ky-footsteps Monday, September 1, 2003 Volume 03 : Issue 118 Today's Topics: # 1 [KYF] NEWS: James B. Finley, Whitley Co. # 2 [KYF] NEWS: Jellico Town, Whitley Co. # 3 [KYF] NEWS: Old Time Customs # 4 [KYF] PENSION: Rev. War, John & Sarah Anderson, Whitley Co. # 5 [KYF] PENSION: Rev. War, William & Elizabeth Rose, Whitley Co. _____________________________X-Message: #1 ------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson Date: 30 August 2003 Subject: [KYF] NEWS: James B. Finley, Whitley Co. ------------------------------------------------------------ Source: The Whitley Republican, Williamsburg, KY - about 1976 (exact date not known) Newlyweds in 1801 “No couple on earth lived happier or more contented” James B. Finley was born in 1791 in North Carolina, spent his boyhood in Kentucky, married in Ohio and later revisited Kentucky in a time that would affect his entire life. In his autobiography he describes his first house and what it was like to be newlyweds on the frontier. “I imagine I hear the reader saying this was hard living and hard times,” he wrote, but throughout his life, he would return in memory to those early years when beset by trouble and frustration. “No couple on earth lived happier or more contented.” As happens to other sweethearts, the parents of Hannah Strane did not approve of her courtship by James Finely. When they were married March 3, 1801, Hannah’s father would not allow her to return for her belongings. The couple went to the woods where, with help from James’ brother John Finley, a simple cabin was built. The nearest neighbor was three miles away. “Into this we moved without horse or cow, bed or bedding, bag or baggage,” Finley wrote. To make a bed the couple drove forked saplings into the ground, placed sticks in the forks, then covered the sticks with elm bark. They gathered leaves, picked out the twigs and dried the leaves to stuff into a bedtick for a mattress. There was no scarcity of meat, for Finley became a sharpshooter during his youth in Kentucky, but they lacked bread. In order to pay for a bushel of potatoes, the young husband cut and split 100 rails. His greatest prize was a hen and three childrens given him for a day’s work. Elm bark that made a mat for the bed also was spread on the cabin floor and used to line the walls. The cabin provided shelter for the happy couple through the summer when they built a neater cabin of logs. To insulate the new cabin they spread their harvest of corn in the loft. Finley went into detail describing the advantages of backwoods life. “We had not then sickly, hysterical wives, with poor, puny, sickly, dying children, and no dyspeptic men constantly swallowing the nostrums of quacks. When we became sick unto death we died at once.” A few months following his marriage he learned of a great religious revival at Cane Ridge, Ky., his father’s old preaching ground and his boyhood home. This movement, he stated, “was accompanied by that alarming phenomenon called the jerks.” He described an awesome scene on his arrival at Cane Ridge. Approximately 25,000 people had collected for the services. “The noise was like the roar of Niagara.” Preachers as well as the crowd were either exhorting, singing, praying, crying or shouting. Finley was so disturbed he ran into the woods. He stood on a stump and once again looked to the crowd. “My hair rose up on my head.” As frightened and disturbed as he was by the emotional display, he too came under the spell and was converted enroute home. He became a Methodist circuit rider, a choice which brought intense problems as well as self satisfaction. Years afterward when greatly troubled he would remember the cabin he and Hannah built in the woods. “Though we had but little, our wants were few, and we enjoyed our simple and homely possessions with a relish the purse-proud aristocrat never enjoyed. No couple on earth lived happier or more contented.” _____________________________X-Message: #2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson Date: 30 August 2003 Subject: [KYF] NEWS: Jellico Town, Whitley Co. