The Siege at the Blockhouse

I shouldn't be writing about this, as I don't really know enough to do it justice. But I loved this event and want to post these pictures. Cousin Bob McConnell loves local history and his whole family was involved in this year's Siege at the Blockhouse at Natural Tunnel State Park. The blockhouse is a replica of the Anderson blockhouse, which was located here in Scott County, and the Siege gave an encapsulated picture of life here in the late 1700's.

This year's storyline was about settlers heading west, a horse race, an Indian killed, a skirmish, and a prisoner exchange between Daniel Boone and the Cherokee. The pictures below are out of order, as I haven't yet figured out just how to add photos to this blog in the order I want them. You have to start at the end and work your way forward....and that's actually a lot harder than it sounds. So, I apologize, and please bear with me. Two re-enactors pose in front of the Blockhouse.

One of the Cherokee.
Another view of the Blockhouse. The upper level overhangs the lower, and there are slots in the overhanging part, so that settlers could shoot the Indians below.

A settler keeps watch over the developing uncertainty.

There was time for food, fun, and music.
Pictured above is Jeff McConnell and his dad, Bob, who naturally turned his back to me just as I was snapping the picture. I guess they didn't trust these newfangled inventions in the 1700's.

This gentleman above portrayed Daniel Boone, and while he wasn't exactly Fess Parker, I thought he did a fine job. He had to be an extraordinary person, old Dan'l, a man of tact and understanding, as well as courage.
Here Daniel Boone and Capt. Joseph Martin talk with the Cherokee representatives.

The Cherokee make a point during the prisoner exchange. I didn't get his name, unfortunately, but the man in red is a local teacher, and was very knowledgable about Cherokee history.
An agreement is reached about the prisoners. Unfortunately, the settlers' daughter chose to remain with the Cherokee where she was better treated! Quite a blow to her mother, I expect!

The settlers were alarmed after an Indian was killed by one of their numbers during a horserace. The culprit was sentenced to a firing squad the following day, but was saved at the last minute by the Cherokee. They took him to replace the man who was lost.
Bob McConnell is ready for the fight.

Attacking the Cherokee with their long rifles.
Unfortunately, Bob suffered an injury during the fighting and had to have a bullet extracted from his arm. He took a few swigs of whiskey, bit down on his knife, and let the doctor hack away. Bob's a pretty good actor. I don't know how many folks caught him winking at his granddaughter, Madison.

The Kentucky settlers arrive at the blockhouse.... ...and receive final instructions from Daniel Boone before heading west.


There were lots of colorful characters on hand. Fixing beans....

Waiting for the menfolk.....
Although small, the camp at the blockhouse was correct in every detail - from the tents, to the furniture, to the food they prepared and ate.

The Williams House

This old house on Manville Road intrigued us the first time we saw it. Don Lane, well-known Kingsport area genalogist, was taking us on a tour of some family cemeteries when we passed it on a sharp curve in the road. He casually mentioned that it was the Thomas Whitt Woolsey Williams home. I recognized the name and asked, "Thomas Whitt Woolsey who was married to Sarah Sally Buckner?" Don said, yes it was Whitt and Sally's home, and I craned my neck to look backwards.

I sat down later and counted the generations: Whitt and Sally were my great-great-great-great grandparents. He was born in 1808 and Sally in 1811, and they both died in 1885. They are buried in the Adams Cemetery which is right up on the ridge where Grandma and Grandpa Peters lived. The picture below is courtesy of Don Lane, as are many of the pictures you'll see here of our Scott County ancestors. What tremendous work he's done for us! Whitt and Sally had eight children and this is my line of descent: Whitt and Sally; Mary "Polly" Williams; Margaret Templeton; Mary "Polly" Pendleton; Margaret Dell Lane; Zella Mae Peters, and me.
The house is still owned by descendants of Whitt and Sally. We met their ggg-granddaughter, Bobbie Pendleton Tignor, there some weeks ago. She told us that the middle 2-story section of the house was the originial part, with the two side wings added on later.

Bobbie and her husband, incidentially, are the folks who bought Grandma Peters' house up on the ridge, and they still live there. This might seem like quite a coincidence, but when you start talking to people down here, connections like this come to light all the time. It's one of the really wonderful things about living here - unraveling the intertwined threads of our common history.

A shot of the porch.
This is one of the center rooms in the original part of the house.

The steps going upstairs are in the red room above. They were in pretty bad shape, but we decided to climb up anyway. As I said before, nothing stops Tom!
Upstairs there is one big room. The floor is still pretty solid, but we decided not to do any jumping. I expect this is where the children all slept.

This fireplace is located in the addition on the upper side of the house.
And this one in the lower addition. It has one of the old cast iron surrounds that are so common in the part of Virginia, where coal was burnt. There's one in the fireplace in Aunt Monnie's house, too.

There's log under this wooden siding, and you can see the decorative woodwork that covered the end of the logs to protect them from the elements.
Hostas still bloom and curtains still hang, reminding us that it wasn't so long ago that this old place was home to generations of Williams families.

The People of Aunt Monnie's House

This picture shows Noble Burkhart Peters and his wife, Margaret Dell Lane Peters, at their home on Moccasin Ridge. They raised a family of 10 children, including my mother, Zella Mae, and Bob's mother, Monnie Agnes. A McConnell brother and sister married a Peters brother and sister. Above we have, from the left, Eugene McConnell who married Monnie Peters, and Frankie McConnell who married Carl Peters.
We have this picture of Aunt Monnie and Uncle Eugene sitting on our pie safe in the living room. It's my favorite picture of Aunt Monnie because of her vibrant smile.

