the health of Col. Sparks became so infirm, that he was induced, by
the earnest advice of Gen. Sevier, to send an application to the War
Department, in consequence of which he was permitted to return to
Tennessee. Thence he proceeded to Staunton, in Virginia, at which
place, or in its vicinity, he died, about 1815. During this last visit
to Tennessee, he passed through Nashville and Gallatin, remaining some
days, and recounted some of the events of his captivity to persons who
called upon him and Mrs. Sparks. Among these was Thomas Washington,
Esq., who is still living in Nashville, and remembers many incidents.
The gentleman to whom I am indebted for this memoir, obtained many of
the particulars from Mrs. Sparks herself, and from her brother, who was
from early youth an officer in the army; while her sister, the widow of
Maj. William M’Clelland, of the United States’ army, who now resides at
Van Buren, in Arkansas, confirms every statement. Some of the records
pertaining to this portion of the family history, are in the Historical
Society library at Nashville.
The father of Mrs. Sparks has been mentioned as “the Governor,”
although the period alluded to was before the organization of the State
of Tennessee. This honorable title had been appropriated to him as
governor of the “State of Frankland,” from the year 1784 to 1788. When
Tennessee was admitted into the Union, he became her first governor,
holding that office, with an interval of only two years, for more than
eleven years.
Mrs. Sparks entered into a second marriage with an intelligent and
wealthy planter of Mississippi. Her residence was a beautiful and
highly improved country seat, within view of the town of Port Gibson,
in Mississippi, and the splendid hospitality so remarkable on these
secluded plantations, was duly exercised at “Burlington,” where there
was a continual succession of visitors. The fair mistress of this
stately abode was distinguished by the same cheerfulness, genial
kindness and attention to her guests as in her more youthful years.
She was a model housewife, and everything about her establishment was
always in perfect order. In the summer of 1824, while on a visit to
some friends at Maysville, Kentucky, her useful life was terminated,
her faith in the Redeemer growing brighter as the final scene
approached. She never had any children, but was at all times extremely
fond of them, and particularly pleased with the society of young
persons, who always manifested a strong attachment for her.
IX.
SARAH SHELBY.
Sarah, already mentioned as the eldest daughter of Mrs. Bledsoe, was
born in the first year of the first settlement of Tennessee. She was
very young when her family removed from Fort Chissel, Virginia, to
East Tennessee. Their residence was then on the frontier, near the
island flats, in what is now Sullivan County. Her early education was
excellent, considering the circumstances of location and the want
of the advantages of instruction which could be enjoyed in older
communities. She attended the first and only lessons in dancing, given
in 1784, not long before her marriage, at the house of Mr. Harris,
twelve miles from Col. Bledsoe’s residence. The teacher was Capt.
Barrett, an English officer who had served under the royal banner
in the war of the Revolution, and then left the service, determined
to cast his lot for the rest of his days with the brave republicans
against whose liberties he had fought. It was among the singular
vicissitudes of life, that a loyal captain who in all probability had
served under Col. Ferguson at the battle of King’s Mountain, battling
to the death against the Tennessee mountaineers, should be found
afterwards in the wilderness giving lessons to their daughters in
this graceful accomplishment! The gentleman who furnishes this memoir
quaintly observes, that “not being able to make the fathers run, he
was content with making the daughters dance.”
While the family still lived in Sullivan County, Miss Bledsoe was
married, in 1784, to David Shelby. Soon after, the young couple, with
Col. Bledsoe and his family, came and fixed their homes in the midst
of the wilderness of the Cumberland Valley, which Bledsoe and his
brother had explored in 1779. The journey by land at that time from
East Tennessee was a difficult and perilous one, across mountains and
through forests and canebrakes, where it was impossible to force a
wagon. Every article carried had to be packed on horses.
