. It was still here, looking probably identical to what it had when my father waded its crystalline waters for the last time over 50 years ago. We each picked our way across the remaining mud and found ourselves standing on the river bottom. We watched as a father and daughter (and a big black lab) made their way across the stream toward us, having waded to the opposite shore and now back. The girls and I each stooped to pick up a few smooth river stones, and then slowly made our way upstream another several hundred yards. We finally stopped at a large bend in the valley, and I looked across to the mouth of a small tributary stream where my best friend and I had camped, my grandfather's boat loaded with several cases of beer, for an entire week in the spring of 1983. We had camped at the waterline then, and now I noted the spot was about 15 feet above the river bottom.
It was getting late (and cold) and the girls and I finally turned to walk back across the mudfields toward the old road bed that led back down the valley. As I turned, I noticed a light hatch coming off the water in the late afternoon sun, and in a deep pool among the shoals, a trout rose and took his evening meal. I thought of my father and of his love for this place. As for the river, it was still there; and it would always be there, silently awaiting the inevitable erosion of man's conventions and patiently contemplating its own return. That revelation has warmed my heart beyond words.
When I was younger, even just 20 or 25 years ago, there were a number of beautiful old historic homes around West Knoxville. Kingston Pike in particular offered a number of such sites stretching westward from the antebellum Baker-Peters Home (at Peters Road) intermittently along the highway, past Lovell Road and finally continuing on out past Campbell Station toward Lenoir City. I can think of at least 17 historic homes along this particular stretch of road that existed then. Today, there are less than half that number; most have been razed to make room for ever-expanding West Knoxville developments.
I read in a Metro Pulse article back in the early nineties that "Knoxville has no sense of itself" (or, as a friend of mine used to say, Knoxville never met a strip-mall it didn't like). The MP comment really resonated with me at the time, and today offers as good an explanation as any why so many of our historic homes are now either gone, or their once stately lawns marred by gas stations and fast food restaurants.
Four or five years ago, my oldest daughter and I were driving down Walker Springs Road and I drove her up to look at the old Thomas Walker estate. It was Mr. Walker's property for which the road was named, and the location of the house must have once offered a commanding view of the adjacent bottom land. The property is located less than a half mile from the site of Cavett's Station, and the Walker home was built within a generation or two of the terrible massacre there. At the time we visited the home, I was surprised to see it was for sale. The brochure stated that the home was built in 1834, was registered on the National Register of Historic Homes and was listed at 259k (which I considered a steal for such an important piece of Knoxville history). After that day, I often fantasized (as history geeks will do) about purchasing the home, stocking it with period-piece antiques, and living the remainder of my days there, smoking a pipe and quietly conversing with whatever Walker ghosts still roamed around the property.
Over the past three or four years, there has been some restructuring of Walker Springs Road, and a connector has been completed from the interstate to route traffic in a much more direct fashion toward Middlebrook Pike and points west. Last week I decided to veer off the connector and take a drive by the old home, just to see how it was faring. However, when I arrived at the site, the home was completely gone, the property graded flat. I sat there in disbelief, unable to comprehend what would possess someone to completely eradicate a landmark of Knoxville's history that had stood proudly for over 170 years. However, it became apparent when I turned and saw the new complex of cookie cutter houses that had just gone in across the street. The estate was gone because the property was suddenly now marketable to some faction of West Knoxville developers.
I am consistently reading articles in local papers in which prominent Knoxvillians, developers included, lament their inability to reshape Knoxville, particularly downtown Knoxville, in the progressive molds of Asheville, NC and more recently, Chattanooga. To me, the reasons are obvious- metropolitan planning in those towns has embraced the local history; protecting, renovating and developing that heritage until it adds texture and a sense of place to the very essence of the towns themselves. In other words, planning that places an emphasis on historic preservation offers a town its soul. And as long as Knoxville is willing to tear down an antebellum mansion or pave over a cemetery in order to create space for another plastic development, we are in very grave danger of losing ours.
I recently received this picture over e-mail from a friend who is also a Flenniken descendant. It's a professionally tinted photo of the "Old Franklin Place" as it was known in the early twentieth century, when the building was already well over a hundred years old. The cabin, located on old Maryville Pike near Mt. Olive Church, was originally built by the Flenniken family c. 1772 (Matthew Franklin, who had most recently lived in the house with his family, was the great grandson of Samuel and Mary Flenniken). As noted in the attached article from the Knoxville News Sentinel, the cabin burned in 1922.
The following narrative is from the book "The DeArmond Families of America" and provides some detail about the life of Samuel Flenniken, my 6th great grandfather and the first of our Flenniken line to reside here in Knox County-
“Samuel Flenniken…was born July 19, 1746 in Pennsylvania.He moved with his parents to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, about 1760 where he grew to manhood, and married.He undoubtedly engaged in farming, and must have lived on his father’s lands since no grants there in his name have been found.
He became a member of the North Carolina Militia and rose rapidly until he attained the rank of captain.He served under Major Davies and participated in the Battle of Hanging Rock, South Carolina, on August 6, 1780, during the Revolutionary War, when Colonel Sumter, with 800 American militia engaged an equal number of loyalists under Major Carden.The Americans were first victorious but were later driven back with considerable losses after inflicting casualties of 269 among the loyalists.For this service, Samuel was recompensed by the State of North Carolina.
Between 1784 and 1787, his bother-in-law, John Dermond, migrated to Greene County, one of the western counties of the state, and settled on a grant of land he secured from the governor of North Carolina, located at the confluence of the Tennessee and Little Rivers, in what soon became Knox County, Tennessee.In 1792, Samuel followed him to Knox County, Tennessee, and settled south of the Tennessee River, on the road to Maryville.He was then 46 years old, and all of his children but the two youngest had been born in North Carolina.
On April 21, 1798, Samuel purchased from John Conner of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, for $500 500 acres of land “lying in KnoxCounty (late in the county of Greene) on the south side of Clinch River, including the mouth of Conner’s Mill Shoal Creek, lying along the river.”This tract had been conveyed to John Conner by North Carolina grant number 624, dated August 23, 1788, being registered in Greene County, North Carolina, on September 21, 1788.
In 1793, Samuel brought suit in the Knox County Court against John Sevier [first governor of the State of Tennessee] and Adam Meek, Executors for the estate of Isaac Taylor, for non-performance of covenant.After having the suit passed to several succeeding courts, Samuel won the action at court on January 27, 1795, and was awarded a verdict of $100.He was an active participant in the affairs of the county, and in 1795 served as Grand Jury foreman; in 1796 as a Superior Court juror, and as a justice of the peace; in 1797, he was appointed tax assessor, and in 1803 became elected judge.
He was listed in the 1806 Tax List for Knox County, Tennessee, with 875 acres,1 white poll, and 1 slave.He was shown in the 1807 list as Samuel Flenniken, Sr., with 875 acres and 1 poll.He was shown in the 1808 list as Samuel Flenniken, Sr., with 1029 acres of land, 1 poll and 1 slave.In the 1809 list, he was listed as Samuel Flannigan with 923 acres, 1 poll and 1 slave.The 1810 list records Samuel Flanikan with 423 acres, 1 poll, 1 slave and lists him again with 500 acres of land.The 1811 list shows him as Samuel Flenniken, Sr., with the same holdings, and in the 1812 list, he was shown as Samuel Flannikin with the same holdings.Since he died in 1811, the 1811 and 1812 tax lists must have been intended to cover his estate.
On June 9, 1809, Samuel secured from the State of Tennessee Land grant number 601, for 423 acres of land, located in KnoxCounty and south of the Tennessee River, contiguous to holdings of William McClellen and I. W. Flanigan (sic).This land apparently lay along the old Maryville Road, beyond present day Vestal, a suburb of Knoxville.
