The Little Tennessee, Revisited

Tonight I drove down to the Morganton Cemetery in Loudon County. The cemetery, bearing the remains of three sets of great grandparents, is the only tangible remnant that's left of a once-thriving river port on the banks of the Little Tennessee River. Today, the town of Morganton, along with the capitol towns of the Overhill Cherokee nation, hundreds of family farms and what was arguably one of the finest free-flowing trout streams in the Eastern United States, has been completely inundated by the Tellico Lake Reservoir.

The town of Morganton was situated at the mouth of Baker's Creek on the east bank of the river. During its heydey, it was a bustling port that supplied flatboat traffic trading up and down the Tennessee River basin and beyond. My family moved into the area in the 1840's.
At the turn of the century, my great-grandfather, John Allen Anderson, was the town doctor; my second great grandfather, Reverend David M. Kerr, was a prominent local minister.

When I was young, my grandfather, Oren Kerr Anderson, used to entertain me with tales of his adventures growing up in Morganton, fishing and playing along the banks of the river. He said the sturgeon in the river were legendary, and that it was not infrequent for flatboat fishermen to land specimens weighing well over 100 pounds. He told me the men would hook the fish initially and then rig the lines to teams of mules on the boats to haul them in.
He remembered there was a spring that flowed from under the cemetery hill in town, and that the "colored folks" all refused to drink from it. My great-grandfather owned the first automobile in Morganton, and I have a photograph of my granddad sitting behind the wheel, surrounded by local girls and holding a cigar, looking all of maybe 15.

Like my grandfather before me, many of my fondest memories of childhood are also associated with that river. It was there that I learned to fly fish, often wading into the wild, dark waters before dawn with my father; warming myself in the early morning sun as the first hatch came off and the trout began to rise. There I learned the 10-2 method of the cast; how to mend my line upstream and ultimately how to effect a convincing drift with a caddis fly nymph. Some days we would catch 30 or 40 good-sized fish before 10 am; always with a wary eye upstream toward the imminent possibility that the waters would rise suddenly when the turbines in Chilhowee Dam began generating.
It was also here, along the banks of this river, that I found several beautiful arrowheads, and my father would relate to me the long and ultimately tragic history of the Overhill Cherokee; their ancient capitol of Chota located just adjacent to where we fished.
And yes, the sturgeon were still there, sometimes visible as huge and ominous looking shadows sweeping across the river bottom just ahead of our approach.

The impoundment of Tellico Lake is one of the most egregious examples of greed and political impropriety in recent East Tennessee history. Others more eloquent than myself have aptly chronicled the tragic destruction of the Little Tennessee River, and the story bears remembering.
I was 13 when the fight to save the river was finally defeated through underhanded political maneuvering by a couple of local politicians, and its loss was as deeply affecting to me as the death of a close relative.
Our family had roots there, and now nothing remains but endless lakefront developments, the cemetery and the still, deep waters of the lake.

"Martyred"

John S. Crye was the brother of my 4th great grandmother, Mahala Crye Anderson, and lived in the Alleghany Springs/Lanier section of Blount County in the mid-1800's. When I located and photographed his grave at Williamson's Chapel UMC several years ago, I noticed the headstone had the word "Martyred" inscribed adjacent to the date of death. I later did a little research and uncovered this information from the writings of the late Ed Best, one of Blount County's most noted archivists and historians. His 2nd great grandfather, George Best, was also involved in the proceedings that ultimately lead to the violent death of both men.

(From the notes of Edwin J. Best)

John Simeon Crye, familiarly called “Shimmon”, was the youngest of the three sons of John and Martha Jones Crye. He was born in Blount County on August 16, 1828. On September 30, 1857, he married Sarah Best, a daughter of George and Jane Roach Best. These neighboring families lived on the mountainous side of the county, in the watershed of Nine-Mile Creek and not far from Allegheny Springs.

John S. Crye was a farmer and fairly well-to-do for the time. In 1860, he estimated his real property to be worth $1, 800. He valued his personal property at $888. The Cryes had three children: George H. (born Sept. 28, 1858), Martha (born about 1862) and John Riley (July 13, 1863).

When the Civil War broke out, John S. Crye, then 33, chose to remain at home to tend his farm and look after his growing family. He was the last of the Crye sons. His brothers Elihu and Elias and his father and mother had all died between 1857 and 1960. The Cryes and the Bests were strong Unionists in a divided county. Three of his Best brothers-in-law saw service in the Union Army. John S. Crye was a member of the Home Guard of the Seventh District of Blount County, although he did not live in that district.

The Home Guard was an unofficial organization whose members tried to protect the property of private citizens from the depredations of roving guerrilla bands that plagued Blount County for the duration of the war. Membership in the Home Guard and display of pronounced Union sympathies often drew the attention of Pro-South bushwhackers. When these armed desperadoes were in the area, the prudent among the Unionists did their best to hide their goods and animals and took to the woods and mountains, there to hide until the danger was past.