The families who formed this pioneer settlement in the Cumberland
Valley were not destitute of means to live comfortably in a region
where the necessaries and comforts of life could be procured, but
isolated as they were from all advantages of communication or
interchange with the friends they had left, they were thrown entirely
upon the resources of their own labor and ingenuity. Their dwellings
were rude cabins made of logs, sometimes rough and sometimes hewn. For
protection against the Indians a number of these cabins were surrounded
by pickets bullet-proof, and several families, usually related to
each other, or attached as old neighbors, lived within the fenced
space. Sometimes the pioneers resided in the blockhouses, built in
the salient points of these picketed enclosures. The upper story of
these blockhouses projected over the lower one, with portholes in the
floor, so that persons within might shoot an assailant who approached
too near under cover of the projection. The term “station,” in the
frontier vocabulary of those times, meant a blockhouse, picketed so as
to shelter several families. It was usually called by the name of the
builder or the owner of the land--as “Buchanan’s Station,” &c. Some,
however, were known by more fanciful designations, as “Bledsoe’s Lick,”
“French Lick,” etc.
It has been already stated that at the time of Col. Bledsoe’s
exploration of the Cumberland Valley, no white man lived within the
limits of Tennessee, west of the mountains, except a few French
traders who had become naturalized among the Indians. After the removal
of the family they suffered many hardships, which pressed most heavily
upon the women, while shut up within military defences in the midst of
the forest. No supplies of groceries or dry goods could be obtained in
the valley, and all the clothing worn by the pioneers, male and female,
was of home manufacture. Not one of the females was exempted from this
labor; all learned how to spin and weave, and it was the pride and
glory of these stout-hearted dames to prepare the material and make up
with their own hands the clothes worn by themselves, their husbands and
children. Col. Bledsoe was attired in a full suit manufactured by his
wife and daughters, when he represented the Cumberland Valley in the
Legislature of North Carolina.
All articles of consumption which could not be procured in the woods
or raised on their plantations, were very scarce. Salt could only be
obtained by tedious and dangerous journeys to the Kanawha salt works
in Virginia, or to some French salt works in Illinois, then a part of
Louisiana. Imported sugar, coffee and tea were almost excluded from
use among the families in the valley, by the expense and difficulty of
procuring them. For the first two or three years, before the dangers
in the midst of which they lived, permitted them to cultivate the soil
to any extent, even bread was scarcely to be had. The rifle of the
pioneer procured for his family venison, bear’s meat and wild turkeys,
as well as protected them from Indian marauders. A little sugar was
made every spring from the maple trees, which grew in great abundance
in the untrodden forest. For this purpose large parties of old and
young, male and female, when they had fixed upon a convenient location,
assembled and bivouacked, or “camped,” to use their own phrase, in the
woods near the grove of maples, which were soon notched and pierced.
The sap was caught in small troughs dug out with an axe, and carried to
the camp, where it was boiled down in large pots. In two or three days
thus spent, sugar enough was often produced to furnish a year’s supply
for a family, and the occasion did not fail to afford opportunity for a
rustic re-union for all the young people of the neighborhood.
Nothing was known at that time of the culture of cotton. Flax was
grown, however, and the prettiest girls in the valley hatchelled, spun
and wove it; the forest trees and shrubs yielding ample materials
for dye-stuffs, by which a variety of colors might be furnished for
ball or bridal costume for the fairest demoiselles of the new colony.
A beautiful scarlet was produced from sassafras and sumach, and the
walnut furnished a bright brown, of which color were dyed the jeans
which formed full suits, elegant enough for the gentlemen’s holiday
wearing. This material, made in old style, is still a favorite in
all the rural districts of Tennessee, the process of its manufacture
having been taught, as a hereditary art, by mother to daughter, from
generation to generation.
If we may rely upon tradition, the women whose time was thus passed
exclusively in useful occupations, and whose labors demanded continual
exercise, were superior in personal beauty to their paler and more
luxurious descendants. Be that as it may, their ideas of feminine
accomplishment and female merit were certainly different from those of
modern days. A young woman then prided herself, not on finery purchased
with the labor of others, but on the number of hanks of thread she
could spin, or yards she could weave in a day on a rustic loom, made,
perhaps, by her father or brother. Many a maiden whose father could
reckon his acres of land in the wilderness by thousands, has appeared
at church or at a country assembly dressed from head to foot in
articles manufactured entirely by herself, and looking as bright and
lovely in her gay colors as the proudest city dame who could lay the
looms of India under contribution.
