Samuel McCammon

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 Kimberlin Heights 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 Knox County 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 Knox County 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 Kimberlin Heights for about half a mile until you reach the intersection with Sevierville Pike. (This used to be the only road heading south into Sevier County 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 “Dunn Cemetery” and immediately below that one another which read “McCammon Cemetery”. 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.

A River Runs Beneath It

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.

"Looks Like a Nice Place for a Nail Salon..."

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.

The Old Flenniken Place

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 Knox County (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 Knox County 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.