Chickamauga, Tennessee - part 2 of 3

  • Monday, May 28, 2012
  • Chuck Hamilton

 Cherokee Nation East

 In the years after the wars, the Cherokee were once again divided into five groups of towns: the Lower Towns, with their seat at Willstown; the Upper Towns, with their seat at Ustanali; the Overhills, with their seat at Chota; the Hill Towns, with their seat at Qualla; and the Valley Towns, with their seat at Tuskquitee.  True, there was a National Council that met regularly at Ustanali, but the real power was in the regional councils until 1809.

 The former Chickamauga towns were quickly reinhabited after the wars, including Toqua, Opelika, and, of course, Chickamauga, which was the most important.  These reoccupied settlements were grouped among the Lower Towns.  Tuskegee was moved from the island into what is now Wauhatchie, or Tiftonia, or Lookout Valley.

 A Cherokee named John Jolly was headman of Cayuga town on Hiwassee Island, which was called Jolly’s Island for decades after the Cherokee Removal.  His adopted son Sam Houston lived there for a time.

 Several notable Cherokee made their homes in the East Brainerd-Graysville area, among them one of the Fields brothers and Alexander McCoy, secretary of the National Committee.  The farms were strung out mostly along Mackey Branch, which they called Tsula Creek.

 The Cherokee who lived there called their strung-out settlement Opelika, after the town which stood at the Elise Chapin Wildlife Sanctuary at Audobon Acres site until burned by Juan Pardo’s Spanish troops and their Coosa allies in 1559.  The settlement included a stick-ball court where Heritage Park is now.

 Besides Chickamauga, there was another settlement along Hurricane Creek in the Parker’s Gap and Rabbit Valley neighborhood.

 In 1805, the federal government built a road from Athens, Georgia, to Nashville, Tennessee that passed through Ross Gap north into Chattanooga Valley.  John McDonald, who had returned to his former trading post to operate a farm, built a house and trading post in the gap and made his residence there.  His house still exists, mistakenly called the Chief John Ross House.  In fact, John Ross never lived there.

 Coming south from Old Washington in Rhea County, the post road from Knoxville crossed at Vann’s Ferry, between the later Dallas and what would become Harrison.  From Harrison, it followed Hickory Valley Road south until reaching the later point where Altamede later was built, then crossed from the west side of the valley to the east.  From there, it followed Concord Road to the South Chickamauga, crossing at Lomenick’s Ferry.  On the other side, it followed the route of Frawley and Scruggs Roads until connecting to the Federal Road.

 The regional councils were abolished in 1809 and the National Council given real authority as the national government of the Cherokee.  The office of Principal Chief likewise gained more authority and recognition.

 In 1817, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had established a mission on McDonald’s farm on the South Chickamauga.  The mission included a school for both male and female students, a grist mill somewhat upstream, and a church officially called the Church of Christ at Chickamauga.  The road from Ross’ Landing on the Tennessee to the new mission became known as Mission Road.

 Hamilton County was formed out of Rhea County in 1819, compromised of the modern county north of the Tennessee.  Its seat was the town of Dallas, which lay where Chester Frost Park is now, at the point where the post road from Old Washington in Rhea crossed at Vann’s Ferry.

 Real governmental reform came to the Cherokee Nation in 1820, with the establishment of a bicameral legislature, with a National Committee as the upper house and the National Council as the lower house.  In addition, the Cherokee Nation was divided up into eight judicial and legislative districts.  Most importantly, government was centered at a new capital named New Echota, freshly built upon the former town of Conasauga in the Calhoun, Georgia area.

 Everything in the counties of Hamilton and Marion south of the Tennessee River and Ooltewah Creek, most of Northwest Georgia, and a tip of Northeast Alabama east of the Tennessee fell into the Chickamauga District, including the last capital of the Cherokee Nation East at Red Clay.  Its seat was not, as one might think, at the town of Chickamauga, but at Crawfish Springs, where the Georgia town of Chickamauga has been since 1891.  Each district had its own judge and court and its own legislative delegation.