Mrs. Shelby’s husband was the first merchant in Nashville, and perhaps
in middle Tennessee. He established himself as such in 1790, and after
two or three years, removed to Sumner County, where he was appointed
to the office of clerk, the first chosen in the county. This office
he continued to hold, residing in Gallatin, till his death in 1819.
He maintained throughout life a high and honorable position among
the settlers of the Valley, possessing qualities of mind and heart
which would have commanded success and ensured usefulness in the most
eminent station to which a republican could have aspired, in the new
State which he and his family aided in building up. But he was not
ambitious, and preferred retirement in the bosom of his family, and the
unostentatious discharge of the duties of an humble office, husbanding
the resources he possessed for the purpose of giving his children a
substantial education, and fitting them for lives of usefulness.
Mrs. Shelby has frequently mentioned incidents that occurred on
different occasions when she and her husband were compelled to fly from
Indians, and narrowly escaped destruction. At one time the savages
came to the block-house where she lived, and attempted to shoot
through a crack in the chimney. It happened that Mrs. Shelby, feeling
a presentiment of danger, had stopped the crevice on the inside by
a plank, which the bullets could not penetrate without having their
deadly force spent. The savages were around the house during the night,
as was discovered by their tracks about the place, and the finding of
several articles belonging to them, such as pipes, moccasins, etc.
The day after the death of Col. Anthony Bledsoe, Mrs. Shelby went with
her husband, son and servants to Bledsoe’s Lick, to attend his funeral,
although the distance was ten miles, and it was known the Indians were
in the forest. The son, now Dr. Shelby, of Nashville, remembers that
his father went in advance, armed with a rifle and holsters, his mother
next, and that he followed with a negro, who also carried a rifle.
In 1788, while living on Station Camp Creek, in Sumner County, Mrs.
Shelby was one day at home with only her little children. As usual
in the early settlements, they lived in a log cabin, in which open
places between the logs served the place of windows. Her husband was
in the fields, some distance from the house. While seated by the fire
she was startled by the appearance of an Indian warrior, fully armed,
approaching her cabin. Quick as thought, she took down a loaded rifle
that hung on the wall, and whispered to her son, then only six years
old, to go out by the back door, and run into the field for his father,
which he did quietly, but with all speed. Then placing herself near the
door, she put the muzzle of the rifle through a crack in the wall, and
stood, with her finger on the trigger, ready to shoot the Indian as he
came near, approaching the door. Just at the moment when Mrs. Shelby
was about to shoot, with deadly aim, the savage saw the gun, and with
hasty strides retreated to the woods. Thus the heroism of the matron
saved not only her own life, but the lives of several small children.
Soon after the retreat of the Indian, Mr. Shelby and his son reached
the house, to embrace the heroic wife and mother, who still stood with
the rifle in her hands.
The history of Mrs. Shelby and her family, if properly given, would
embrace almost the entire history of Tennessee; nor would it be
possible to offer anything like an adequate sketch of the founders
of the colony of Cumberland Valley, without writing in detail the
history of that eventful period. This may be done by some future
historian, the scope of whose work will permit him to do full justice
to the patient and self-denying toil, and the heroic deeds of those
enterprising pioneers. Whenever this is done, the names of Bledsoe,
Shelby, Sevier, Robertson, Buchanan, Rains, and Wilson, cannot fail to
shine forth prominently in the picture. These men were neither refugees
from justice, nor outlaws from civilization, but belonged to a band of
patriots who came, like Hooker, Haynes, or Roger Williams, to set up
the altar of freedom, and find a home in primeval forests, beyond the
reach of oppression, where they might live independently, and in time
happily. They came not, as they knew, to an ideal paradise, or happy
valley, but to a dreary wilderness, where a thousand perils environed
them; beyond the paternal care of either state or federal government;
harassed from time to time by a savage foe; destitute of regular
supplies of provisions or munitions of war; depending for subsistence
on the forest and the small patches of cornfield they were able to
cultivate in the intervals of Indian campaigns; a mere handful of men,
with a few helpless women and children, and equally dependent slaves;
yet they kept their ground, and year by year increased in numbers and
strength, till after a struggle of fifteen years against fearful odds
of Indian enemies, the colony numbered from seven to eight thousand!