Uncle Carl, Aunt Frankie and their daughters, Kay, Judy and Rudine pose in front of Aunt Monnie's house.
Cousins Bob McConnell and Kay Peters Stallard look pretty in the front yard before heading off to the Prom. Don't you love her dress? And boy, would I like to drive that car!

Notice the tree trunk - it's the same one in the post on Aunt Monnie's house.

Aunt Monnie's House

Funny to think of now, Tom and I actually talked about moving to Scott County the very first time we came down together. Three years later, we're living in Aunt Monnie's house. I called Cousin Bob McConnell in January and said, "Bob, we're coming. We've decided we want to move now, so we're putting our house on the market and as soon as it's sold, we're coming to Scott County." And Bob said, "Well, the lady who was in Mother's house just moved out. She's going to West Virginia to be with her daughter."

Our house in Pennsylvania sold in two weeks, and here we are.

Aunt Monnie's house sits on Manville Road amongst a little cluster of houses. The picture above shows Uncle Carl's house on the knoll in the background. Cousin Judy, Uncle Carl's middle daughter, told me recently that when she thinks of home, this is the house she thinks of. June Pressley lives in the house now. This is the living room in Aunt Monnie's house, and the pretty brick fireplace where the family used to burn coal. The house was built in the early 1940's - help me out here, Bob, exactly when was it built? - by our grandfather, Noble B. Peters, for Aunt Monnie and her family. It is possible - and I like to think probable - that the lumber he used came from the sawmill of his father-in-law, Abe "Super" Lane, our Grandma Maggie's father. By all accounts, Grandpa Peters was not a happy man, and very likely suffered from a form of the depression that runs through the family. I hope he has found peace now. I hope he knows that I am here in this simple, sturdy, dear house he built, and that I think of him every single day. I hope he knows, that even though I, too, struggle with depression, I am glad to be here. And I am happy.

Another view shows the beautiful woodwork. The door on the right leads to the front bedroom, and the other to a little hallway, and the kitchen, bath, and back bedroom.

The house is basically four rooms with a bath in the middle and a laundry room built off of the kitchen. The cupboards in the bath and in the kitchen, above, were crafted by Uncle Carl.

Three of Noble and Maggie Peters great-great-grandchildren swing on the front porch of Aunt Monnie's house. From left, Tabitha, Phillip and Sabrina, are the children of Dale and Allison Page, Dale is the son of Barbara Peters Page, who is the daughter of Glen Peters, the youngest son of Noble and Maggie. You can see Uncle Carl's store/woodshop in the background. This building is now owned by Annabelle Hammonds. When we moved into Aunt Monnie's house in April, the branch was flowing fast, and these pretty flowers welcomed us. Now in summer, the branch has slowed and to hear it trickling over the rocks, you must sit quietly. I like to sit by it in the evening and watch the lightning bugs come and go, and the stars appear.

One of the first things we did was fill up the bird feeder in the backyard and add a few more. Goldfinches flock to the thistle feeder, and hummingbirds have found the nectar we put out for them. So far, we've identified 20 different kinds of birds at these feeders in our backyard. And every morning we wake up to birdsong.
This is one of the first pictures I took when we moved here. Uncle Carl's house is on the upper right and Aunt Monnie's in the lower left. The redbuds were blooming everywhere. We could pretty much look out any window and see a redbud.

This big pine tree stands in our front yard. I just think it's a neat picture. A row of these trees stood all along the front of Uncle Carl's store, and I remember them from my girlhood. It is a curious thing to walk down the road beneath them. It seems as if the past and the present are side-by-side and sometimes it's hard to remember just where I am. It's disconcerting right now, but I'm getting used to it, and now and then comes a moment of wholeness and perfect peace. Just what I hoped to find here.
Aunt Monnie's name is still on the mailbox, because as Cousin Bob said, "It belongs there." I agree.

Beauty Everywhere You Look

This pretty scene is of the Clinch River, taken from the Swinging Bridge near Clinchport. If you've read the post about Cait and I crossing this bridge, you've seen the view from the other direction. To be perfectly honest, I don't know if this is upriver or downriver. And, shoot, Tom's already gone to bed..... I still have a lot to learn about my new home.







This is Bush Mill, located on Twin Springs Road, outside of Nickelsville. I should know more about it than I do, and I'll try to find out a little more, and post some details. But right now I'm just posting pretty pictures, and had to include this one.





This is a shot of Copper Creek, about a mile from our house. We often see people fishing here, and great blue herons, too. I think the herons have better luck.









Get Tom near water, and you can bet, he's going in. Sometimes it's on purpose, and sometimes it's accidently on purpose. When I met him, oh so many years ago, he told me he was a mountain man. I believed him then......but now I know for sure.


Just about everywhere you go in Scott County, you'll see scenes like these.....mountains, trees, winding waters, and curvy roads. There are old barns; abandoned houses; and chimneys standing all alone in fields, where once firelight shone surrounded by a family, singing, reading the Bible, or rocking a cradle. The past is alive here. The mountains hold it close and keep it near. This picture and the one above show a small part of Tom's favorite view. It's at the top of Manville Road, a few miles up the mountain from our house. You can see the Clinch River and beside it, the Clinch River highway. If ever Tom goes missing, this is where I'll look for him first.