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Whitley Republican, Williamsburg, KY - Thursday, May 20, 1976 Jellico - a town full of brothers By Gene Siler This town was full of brothers and it has claimed quite a few notables among its citizens through the years. It was always called Jellico - or Jillico as my grandmother used to say. “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down”, according to the Negro spiritual. But our Jillico was not a Jericho by any means and the walls are still there - just about all of them, I think. Oh Yes! I promised to tell you about those brothers who lived up and down Main Street and really ran the town of Jellico. There were the Ellison brothers - Will and George. They were in furniture and undertaking and wholesale groceries. There were the Smiths - Frank and Charlie. They were in hardware and banking. There were the Bairds, whose first names I don’t recall, and they were in dry goods. There were the Silers - M.V. and Wymer. They were in wholesale groceries. There were the Harknesses, whose first names are hiding out from me right now. They were in the ice and electric power business. There were the McCombs brothers, Sam and Barrett. They were in the coal and mine supply businesses. There were the Mahan brothers, Lee and Wesley. Lee was a salesman and one a postmaster. Eight sets of brothers in one small town. All those mentioned, except Charlie Smith, have gone on to help run the affairs of the golden streets, we hope. But wherever they are, it is likely they will be busy in any situation - never idle. They were not good loafers. And now I hope you are hanging on my words to find out who were Jellico notables. I promised to tell, didn’t I? In music, there were Grace Moore, Metropolitan Opera Star and movie celebrity, and Homer Rhodehaver, nationally known song leader for the great evangelist, Billy Sunday. In sports activity, there were the Douglass brothers, Big Doug and Little Doug, both Big League Baseball pitchers, and there was Billy Harkness, University of Tennessee football quarterback. In the field of writing, there were Tom Siler, author and sports editor of Knoxville News Sentinel, and Grover Cleveland Kidwell, whose published stories appeared in national periodicals a generation ago. If you had come down town in Jellico on a Saturday night in those halcyon days I have mentioned you would have seen a great throng of peope at the Union Station. What on earth were they all doing? Well, talking and waiting for the evening trains from Knoxville. It was excitement and romance and crowd stimulation, you see. Then, if you had left the crescent driveway of the station and wandered up on Main Street, you would have found plenty of people still milling around, even until 10 o’clock. What brought up all of this Jellico lore? Well you see, I went to Jellico to the funeral of Nona Vermillion, a beautiful Christian, and as I sat between former Mayor Paul Harp, and Goldie Garber, both of them were voluble talkers. So we talked and talked about Jillico and its people. But we also listened to the funeral, mind you. Jellico - it’s the only one of its kind on earth, the town you can’t forget. _____________________________X-Message: #3 ------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson Date: 30 August 2003 Subject: [KYF] NEWS: Old Time Customs ------------------------------------------------------------ Source: The Whitley Republican, Williamsburg, KY, Thursday, February 2, 1978 By J.B. Johnson, Sr. Old time customs……. Peddling - an early form of salesmanship Peddling - Oh, they call it salesmanship now - is as old as civilization. When Columbus came to America he and his crewmen bartered with the natives. Capt. John Smith found the Indian had useful trinkets and food to exchange. He even bartered for Pocahontas. Our pilgrim fathers made friends with the Massosoits and exchanged gifts. They were buying and selling goodwill. Our early Kentucky mountaineer farmers had a more difficult barrier to hurdle; they had no roads, no bridges and slow transportation. Some called it moving by the TM & W - two mules and a wagon. The nature of the peddling varied according to what the farmer produced. Some of the farmers had large fertile acreage. They were on or near the Cumberland River. Others had predominantly hillside land, not fertile. Many had small farms. Some were sharecropper tenants. The farmers with rich soil raised corn and fed hogs and cattle for the market. The first night I ever stayed in Williamsburg was when J.B. Siler employed me to help drive a drove of hogs from Dishman to Williamsburg. We put them in an L&N cattle car opposite the Methodist Church. We stayed all night at the Cumberland Hotel, ran by a man named Wilson. Eating there I first learned that a “Square meal” meant all you could eat. Some farmers preferred raising cattle. A few had both hogs and cattle, of