Editable Texts from the First Edition of
Beersheba Springs
150 Years 1833 - 1983
A History and a Celebration
Written and Edited by
Margaret Brown Coppinger
Herschel Gower
Samuel H. Howell
Georgianna D. Overby
With the Assistance of
Numerous Contributors
Beersheba Springs Historical Society
Beersheba Springs, Tennessee
1983
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments...... 5
EDITORS to READERS...... 6
Cathedral Canyon, July 3, 1982...... 7
A General History...... 8
The Hotel: A Fortress that Shrugged at Doom...... 16
How We Acquired Beersheba Springs Assembly...... 19
Beersheba Springs On The National Register...... 21
The University of the South and Beersheba Springs...... 23
Schools, Churches, and the Library...... 24
Beersheba: A History and a Personal View...... 26
Savage Gulf State Natural Area...... 43
The Springs in and Near Beersheba...... 45
The Cliffs: The Armfield-Glasgow Cottage...... 47
The Turner Cottage...... 53
The Mitchell Cottage...... 59
The Burch Cottage...... 62
Cagle-Taylor Cottage...... 64
Nanhaven...... 66
The White House ...... 77
Tother House...... 84
Lige Walker's Mule...... 87
The Howell Cottage...... 89
Bishop Otey's Cottage...... 95
Hemlock Hall...... 97
The Eve Cottage...... 100
Lovers Leap...... 102
Hege-Hunerwadel House...... 104
Morgan Lodge...... 106
Uncle Nathan's Cottage...... 108
Kenner-Ferriss Cottage...... 109
Dan: The Plumacher Place...... 111
Captain Plumacher and The Swiss Colony...... 112
Cockrill Cottage: the Middle Hege Cottage...... 114
The Bunk House...... 116
Nelson-Hopper Cottage...... 117
Douglas Brown Cottage...... 118
Bean Home...... 119
Indian Rock: The Mary Means Cottage...... 120
Benhame...... 122
The Armistead Cottage...... 125
Vallée Noire...... 126
The Pull of the Past...... 128
Cabin in the Pines...... 130
Ten Pin Cottage...... 131
Cagle-Tate Cottage...... 132
Mason-Fahery-Rogers Cottages...... 134
Liza and Bill Perry...... 136
Backbone Inn...... 137
Stewart Cottage...... 138
Wholemeal: The Andrews Cottage...... 139
A Poet in Residence...... 144
Beersheba Springs’ Centennial Celebration...... 146
Randal W. McGavock and Beersheba’s Heyday...... 148
A Lady’s Man Before the War...... 150
The Diary of Mrs. Bettie Ridley Blackmore: July 1863...... 152
War Times: 1861-1865...... 157
The Howells Come to Stay: Recollections, 1870-1922 ...... 159
The Mountain from Afar: A 50-Year Retrospective...... 164
Life Was Young at Beersheba...... 167
Cakewalks and Charades...... 170
As The Century Turned...... 172
A Young Doctor at the Hotel...... 177
Field List of Tennessee Birds...... 180
The Trabue Families at Beersheba...... 181
Cousin to Cousin: Two Boyhoods Revisted...... 189
Girl’s Simple Pleasures in the 1930s...... 194
Hazards of the Road...... 196
Summer Cloudburst...... 198
Off on A Hike: July 21, 1922...... 201
Hard Times in a One-Room Schoolhouse...... 202
Pond Springs School in the 30s...... 203
Recollections: Personal and Handed-Down...... 207
Beersheba, Off-Season...... 213
Indian Grave Sites...... 216
Uncle Bill Perry and the Hams...... 218
Brief Snippets...... 220
The Medicinal Spring Water...... 220
Monteagle, Meet John Dillinger...... 220
To the Memory of Beersheba Cain...... 221
Praise from England...... 221
Elder Dykes...... 221
Whimsical Observations...... 222
FIRST FAMILIES...... 223
Anglin...... 224
Argo...... 224
Armfield...... 224
Barnes...... 224
Bess...... 225
Bouldin...... 226
Brown...... 226
Cagle and Countess...... 228
Coppinger...... 229
Creighton...... 231
Dugan...... 231
Dykes...... 232
Fults...... 233
Green...... 233
Hege...... 234
Gross ...... 234
Hill...... 235
Hillis...... 237
Hobbs...... 237
Killian...... 238
King...... 239
Knight...... 240
Lankford...... 241
Layne...... 241
Lockhart...... 241
McCarver...... 241
Morton...... 242
Northcutt...... 242
Nunley...... 243
Roberts...... 245
Smartt...... 246
Savage...... 246
Scruggs...... 247
Smith...... 248
Stokes...... 249
Tate...... 249
Thompson...... 251
Walker...... 252
Wanamaker...... 253
Whitman...... 253
Woodlee...... 254
Poems by Leonard Tate...... 256
Acknowledgments