 The judge for the Chickamauga District was John Brown, owner of Brown’s Tavern, Brown’s Ferry, and Brown’s Landing (some distance upriver from the ferry).  Judge Brown owned most of Moccasin Bend as well as Tuskegee Island, which came to be called Brown’s Island.  After the treaty of 1819 which ceded the land north of the Tennessee River upon which Hamilton County was founded, Brown maintained a 640-acre reserve on Moccasin Bend which he later sold to Ephraim Hixon.

 Judge Brown became one of the Old Settlers in the 1820’s, those Cherokee who voluntarily removed westward long before forced removal became a question.  In 1839, he served for a few months as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West.

 The first post office in the region, even before Hamilton County (created in 1819 out of Rhea County and at the time comprised only the territory north of the river) had one, was called Rossville in 1927.  It ran out of John McDonald’s trading post along the Federal Road, with Joseph Coody as postmaster, then Nicholas Scales, before it transferred to the mission and became Brainerd.  That post office ceased existence in 1838 when the U.S.

Army began rounding up Cherokee for removal and the mission closed.

  Without getting into the politics of it, there were two concentration camps in Hamilton County for Cherokee awaiting Removal.  The largest was near Ross’ Landing and was called Camp Cherokee; it was located where the current Scrappy Moore Field and Manker-Patten Tennis Courts are now.  The other was Camp Clanewaugh at Indian Springs (at Parkwood Nursing Home).  The soldiers were housed at Fort Wood, located where the school building now housing Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences is.

 Between the Cherokee Removal and the War

 After the Removal was complete, people hungry for land poured across the Tennessee River to lay claim to plots in what surveyors called the Ocoee District.  This included everything in Bradley and Polk Counties, and Hamilton and Marion Counties south of the river.

 The seat of Hamilton County moved from Dallas north of the river to Vannsville south of it in 1839, which became Harrison in 1840.

 Soon after frontierspeople or less adventurous settlers moved into a new area, they often continued referring to it by the names its previous inhabitants had used, such as Opelika for the later Graysville, Georgia, and Running Water for the later Whiteside.  Chattanooga derived from the name of a Cherokee settlement in the Saint Elmo area.

 The name Chickamauga disappeared from Georgia when citizens of that state began pouring lands distributed by the Georgia Lottery.  However, when the citizens of Walker County first met they did so in the former courthouse of the Chickamauga District, before the county seat was moved to the city of Lafayette.

 Though it disappeared entirely from Georgia, the new incomers in Tennessee applied the name Chickamauga to churches, post offices, and communities due to the prestige of those who carried out the Cherokee resistance.  This began even before the Removal when Ephraim Hixon supervised a post office north of the Tennessee called North Chickamauga in the early 1830’s.

 What had been Old Chickamauga Town came into the possession of the Steel brothers, who named their large farm Vinegar Hill and planted it in strawberries.

 Unquestionably, the greatest landowner in Hamilton County east of South Chickamauga Creek was Col. Lewis Shepherd, who built a mansion he named Altamede on the west side of Hickory Valley and owned 6400 adjacent acres plus numerous detached plots.  Altamede stood inside the circle formed by Dupree Road and Mary Dupree Drive until 1977.  Col. Shepherd chose the point at which the post road, later stage road, turned to cross the valley, establishing a post office called Hickory Valley there in 1840.

 The first Baptist Church in Hamilton County was founded in April 1838 in the community initially called Good Springs Baptist after the Silverdale Springs.  It was first named after the community in which it was established on land donated by Col. Shepherd across the main road from what later became the village of Tyner.

 Some five months later, a second Baptist Church was founded, next to Taliaferro Spring near what became Kings Point, and named Chickamauga Baptist.

 At the afore-mentioned Silverdale Springs was a campground shared by both Cumberland Presbyterians and Methodists was called Chickamauga Camp Grounds at least through the Civil War.  In 1839, the first group organized Chickamauga Cumberland Presbyterian.  Five years later, the Methodists built House’s Chapel at the campgrounds.

 Though his main residence was in McLemore’s Cove in Walker County, Georgia, Philemon Bird bought the old mission and all its “improvements”, including the Missionary Mill.  The grounds of the mission became a farm while Bird constructed a larger mill closer to the main road which now became known as Bird’s Mill Road.  In addition to being renamed, the road extended further eastward well into the heart of Concord community.

