Stone foundations and walls are all that remain of the coal mining community of Shakerag
Samuel and George Williams had great aspirations in the business world, including promising coal lands in Marion County. After a sizable investment, they later concluded that the coal embankment was too thin to be a paying proposition.
The same site was later mined by the McNabb family and a settlement known as Shakerag grew up there. It had a hotel, commissary, coke ovens, miner homes and other buildings. There were 34 building foundations documented there in the 1980s. The name Shakerag came from the fact that some of its citizens would bum a ride on a passing river vessel by shaking a rag to get the pilot's attention.
David McNabb gave a deposition in an interesting long-running Williams lawsuit that was found last year. He said, "My understanding there is a tract of about 1,200 acres. It lies on the side and the top of the mountain opposite Kelly's Ferry and Savannah Island. Samuel Williams came down there and said we would have to be stopped from working at the coal banks - that there were minor heirs who had an interest and it was sort of a difficult case that a back slam might come against a fellow after a while. I rented the coal banks from Mr. Williams and gave him my obligation for a third of the coal that we took out. His third was to be left at the bank. I think he received $5 or $6 from Mr. Sterling for rent of the coal lands. Mr. Pearson bought 20 yards of the coal bank. He was to pay for some coal he had previously dug. Robert Jack, who lives on Sale Creek, said he had sold it to Williams. The coal had been discovered at the time of the sale. It went by the name Jack's Entry. Williams sold the land to me for $300. I was acquainted with Allen White. He lived in a house on the mountain. He had been ailing for some time and went there for his health. He died at the house. I lived at the north side of the Tennessee River in Marion County about two miles above Kelly's Ferry. I have been living in the same neighborhood for 20 years or more. John Haley sold a coal bank to George and Samuel Williams. It was about seven or eight miles from my coal bank. Haley and Evans worked it some."
To get to the Hamilton County Courthouse at Harrison from Suck Creek Road, it was a long trip for McNabb, who collected $20 for his appearance. He said he had to use four ferries to get there.
John Haley said, "Samuel Williams informed me he had received a large sum of money to invest in land. Col. James A. Whiteside drew a bond for the land, and I signed and Charles Haley signed. During the partnership I lived about five miles from G.W. Williams and about nine miles from Samuel Williams. There was a coal bank near Kelly's Ferry that the heirs of my father claimed. I was working there and received notice from Samuel Williams that he claimed the land. I quit working there until it could be settled.
John Haley said there is a 50-acre tract in Marion County on the north side of the Tennessee River a short distance below the Suck, an undivided half of which belongs to G&S Williams.
Col. Whiteside remembered, "In December of 1839 an agreement was reached to invest in coal lands in Marion County. It was between myself and Samuel Williams of one part and Farish Carter, Ker Boyce and Richard K. Hines of the second part. They were to advance $20,000 and more later if it was thought advisable. They advanced $20,000 first in bank notes of Georgia not receivable at our land office which were returned and they drew Bills of Exchange in New York for the amount and Samuel Williams had them discounted at the branch Bank of Tennessee at Athens. The proceeds went into the possession of the Williams' - mostly into George's hands I think for he was generally the most active businessman. The coal lands were bought from John Haley and placed in the Hines Company account. When George Williams died on Aug. 9, 1842, Col. Carter and Ker Boyce were at Chattanooga to close the business. On the 11th or 12th, Samuel Williams and myself made a deed to Col. Carter."
Col. Whiteside also said, "The purchase of property from John Haley for $1,000 was made in 1839 and was part of the Carter, Boyce and Hines $20,000 investment. I had purchased of Allen White some mountain lands and interests in some coal banks in 1840 or 1841 for the Boyce, Carter and Hines Company. I later approached Samuel Williams about taking the White deed. He said he had purchased a piece of mountain land from White in about 1845, being all he could get for a bad debt. White was insolvent and owed him. He requested me to take a deed from White for him. I now consider it not worth more than $300. The strata of coal is too thin to be valuable."
The ruins of Shakerag - where Samuel Williams once hoped for a thriving coal industry - are in the Prentice Cooper State Forest along Suck Creek Road.
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A demolition project on Walnut Street unexpectedly turned up documents from Chattanooga's earliest days in March 2018.
Rob Bentley, a young man who has developed a love for Chattanooga's history, said he got a call from his friend Robert Parks about the discovery. His company, T. U. Parks, was doing the demolition and build-out of the former Elks Building at Walnut and Seventh and the small adjacent former Title Guaranty and Trust building.
Mr. Bentley, who works at the venerable Chattanooga firm of T.T. Wilson and Company, said, "When they were demoing the old vault the workers found the old documents. Robert went to look at them and a check made out to T.T. Wilson was on top of the pile so he called me to let me know what he had found. I asked him if they would stop the demo of the vaults so i could come take a look at the papers.
"By the time I got to the job site some of the documents had already been thrown into the dumpster and destroyed. I loaded up all the documents I could save out of the dumpster and the ones not yet thrown away into my truck. I went home and organized them the best I could."
The cache included many other checks to pioneer Chattanooga businesses.
The retrieved items included some 800 pages of old documents related to a lawsuit against Chattanooga pioneer Samuel Williams. Some of the documents date to well before the Indian Removal and to the earliest days of Hamilton County.
Mr. Bentley later met with Sam Hall, who has been saving thousands of old Chattanooga photos and documents through his Deepzoom Chattanooga website (now ChattanoogaHistory.com).
Mr. Hall was excited about the find and began scanning the Williams legal documents. He scanned a large group that was saved before some were thrown in the dumpster. Those retrieved from the dumpster, he photographed. Portions of those documents had water damage so that about a fourth of each page cannot be read.
Some of the documents bear the signature of H.C. Beck, one of the founders of Title Guaranty and Trust. The title company later built a much-larger headquarters next door. Both are directly across from the County Courthouse.
Through the years, the upstairs portion of the initial Title Guaranty building was rented to attorneys, including Lewis Coleman, a protoge of Coca Cola bottling magnate Jack Lupton. It is believed that the papers that were located were from one of the attorneys renting the upstairs office or from the Title Guaranty operation itself.
Later the small building was merged with the Elks Building next door. The county named the pair of buildings the Mayfield Annex. The county in recent years vacated the buildings and they are being renovated by Lamp Post Properties, which has been restoring several downtown historic buildings for new uses.
The Williams documents can be read on ChattanoogaHistory.com. They are in two files - the undamaged scanned ones and the photographed pages with water damage.
The links to the Williams papers on Sam Hall's website are here.