The editors have not attempted to rewrite or revise basic works published earlier about Beersheba Springs. We note particularly the major contributions of Blanche Spurlock Bentley, Sketches of Beersheba Springs and the Chickamauga Trace (1928; long out of print); Isabel Howell, John Armfield of Beersheba Springs (1943; reprinted by the Beersheba Springs Historical Society, 1983); two Bicentennial Histories, 1976, published by the Grundy County Herald and a special edition of the Warren County News (October, 1979) edited by Georgianna D. Overby; finally, Grundy County, an excellent history by James L. Nicholson, 1982. The reader is advised to approach our volume knowing that we are not encroaching upon our distinguished predecessors.
We are indebted to all the cottage historians for their painstaking research and the articles they have signed individually. Second, we acknowledge the contributions of those who took the time to share their reminiscences of what Beersheba was like at a particular time in its history. Stories, anecdotes, and songs are included for the concrete details they add to local history and the total potpourri.
The photographer as historian has contributed much of the scenic drama of the place and its people. Many cannot be identified, but our special thanks go to Kay Russell Beasley, Herb Peck, Samuel Harwell Howell, Jr., and Phyllis Pennington for their reproductions. To Isabel Chenoweth we are grateful for her stunning collection of photographs displaying Beersheba’s architectural details and to Charles Warterfield for his learned and enthusiastic comments on those details. To John Casey Killian we are indebted for the two maps and to Evette Allen for several line drawings.
Linda Childers, Registrar, Grundy County Courthouse, spent many hours of research in the public records and graciously copied basic documents for this history. She has allowed amateur historians to swarm her crowded premises without so much as a murmur of protest.
Numerous friends of the editors have performed the labors of typing: Norma Filson of the Commerce Union Bank, Nashville; Alberta Martin, Vanderbilt; Charlene Killian, Mrs. A. B. Burdick, and others.
This is hardly the beginning; there is no comprehensive file for naming all the worthies. But finally Betty Elliott and the staff of Curley Printing Company have gone to
extraordinary efforts to get this book ready in time for the
Celebration.
The Editors
EDITORS to READERS
It was on July 5, 1840 that Samuel H. Laughlin of McMinnville, a successful business man, Democrat, and strong supporter of James K. Polk, wrote to the future President about a meeting he had arranged at Beersheba to plan the party’s strategy. Laughlin said to Polk: “At Beersheba, we shall see what is best to be done. God Speed.”
Laughlin had already experienced the serenity of the plateau removed from the heat, the noise, and the distractions of the city. He knew that Beersheba would provide the assembled politicians a place for contemplation, for making right decisions, and for refreshing minds and bodies for the work ahead. Laughlin’s thoughts that year echoed once again the Biblical resolve: “I shall lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
The editors of this book have endeavored to support Laughlin’s convictions and to confirm the Biblical injunction. They have underscored, by printing the reminiscences of many contributors, living and dead, the importance of Beersheba in the lives of its residents and visitors for the past 150 years. They feel that it would be folly to say they have captured, even with all their labors, the ultimate Beersheba, for the ultimate is always beyond the reach of human hands.
An English lecturer at Sewanee in 1978, who had spent several years in the Far East, likened Beersheba to the hill towns of India, to which the British and their families moved in summer to escape the clamor of the cities and the unbearable heat. The professor was firmly convinced of his comparison when told that Beersheba was the resort of planters from Mississippi and Louisiana looking for higher, healthier ground in the 1850s.