 The richest man in the Concord community after Col. Shepherd was Anderson S. Wilkins, whose mansion stood where the I-75/East Brainerd Road cloverleaf is now.  According church records, unorganized Baptists began meeting in a small log cabin in 1838.  In 1848, they formally organized as the Baptist Church of Christ at Concord and moved into their new building on land donated by Mr. Wilkins.

 Before the War, there was another establishment in Concord of the type euphemistically called a meeting house, at approximately the spot where East Brainerd Church of Christ now stands.  In reality, it was a tavern, more like a pub than a dive, however.

 In the Opelika community, which straddled the state-line, Methodists had been meeting periodically since William Blackwell made his home in 1832 at what is now Council Fire subdivision and golf course.  In 1849, his son Lyndsey, whose house stood at what is now the corner of Julian and Davidson Roads, donated a parcel of land upon which to build a church, which became Blackwell’s Chapel Methodist.

 The same year, Opelika became the home of one of the most important industrialists in its history, as well as that of city of Chattanooga, the state of Georgia, and the railroad industry in the South.  By 1849, John D. Gray’s company had built or been involved in nearly all of the railroads built in Georgia.  He moved his family to Opelika while he was building the section of the Western & Atlantic Railroad between Dalton and Chattanooga, even before his company had started the tunnel through Cheetoogeta Mountain.

 Naturally, the stop at Opelika was named Graysville, which became the name of its post office as well as of the company town which Gray proceeded to build.  Gray Mining and Manufacturing eventually operated a lime mine and kiln, a furniture factory, a barrel factory, and a gristmill. 

 In 1850, the tunnel through Cheetoogeta Mountain was completed, as well as the rail line to the city of Chattanooga.  Coming from Graysville, Georgia, the first station in Hamilton County had been built in an area known to residents as Pull Tight.  In honor of local history, the stop was named Chickamauga.  A village quickly grew up around it, by the Civil War containing the Finley General Store, Ellis Bros. General Store, a grocery, and a saloon.  The post office contributed to use of the name for the local area well into the 20th century.

 The W&A line into Chattanooga crossed the South Chickamauga beyond Chickamauga Station, and the point on the west bank at which it crossed the Harrison Turnpike became home to  Boyce Station.  A thriving village whose industries relied on water power soon sprang up.

 The Vinegar Hill neighborhood at the former Old Chickamauga Town began to be called Ellis’ Crossing, after the point at which Bird’s Mill Road crossed the railroad tracks.

 One of the early leaders of Hamilton County after its organization in 1819 was Samuel T. Igou, who among other enterprises owned a ferry across the Tennessee.  After the Removal, he made his home in Rabbit Valley at the foot of Whiteoak Ridge near Igou Gap, the next gap north of Perker’s Gap.  In 1851, local inhabitants founded West View Cumberland Presbyterian upon land Igou donated, naming their church after his large farm.

 Henry Massengale donated a plot of land in the village of Boyce on the west bank of the South Chickamauga to Chickamauga Baptist Church in 1856.  The church was across the turnpike from the station, between the railroad and the creek.

 John D. Gray finished construction of the Chattanooga-Cleveland link to the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in 1858.  The station in the community of Good Spring took the name Tyner after the railroad engineer who built it.  At the time the war broke out, Tyner was also home to Varnell General Store, Rawlings General Store, Springfield Bros. Grocery, and a saloon.

 Gray’s plans for the Harrison-Lafayette Railroad were interrupted, permanently it turned out, by the advent of the Civil War, robbing Concord community of the Johnson whistle-stop which had been planned for it.  Gray was also instrumental, by the way, in construction of the Nashville & Chattanooga, Memphis & Charleston, and Wills Valley Railroads into Chattanooga.

 The War Between the States

 In this section, keep in mind that the Army of Tennessee is Confederate, named for the state, while the Army of the Tennessee is Union, name for the river.

 The War effected the Chickamauga, Tennessee community only indirectly before 1863, at least in terms of destruction from combat.  Both railroad bridges over the South Chickamauga (of the Western & Atlantic and the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroads) were burned in November 1861, and a Confederate guerrilla group first known as Osborne’s Scouts and later as Jenkins’ Scouts operated in the general area through at least part of the war.