Union soldiers made their first appearance in Blount County on Sept. 2, 1863, and for a few weeks, the loyalist citizens felt secure. On Nov. 13 General Wheeler came into the county with three brigades of Confederate cavalry and on the following day, drove out the occupying U.S. forces.

On the same day that the brief Federal hold on Blount County was broken, a band of Confederate bushwhackers appeared along Nine-Mile Creek looking for Unionist sympathizers. Many loyalists went into hiding, but not all escaped. The Bushwhackers captured two members of the Home Guard, Larkin Anderson and Lawson Fields. They next went to the home of John S. Crye, another member of the guard, who was in hiding with his father-in-law, George Best. One of the bushwhackers went to the Crye house where he found Josephine Crye, a younger sister of John S. Unmarried, she had lived with her brother since the death of their parents in 1859. The guerrilla identified himself as a friend and companion of Crye, and persuaded the innocent Josephine that her brother’s life was in grave danger. He must, he said, find him and escort him to some safer place before the bushwhackers could take him. Josephine disclosed her brother’s hiding place, and in short time, he and George Best were in the hands of the desperate outlaw band.

The three home guard members were murdered near George Best’s mill on Nine-Mile Creek. They were given permission by their captors to drink from a spring. When they were lying on their stomachs lapping up water, they were killed, each shot through the back.

George Best had three sons in the Union Army. He, too, was marked for execution. For some reason he was spared for a while. The guerrilla band took him to the Little Tennessee River and at Henry Ferry, just over the county line in Monroe County, they shot him and left his lifeless body where it fell.

John Crye was taken to Williamson Chapel Cemetery where his father, mother and two brothers had so lately been laid to rest. His children, or someone acting for them, erected a small monument to his memory. At the top of the stone is a medallion, in which is carved a single flower drooping on a broken stem. The tombstone reads:

Untimely Grave of our Dear
Father
John S. Crye
Martyred Nov. 13, 1863
aged 35 yrs. 2 mos. 27 ds.
Died for His Country’s Sake

The newly widowed Sarah Crye and her three little children were soon the victims of another cruel fortune of war. Union troops moving through Blount County in late 1863 requisitioned her grain and hay. They took 124 bushels of corn, 67 ½ bushels of wheat and almost a ton and a half of hay. A long, hard winter lay ahead, and while the government reimbursed the estate of John S. Crye in the spring of 1864, the deferred payment could not feed the family and farm animals between the death of the father and the coming of the next crop.

The perpetrators of the Nine-Mile Creek massacre were never brought to justice. A guerrilla band suspected of bushwhacking was captured at Chilhowee on the Little Tennessee River on January 12, 1864. But its members were subsequently released by military commission in Knoxville when charges against them could not be substantiated.

When the war was finally over, Sarah Crye was visited by one last tragic event. In 1867, her mother fell down the steps in front of her house with a pipe in her mouth, and sustained a fatal throat injury.

On March 19, 1868, Sarah married William A. Armstrong. They had one child, Dolly Ann, born in 1869. Sarah Armstrong died on February 14, 1899.

Simpson's Ferry

Update- Recently (February 09) received the lower picture over e-mail from a cousin. It's a sketch of the area around Simpson's Ferry and not only indicates the site of the ferry, but also the Jesse Simpson (Jr.) house. Thanks Susan!

The following is an excerpt from the writings of Katherine Baker Johnson, regarding the life of her grandfather Jesse Simpson, Jr. (Jesse was the brother of my fourth great grandfather, Sanford Simpson). These notes were written c. 1940-

In 1869 Jesse Simpson Jr. bought from John Jones 116 acres of land lying along the south bank of the Tennessee River about 1 mile east of the Knox County Courthouse. After the Knox County toll bridge was blown down in a small cyclone about 1875, Jesse Jr. established a toll ferry near his home. Jackie (John) Jones also owned a ferry which crossed the river near where the present Gay Street Bridge crosses over. For the accommodation of his customers Jesse Jr. built a large shed near his ferry. This shed had sleeping quarters at one end and a large fireplace for cooking. Usually there was a supply of free wood for fires during cold weather. The writer has seen as many as a dozen mountain wagons and their owners camping there at one time. The huge wagons with their billowy white covers and loaded with apples, chestnuts and other products of the mountain farms, were drawn by oxen. Roads were poor in those days and oxen were sure-footed and well adapted to mountain travel. Sometimes, after spending a night at the convenient Simpson Camp, enjoying its shelter and often the free firewood, the mountaineer would turn his oxen and drive off to cross the river on his competitor's ferry closer to town. This was most exasperating.

Although the exact the location of Jesse Simpson's ferry has been lost to history, one can assume from the descriptions above, as well as the current location of "Simpson Avenue" (a short stretch of road situated about halfway between Island Home and the Gay Street Bridge) that the location of the ferry was somewhere in that general area. The photo and map above probably reflect the original location of the property and ferry. Jesse Simpson's holdings in the area also included the quarry along Island Home Pike, as well as the adjacent property containing the Cunningham-Flenniken Cemetery.