Then there was an English couple who spent a month at Beersheba in 1980, explored Savage Gulf, jogged twice a day in the heat of that extraordinary summer on the plateau, and moved from one cottage to another on social occasions.
After attending a beautiful wedding on the front porch of Nanhaven, with relatives and friends seated in the yard beneath the pines enjoying lunch afterwards, the English couple made these observations: “Beersheba is posi- tively nineteenth century. Whole families move from one cottage to another. Everybody seems to know everybody else because everybody seems to be kin. Beersheba is an American version of Chekov and his quiet representations of the aristocracy of Russia a century ago. All that is missing are the serfs.”
These are the impressions of outsiders who were welcomed into the community. There are obviously many versions of what Beersheba is like. Ask anybody who loves it and he will add to the legend. The standard exchange between visitors is always: “When did you get here? When do you have to leave?”
We like to think of Beersheba, finally, as a community of families—with strong-willed individuals within those families. But we are not obliged, as editors, to explain everything. We only hope that in the pages which follow, we have somehow managed to describe and record and pass on part of the legacy.
Margaret Brown Coppinger
Herschel Gower
Samuel Harwell Howell
Georgianna D. Overby
Cathedral Canyon, July 3, 1982
Sacrifice to the sun,
Caught by a fugitive breeze
Careening around corners,
Canyon commando,
I sprawl on a rock table
At the brink of falls,
Cradled in crevices,
And nothing gnaws.
I hear a wash of water-color,
Blending the trees' tactic
With rumble and gurgle of falls,
And feel on my eyelids
Clouds that puzzle the sun,
Boom-Boom's dripping whiskers,
The flicker of undone notions
On the brain's bare table.
A gaggle of broken voices
Paddles against the stream,
Leaps like desperate salmon
Up the soul's ladder.
Small and fractious legions
Of garrulous human defenses
Pour upstream undercover
And capture the breeze.
The soul's flow is blocked
By precipitate driftwood.
The body breaks loose from its dream,
Hectic for home.
O free for a sun-charmed moment,
Wed to the cradling rock,
Remember the grace of the river,
The delight of cathedral!
Francis Russell Hart III
Crowe Point
Hingham, Massachusetts
A General History
The history of Beersheba Springs goes back to the time when the Chickamauga Indians crossed the Cumberland Plateau over an old trail which led from near Chickamauga Creek to Rock Island. They descended the mountain near the springs—the Chalybeate and Indian Spring which had been carved out by Indians. Thirty-five or 40 years ago many arrowheads could be found around the springs.
Not too far from the Indian Spring at the L. V. Brown place is another basin chiseled out of a large flat rock where it is believed the Indian women ground their meal. Mrs. Georgianna Overby of McMinnville, the present owner of the place, has been told that there is only one other like it in the southeastern United States. According to Indian Trails of the Southeast by W. E. Myer, a Tennessee archaeologist, there was an ancient Indian village in the vicinity of Beersheba Springs, to the West.
In October 1793 a company of Chickamaugas and Creeks started across the mountain to Rock Island to make an attack on the Cumberland settlers. About a week later these Indians engaged in a fight at Rock Island with some scouts from the Cumberland settlements. The Indians were defeated and hurried back across the mountain to their village in Nickajack. This was one of the last battles, because the Treaty of Holston made in 1791 had confined the Indians to the plateau of the Cumberlands. By 1806 the Mountain District was opened to settlement; however the Indians continued to give the settlers trouble until 1838 when all Indians were removed. At that time over 13,000 were rounded up by the United States government and forced to begin their long journey to the west which is known as the “Trail of Tears.” Many died on the way and some of them were buried in Shellsford Cemetery in Warren County.
In 1806 the legislature formed White County from Smith County. Both Warren and Grundy Counties were included in White County at that time. Later Warren County was formed and in 1844 that part of Grundy County which includes Beersheba was cut off from Warren and made into a county.