During all this time of trial, the armed occupation was maintained
with toil and bloodshed, both of men and women, who showed, in times of
emergency, that they, too, possessed the lion will and the lion heart.
Thrilling was the story of their adventures, with which, in after
years, they held their listeners spell-bound; and far surpassing the
wildest romance were their homely but interesting narratives, glowing
in the warm coloring of life. They told
“How oft at night
Their sleep was broke by sudden fright,
Of Indian whoop and cruel knife
To spill the blood of babe and wife;
How prowling wolves and hungry bears
Increased their dangers and their cares;
How bold and strong these pilgrims were--
That feared not Indian, wolf, or bear;
By sickness pressed, by want beset,
Each ill they braved, each danger met;
’Midst want and war their sinews grew,--etc.”
Among the women of this period, remembered particularly for the energy
and cheerful self-denial with which they aided the hardy pioneers,
encouraging and animating them, while sharing in their labors, none
did her part more nobly, with more womanly grace as well as firmness
and resolution, than Mrs. Shelby. Her memory preserved to an advanced
age every prominent incident connected with the settlement of East
Tennessee and of the Cumberland Valley. Every part of the State, within
her recollection, was a wilderness. Having lived through the border
troubles and succeeding years of change, having survived the slaughter
of her nearest relatives by the murderous Cherokees and marauding
Creeks and Shawanese, she lived to see that helpless and bleeding
colony of the Watauga, increase and multiply and grow up in the midst
of the receding forest to a goodly State--it may be said, a nation.
This venerable matron died on the 11th of March, 1852, in the
eighty-sixth year of her age. She was in her usual health, and occupied
with her needle, only three days before her death. She had long been
a member of the Episcopal church, and gave up her spirit to God with
Christian resignation, leaving an affectionate circle of her children
and descendants to mourn her departure.
She had been in the habit of going to visit her relatives in the old
county where she formerly resided. The fourth of July, 1851, was kept
by a number of aged pioneers in Sumner, assembled to dine together, and
many were the interesting recollections called up on that occasion.
After 1832, Mrs. Shelby’s residence was with her son, Dr. Shelby
at his beautiful country-seat, “Faderland,” in the vicinity of
Nashville, now almost surrounded by the new town of Edgefield. It was
a pleasure to her to receive and converse with all interested in the
early history of Tennessee, and she presented in her own bearing and
character a noble example of the heroines of those times of trial.
The laborious, painful, and perilous experiences of her life withal,
never marred the harmony of her nature; and in advanced age she had the
contented and cheerful spirit of one whose days have glided away in
undisturbed tranquillity. She was a deeply spiritual Christian, engaged
continually, as far as her strength permitted, in the dispensation
of charities, and exhibiting to those who knew her, the beauty of an
humble and earnest “walk by faith.”
Her husband, David Shelby, died in 1822, leaving several children,
who were reared to sustain their part with usefulness in the arena of
life, and in the midst of difficulties to exhibit the same energy and
patience which had distinguished their parents. Judge Shelby, of Texas,
was one of these children. John, the eldest son, was the first white
child born in Sumner County, and is one of the oldest and worthiest
citizens of Nashville. He determined in youth to study medicine, and
was sent to Philadelphia to have the advantage of instruction under
the celebrated Dr. Rush. He settled early in Nashville, where for
many years he devoted himself successfully to the practice of his
profession, being also occupied in the management of a large private
business, in taking care of his town property. In 1813, he was a
volunteer under Jackson, in the Creek war, and received a wound in the
eye in the battle of Enotochopco. Though holding the office of surgeon
in the army, he took an active part in rallying and leading the troops
in this memorable action, and in acknowledgement of his services was
honorably mentioned by the General.