course, with enough horses and mules to cultivate the crops. The plows were level land and hillside turners and bull tongues (one plow, one horse) and double shovel. The writer has used all of them. I began with the bull tongue. Hay crops required a mowing machine and rake and men with pitchforks to stack the hay or put it in the barn. All oats, barley or millet had to be cradled by hand. That was the hardest farm work to be found. Now, in those days everybody had chickens, hogs, cows and had a garden and truck patches; these were considered essential for any family. I was very young when I learned that a mine had opened at Wilton, that is near Woodbine; a short time later at Bird-Eye, near Jellico and about 1907 or 1908 at Gatliff and Packard later Long Branch, near Rockholds. The opening of these mines changed the pattern of life and living for many in our area. Some of them, mostly tenant farmers, went to the mines to work where their wages were doubled what farm hands were paid. This brought to each mining camp several hundred workers and their families. Nearly all lived in the camp. So nearby markets were created for the farmers’ products. Many farmers responded. They became truck farmers. (Now the word “truck” means farm produce. It has no relation to the auto truck.) They doubled or tripled their production of vegetables such as beans, potatoes, corn, apples, melons, chickens, milk and butter. In season they butchered calves, sheep and hogs and peddled it in the mining camps, principally at Wilton, Gatliff and Packard. They went from house to house to sell. It brought a good price. But there was one drawback on the minus side. Most of the miners had to pay in Scrip. “Scrip” was issued by the mining company as an advancement of wages and was redeemable only at the company store where prices were, like wages, about twice as high as in the country Store. For example if flour was 75 cents per 25 pound bag in the country, you would pay from $1.35 to $1.50 for it at the commissary. Yet it was an improvement in the economy and the standard of living. No one complained very loudly. Soon the farmers established regular customers and often from week to week they had their peddling load, carried by the TM&W, sold a week in advance. Some of them found CASH customers. Usually milk, butter and eggs were always sold for cash. The farmers used the “Scrip” at the commissary to buy flour, sugar, salt, pepper, coffee, shoes and clothing - things not raised on farms. But peddling was not an easy way of life. The farmers spent one day getting his load ready and had to leave home at daylight to get to the mines; then they usually did not get back home until after dark. It was a hard life, but a better way of living. _____________________________X-Message: #4 ------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson Date: 30 August 2003 Subject: [KYF] PENSION: Rev. War, John & Sarah Anderson, Whitley Co. ------------------------------------------------------------ Abstracts of Records Pertaining to Soldiers of the Revolutionary War John and Sarah Anderson - Widow's Pension No. W 9320 In Whitley Co., KY on 21 Oct 1833, John Anderson, a resident of Whitley Co., KY, age 75, made declaration that he entered the service of the US in Wilkes Co., NC, during the Revolutionary War, under Capt. William Galbreath of NC Militia, Lt. William Sutton and Ensign James Shepherd. He was marched from Wilkes Co. Court House at Salsbury to Dilley's Ferry on the Savannah River. He continued in service and served as a fifer for 5 months and was discharged. He soon afterward volunteered in Wilkes Co., NC under the command of John Barton, Lt. Benjamin Gess, and Ensign Thomas Barton. They served with the Droker troops under different officers and pursued Col. Ferguson, commander of an army of British and Tories. They had a severe battle on King's Mountain. Their chief commander was Col. William Campbell, Col. Shelby Cleveland and Williams also commanded. They lost 26 men and killed over 500. They also took the same number of prisoners. In this tour he also served for 5 months and acted the whole time as a fifer, making in the whole 10 months that he served as a fifer. He also served in the tour all 3 months as an orderly or first sergeant under the command of Capt. Roddy of Washington Co., NC and under his command was marched through Muhlenburg by way of Charlotte to the High Hills of Santee where they joined Gen. Green and by him were ordered to join Gen. Marian in