After the coming of John White in 1789 to White County, other settlers soon followed and began to settle rapidly that part of White, later known as Warren and Grundy Counties. In 1794 Reuben Roberts, a Revolutionary war soldier, came to a small settlement near the Horseshoe Bend. In after years this old settler described to his grandson the crossing of the mountain by way of the Chickamauga Trail or Trace. He and many other old settlers were familiar with this route. Some were known as “squatters” because they settled on land to which they had no title.
As early as 1806 the Cherokee Indians had agreed to allow the federal government to construct a road from North Georgia across the Cumberland Mountains and on to Stone’s River near Murfreesboro.
The records of Warren County show that an entry of 150 acres of land made for William Dugan in 1826 in the Horseshoe known as Charley’s Camp was on the southside of Little Laurel Creek. In a later deed Charley’s Camp is given as being two-and-half miles southwest of Beersheba Springs.
Most of the early pioneer settlers of Beersheba first came to the Collins River Valley from Virginia, North and South Carolina. They were mostly of English, Irish, Scottish, or German stock. Some familiar local names found in the 1820 Census were Reuben, James, William, and Isaac Roberts, John Gross, Henry, Robert, Alexander, Aaron, and John Tate, Isham Dykes, Gabriel, Samuel, and James Walker. Some walked and others rode horseback across the mountains. It has been said that one of the Dugan women rode horseback, carrying a child in her arms all the way from North Carolina. Many others came by flatboat up the Cumberland River with all their household goods as well as their horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and chickens on flatboats. According to tradition, in the year 1833 Mrs. Beersheba Porter Cain, wife of John Cain of McMinnville, was making a horseback journey across the mountain accompanied by Beersheba Porter Cain.
The Cains stopped for rest at the home of William Dugan, and while walking in a woodland near the Dugan house Mrs. Cain entered a distinctly defined path and followed it until she reached a spring of iron water. She has since been cited as the first known white person to see this great Chalybeate spring which was afterwards called Beersheba’s Spring.
Records of 1834 show that John Cain had bought land on the mountain from William Dugan and erected log cabins near the bluff.
By 1836 a tract of land containing 1500 acres on top of Cumberland Mountain near the bluff was conveyed to Dr. Alfred Paine and George R. Smartt who began erecting a house for a tavern.
In 1839 the Tennessee General Assembly incorporated Beersheba Springs and it was officially opened and recognized as a summer resort under the active management of Smartt, whose wife was Athelia, daughter of Isham Randolph, a member of a distinguished Virginia family. Dr. Alfred Paine, who had married Myra, another daughter of Isham Randolph, became the resident physician of the Springs which were patterned after the popular Virginia resorts. In the same year, William White of McMinnville employed a carpenter to build his house at Beersheba which was to stand on the bluff and later to become the well-known John Armfield home.
In 1836, a road from McMinnville to Chattanooga going over Peak Mountain was authorized by the state. Before that time the only road crossing the mountain was the Chickamauga Trace. By 1839 the stagecoach and other vehicles were traveling the road between McMinnville and Beersheba Springs, passing William Dugan’s house.
On January 29, 1844 the Tennessee Legislature created Grundy County from Coffee and Warren and designated Beersheba as the county seat. William Dugan was appointed one of the commissioners to help organize the new county and the first court was held August 5, 1844 in Beersheba. The court continued to meet here until about 1848 when the town of Altamont was laid out for the new county seat.
When this new county was formed it was named for Felix Grundy (1777-1840) a famous criminal lawyer, judge, United States Senator, and Attorney General of the United States under Martin Van Buren. It was no secret that he had been dealing in the mountain lands of this section and at his death in 1840 his daughters and sons-in-law fell heir to 100,000 acres of mountain land. The two sons-in-law named executors of Grundy’s estate were John M. Bass, who later built a cottage at Beersheba, and Jacob McGavock, father of Randal W. McGavock a visitor there in 1858. At first a quiet refuge for visitors from surrounding counties, Beersheba was promoted through advertisements in the Nashville papers of the 1840s and its fame was soon to spread throughout the South.
A great obstacle to getting there was the uncertainty of the roads. So a “jury of view” was appointed by the County Court—William Dugan, Isham Dykes, James Lockhart, John Gross, and William B. Smartt—for the purpose of marking and laying out a road. The report, humorous to readers today because of its details, is as follows: