Saying Goodbye to Mason's Corner

Last week the girls and I were in South Knoxville and decided to take a drive out by my grandparent's old farm on Neubert Springs Road. As we turned west off of West Ford Valley Road onto Neubert Springs, I noticed bulldozers in the field adjacent to what was once my aunt and uncle's place. It appears the field is being developed- possibly for the first time ever. I felt a tangible pang when I saw hundreds of square feet of red earth scarring the familar green of the field.

The property at the corner of Neubert Springs and what is now West Ford Valley Road has bordered our family's original 250 acres since the late 1790's. The property was originally known as "Mason's Corner", most likely because of the wedge shape formed by the borders between the Moore holdings on the west and the Anderson property immediately to the northeast. The land was owned by Abigail Mason, a widow who, with her late husband Edward, had originally homesteaded the property around the turn of the century. Neubert Springs Road was then known as Pickens Gap Road, and West Ford Valley road didn't exist at all. (When the road was built decades later, it's southern terminus would be drawn exactly along the old Mason property line as it enters Neubert Springs Road.)

The property was bought from Abigail Mason in the 1830 's by John Doyle. John built a cabin just off the road, immediately in front of where the first modern house on the right (my aunt and uncle's old place) now stands. The following is a brief paraphrase written by my father from the recollections of "Aunt" Parthenia Ford, John Doyle's oldest daughter. Parthenia, who grew up in the cabin, had described for my father the night of her elopement with a young Union officer-

"It was the night of August 31, 1867, and the John Doyle family had bedded down for the evening at their home on Pickens Gap Pike. In the upstairs bedroom, Parthenia, the Doyles’ oldest daughter, had gone to bed fully dressed under her nightgown. Parthenia was waiting for a signal. What must have seemed like an eternity passed before she heard the sound she’d been breathlessly anticipating. The sharp staccato of a horse’s hooves came to her in the still night, the sound rising as the horse neared, and then waning as the horse passed the small house at a gallop and continued down the pike toward the gap. Parthenia sprung to her feet, as she knew well the sounds of John Agee’s horse, and crossed to the outside door to the loft. Parthenia also knew full well that the horse had not made it as far as the gap, but rather had turned and was waiting with its young rider in the cemetery a scant quarter mile down from the Doyle’s home. With the aid of her younger sister Lindy, Parthenia quietly descended the outside staircase from the loft, and crossed the yard behind the home to the family’s outhouse. Once there, she quickly pulled her nightgown over her head and hung the garment on a hook on the inside of the latrine door. Then, probably without a glance backward, Parthenia ran across her father’s fields to the wooded cemetery on the other side. There her betrothed, the dashing young John Agee Ford, waited for her astride his horse. Parthenia later reported that she stood atop a tombstone as the young man scooped her up into his arms, the couple then riding off into the night, their wedding night, with all the reckless uncertainty of youth."

Now heavy equipment and digging machines are at work in the field Parthenia crossed between her father's house and the old cemetery nearly 140 years ago. A few months from now it will be rendered into office buildings or maybe a convenience store. Progress is inevitable, but I can't help but feel a stab of poignancy knowing that Mason's Corner, its fields left undeveloped through 200 years of settlement, is now undeniably lost forever.