He is now sixty-seven years of age, and after an arduous and well spent
life, is still able to perform the duties of a responsible office,
and to manage the business of a large farm. One of his daughters is
the wife of the Hon. George Washington Barrow, late representative
in Congress for the Nashville District, and during the years 1841-5,
Chargé d’Affaires to the court of Portugal. Another daughter is Mrs.
Priscilla Williams, now residing at Memphis, Tennessee.
X.
REBECCA WILLIAMS.
Walter Scott’s Rebecca the Jewess was not more celebrated for her
medical skill and success in treating wounds than was Rebecca Williams
among the honest borderers of the Ohio river. She was the daughter of
Joseph Tomlinson, and was born the 14th of February, 1754, at Will’s
Creek, on the Potomac, in the province of Maryland. She married John
Martin, a trader among the Indians, who was killed in 1754 on the Big
Hockhocking by the Shawanees, one of her uncles being killed at the
same time. In the first year of her widowhood, Mrs. Martin removed
with her father’s family to Grave Creek, and resided near its entrance
into the Ohio, keeping house for her two brothers. She would remain
alone for weeks together while they were absent on hunting excursions;
for she had little knowledge of fear, and was young and sprightly in
disposition.
In the spring of 1774, she paid a visit to her sister, who had married
a Mr. Baker, and resided upon the banks of the Ohio, opposite Yellow
Creek. It was soon after the celebrated massacre of Logan’s relatives
at Baker’s station. Rebecca made her visit, and prepared to return home
as she had come, in a canoe alone, the distance being fifty miles. She
left her sister’s residence in the afternoon, and paddled her canoe
till dark. Then, knowing that the moon would rise at a certain hour,
she neared the land, leaped on shore, and fastened her craft to some
willows that drooped their boughs over the water. She sought shelter in
a clump of bushes, where she lay till the moon cleared the tree tops
and sent a broad stream of light over the bosom of the river. Then,
unfastening her boat, she stepped a few paces into the water to get
into it. But, as she reached the canoe, she trod on something cold and
soft, and stooping down discovered, to her horror, that it was a human
body. The pale moonlight streamed on the face of a dead Indian, not
long killed, it was evident, for the body had not become stiff. The
young woman recoiled at first, but uttered no scream, for the instinct
of self-preservation taught her that it might be dangerous. She went
round the corpse, which must have been there when she landed, stepped
into her bark, and reached the mouth of Grave Creek, without further
adventure, early the next morning.
In the ensuing summer, one morning while kindling the fire, blowing
the coals on her knees, she heard steps in the apartment, and turning
round, saw a very tall Indian standing close to her. He shook his
tomahawk at her threateningly, at the same time motioning her to keep
silence. He then looked around the cabin in search of plunder. Seeing
her brother’s rifle hanging on hooks over the fireplace, he seized
it and went out. Rebecca showed no fear while he was present; but
immediately on his departure left the cabin and hid herself in the
standing corn till her brother came home.
In the following year the youthful widow was united to a man of
spirit congenial to her own. Isaac Williams had served as a ranger in
Braddock’s army, and accompanied Ebenezer and Jonathan Zane in 1769,
when they explored the country about Wheeling, having before that
period made several hunting excursions to the waters of the Ohio.
He explored the recesses of the western wild, following the water
courses of the great valley to the mouth of the Ohio, and thence along
the shores of the Mississippi to the turbid waters of the Missouri;
trapping the beaver on the tributaries of this river as early as
1770. His marriage with Rebecca was performed with a simplicity
characteristic of the times. A travelling preacher who chanced to
come into the settlement, performed the ceremony at short notice, the
bridegroom presenting himself in his hunting dress and the bride in
short-gown and petticoat of homespun, the common wear of the country.