the swamps of Santee, under whose command they took the British Garrison at Monk's Corner. Soon afterward, they got news that Cornwallis had surrendered at Little York. He also served another term of 3 months as a private under Capt. James Richards. From Washington Co., NC, they marched to the Chichmauga Towns, under Col. Severe and burned several of these towns. He served another tour of 3 months as an orderly or first sergeant under the command of Capt. John Hunter and General Martin. He was in the battle at Look Out Mountain with the Indians, making 6 months, he served faithfully as an orderly sergeant, 3 months as private, and 10 months as fifer, all of which was militia. He received a discharge. He states that he was born in Bedford Co., VA in 1758, that he was living in Wilkes Co., NC when called to service and since the Revolutionary War lived in the counties of Washington, NC (now Tennessee), Hawkins Co., TN, Cumberland Gap, Campbell Co., TN and Whitley Co., KY where he now lives. He was a volunteer in the service. Some of his regular officers with the troops were Gen. Lincoln, Col. Micajah Lewis, Col. Wm. Little and Gen. Nash. William Hayes, Clergyman, and John Ross, residents of Whitley Co. made certificate of their acquaintance with John Anderson and to their belief in his services. John Anderson of Whitley Co., KY, who was a fifer and sergeant in the company commanded by Capt. Gilbreath in the regiment commanded by Col. Ferguson in the NC line for 10 months as a fifer and 3 months as a sergeant was inscribed on the roll of the Ky agency, with pension to commence on 4 Mar 1831. Certificate of pension was issued 14 Nov 1833. In Clay Co., MO on 21 Feb 1856, Sarah Anderson, resident of said county, age 78, appeared before a notary public and made oath that she is the widow of John Anderson, deceased, who was a fifer and sergeant in the Revolutionary War as stated in his application for pension. She stated that she was married to John Anderson in Virginia in Dec. 1796, that her name before her marriage was Sarah Pierceful, that her husband died in Whitley Co., KY 22 Feb 1838. She appointed Richard M. Young of Washington, DC, her attorney to prosecute her claim and to receive her pension when ready to be delivered to her. Eliza Anderson and Drusilla Brooks made attestations to this declaration. Jeremiah Anderson and Anna Anderson, residents of Johnson Co., MO, made declaration that they were well acquainted with Sally or Sarah Anderson, his widow. They became acquainted with them about 25 years ago. John Anderson died in Whitley Co. about 22 Feb 1838 and they were both present at this funeral and burial. In Johnson Co., MO, 25 Jul 1857, John Anderson, resident of Johnson Co., MO made declaration in court that he is a son of John Anderson, deceased, who was the husband of Sarah Anderson, who now applies for a pension for services rendered by her husband in the Revolutionary War. This affiant is the son of John Anderson, deceased and by a former marriage, that this affiant believes, as he had been informed by his father and from the record of his age as entered in the family Bible that he was born 4 Nov. 1790, that he has been informed and believes that his father, John Anderson, and his step mother, Sarah Anderson, were married in the latter part of the year 1798. He is certain of the fact that the first child after the marriage of his parents, John Anderson and Sarah Anderson, his step mother, was born in 1799 as appeared from the record of the first child to be born after said marriage. There was born to his father and said Sarah Anderson, ten children, 8 of whom were raised to a mature age, and his father was a Revolutionary War Pensioner at the time of his death in Whitley Co. Ky. Sarah Anderson, widow of John Anderson, was inscribed on the roll of Mo, to commence on 3 Feb. 1853. Certificate of the pension was issued 3 Aug 1857. (Transcribed record on file at Library of Michigan - Whitley County, Kentucky Extracts of Revolutionary War Pension Applications, 457 .W6, W56, 1989 Genealogy - Page 1 & 2) _____________________________X-Message: #5 ------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson Date: 30 August 2003 Subject: [KYF] PENSION: Rev. War, William & Elizabeth Rose, Whitley Co. ------------------------------------------------------------ William and Elizabeth Rose -- Pension No. W 8554 In Whitley Co., KY 19 Nov 1833, William Rose, resident of Whitley Co., KY on the waters of Cain Creek on the main road