 In 1862, Maj. Gen. Pat Cleburne’s division built a number of redoubts in the area, one of which still stands in the former village of Tyner.  Three others formerly stood on Tyner Hill where the middle school is now, on Stein Hill exactly where the water tower stands, and on Dupree Hill where Grace Works Church is now.

 The first two redoubts guarded Tyner Station, the second two Chickamauga Station, which was also protected by another redoubt on the hill to the north of it.  In addition, one of the brigades of Cleburne’s Division built the redoubt guarding the county seat of Harrison.

 Highlighting the extent to which the name Chickamauga had disappeared from Georgia, the Confederates called the engagement which took place near Crawfish Springs in 1863 the Battle of Mud Flats, following their habit of naming battles by the nearest community.  The Union, on the other hand, tended to name battles after nearby streams and called it the Battle of the Chickamauga, referring to West Chickamauga Creek.

 During the siege of the Army of the Cumberland by the Army of Tennessee between the Battles of Mud Flats (of the Chickamauga) and of Chattanooga, the single-most important supply for the Confederates was at Chickamauga Station.  Tyner Station served primarily as a departure point for troops joining the siege of the Army of the Ohio at Knoxville.

 What most people don’t know about the action on 25 November 1863 is that the charge by the Army of the Cumberland which drove the Army of Tennessee from Missionary Ridge was supposed to be a feint.  It was intended to relieve Sherman’s augmented 15th Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, which had been repeatedly driven back by Cleburne’s Division at the north end of the ridge called Tunnel Hill.  To the end of the war, Cleburne’s “Blue Flag Division” carried banner with “Tunnel Hill, Tn.” as one of its victories.

 Chickamauga Station was the designated rendezvous point for the retreating forces after Gen. Bragg’s loss at Missionary Ridge.  Cleburne’s Division, which had been sitting down to celebrate their victory when informed of the collapse, was tasked with covering the retreat eastward.

 Little did President Lincoln realize how fortuitous the choice of 26 November would prove to be for the Thanksgiving Day he had proclaimed.  His goal was to distract from the Union disaster at Mud Flats and the horrific casualties at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.  That day the whole Army of Tennessee withdrew toward Ringgold, Georgia, in two columns from Chickamauga Station, with Gist’s Division serving as rear guard for Breckenridge’s and Cleburne’s for Hardee’s. 

 According to the Official Record of the War Between the States and letters from participating soldiers, there were four minor battles during the retreat that day.  The first took place at Chickamauga Station.  The second in Hickory Valley occurred along Shepherd’s Run (aka Hickory Creek), with the Confederates positioned on Concord Ridge.  The third in Concord east of that like-named ridge near Mackey Branch, then called Cat Creek.  The last, in the early evening, took place at Graysville, Georgia.

 The next day, of course, Bragg’s army retreated to Dalton through Taylor’s Gap, with Cleburne’s troops successfully holding the narrow passage against those Hooker’s Corps. 

 That winter, the Army of the Cumberland wintered in and around Chattanooga, including the eastern Chickamauga Valley.  Several churches found themselves appropriated as hospitals, including Concord Baptist and Cumberland Baptist, both subsequently burned.  In Concord, many of the Union dead were buried in what was then Wells Gray’s front yard, right about the spot where the Kimsey house now stands.

 The base camp of the Army of the Cumberland remained in Chattanooga through 1866, mainly serving as home to its quartermaster corps and its First Colored Brigade.

(Chuck Hamilton was born and raised in Chattanooga and has lived in East Brainerd since 1967. HeI went to school at East Brainerd Elementary for six years, Tyner Junior for three, Ooltewah High for one, and finished his last two years at Tyner High, graduating in 1981. He went to UTC for four years, getting his B.S. in political science with minors in psychology and history in 1985.  Following graduation, he enlisted in the Navy and did one tour, including two years at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. After getting out, he returned to the Philippines for two more years to work with the U.S. Refugee Program in Morong, Bataan.  Upon returning to the area at the end of 1991, heI became involved with Indian rights, which led him back into renewed interest in local history. He is fluent in Spanish and Vietnamese, and speaks a little French.  The past year he has spent several months in Paris, and the past three years has been heavily involved in supporting the movement for secular democracy and human rights in Iran.
He has been passionately interested in history all his life - local, Tennessee, U.S., world, ancient, etc.  He can be reached natty4bumpo@gmail.com )

 


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