leading to Barbourville from Jacksboro, TN and about 22 miles from Barbourville, KY, age 76, made declaration that he entered service in the Revolutionary War as a volunteer in Granville, NC where he resided at that time. He began in the spring of 1790 for a term of 8 months, under Capt. Bartlet Scearcey, Lt Simms and rendezvoused at Hillsboro, then received the appointment and commission of Ensign. They marched to Salisbury, then down the Peedee River, then on the road to join Gen. Gates. They were joined by Gen. John Butler. He states that when about 7 miles from Camden, they heard of the defeat of Gen. Gates at that place and retreated back to Hillsboro, then marched in the direction of Wilmington and stationed at Col. Robert Burton’s near a small village. They remained there until sometime in November when he was permitted to return to his family. On 1 Dec 1780, he had a small son born to his wife whom they named William. The son now lives within 5 miles of this deponent. Soon after the birth of his son, he again volunteered under Stephen Merit, and Capt. Joseph Langston. This deponent again was Ensign. He was constantly engaged in scouting the country, disarming the Tories and marching against them when they collected in numbers. He was at Hillsboro when he heard of Tarlton’s defeat at Cow Pens and then by a “Naration,” which was the old soldier name for calling the soldiers, they were all called to join him and receive protection. A great many did join him. At that time Gen. Butler and the militia under him were in the lower end of Granville Co. He was with them. After this Cornwallis marched to Guilford, as he understood. The company to which he belonged was never with the army of Gen. Greene, but were often within a few days march of him. Later they were ordered to join Washington at Yorktown. Before they got there, Cornwallis had surrendered and he resigned his commission of Ensign and returned to his family. He stated that he served nearly 18 months. He stated that he was born in Granville, NC on Tar River in 1757 and that he was living in Granville Co. when he was called into service. Since the Revolutionary War, he moved to Pendleton Co., SC., then to Powell’s Valley, then to Whitley Co., then to Knox Co. where he lived more than 15 years. William Crowley, Edward Bennett, Thomas Adkins, an old soldier himself, Rev. Wm. Siler, John Powell and Ann Powell made certifications of their acquaintance with Wm. Rose and to their belief in his statements. William Rose of Whitley Co., KY, who was an ensign in the company commanded by Capt. Learcoy of the regiment, commanded by Col. Burton in the NC line for 1 year and 4 months was inscribed on the roll of the KY agency to commence 4 Mar 1831. Certificate of the pension was issued 6 Dec 1833. In Whitley Co., KY 18 Aug 1836 before Wm. Siler, J.P. Elizabeth Rose resident of Clear Fork, age 76, appeared in court and made declaration that she is the widow of Wm. Rose, who was an ensign in the militia during the Revolutionary War and that she was married to Wm. Rose on 12 Mar 1774 and that her husband died 12 Feb 1835. They had 4 children other than William, who was born during the Revolutionary War. She mentioned Hutson and Christina and stated that William was born 1 Dec after Gates Defeat and that she was married to Wm. Rose in Granville Co. NC by Robert Dickins. They had 10 children, the oldest of whom is at this date age 60 and the youngest is between 37 and 40 years of age. John Powell made deposition at the home of Ephraim Rose in Whitley Co., KY that he was well acquainted with the above named Elizabeth Rose and her husband, Wm. Rose for 45 years. Ann Powell made deposition at the home of Ephraim Rose in Whitley Co., KY that she is the daughter of William and Elizabeth Rose and that she is about 57 or 58 years of age and knows the statement above made to be true. Elizabeth Rose, widow of Wm. Rose was inscribed on the roll of the KY agency to commence 12 Feb 1835. Certificate of the pension was issued 19 Oct 1836 and sent to O.S. Ballinger, Barbourville, KY. . (Transcribed record on file at Library of Michigan - Whitley County, Kentucky Extracts of Revolutionary War Pension Applications, 457 .W6, W56, 1989 Genealogy - Page 17 & 18) End of ky-footsteps-digest V03 #03 118 ************************************************************************* USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. **************************************************************************