Today we travel across the country with ease. The first settlers weren’t so fortunate.

 

Discoveries

Recently, I took Mom to see the Tennessee State Archives and Library in Nashville. (I wrote about the TSAL in December’s DYK Tomorrow Never Comes?)

To our surprise, we discovered Mom’s third and fourth great-grandfathers were both buried in a small graveyard near where some of our friends live in East Tennessee. And though her great-grandfather’s grave is in a different cemetery, it, too, was nearby. So, we decided to try and find their graves when we went to visit our friends.

 

Reflect

As we traversed the winding roads through the mountains, especially the small two-lane roads without shoulders and often steep drops-offs, I couldn’t help but reflect on the difference between our travel experience and those of early settlers.

In 1808, when Mom’s grandfather, three greats back, moved with family and friends from Virginia to East Tennessee, traveling wasn’t nearly as fast or easy.

 

Travel

Today, traveling the approximately 350 miles from Rockbridge County, Virginia, to Roane County in the mountains of East Tennessee takes about five hours by Interstate. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fast for our relatives.

Going by land meant traveling by wagon, horseback, or on foot. (Back then, walking was often the only way to get from one place to another. Remember Did You Know You’ve Never Heard About This Incredible Journey?)

Settlers also traveled by water, if a river happened to be nearby. Back then, rivers were the highways, and our relatives may have made part of their trip to East Tennessee by boat.

 

The Town

In about 1808, our relatives settled in Roane County, Tennessee, near the town of Kingston. The town was almost a decade old, at that point, and had grown up in the shadow of a federal frontier outpost—Fort Southwest Point.

Established in 1792 and located on a peninsula at the mouth of the Clinch River, the fort’s original purpose was to protect settlers traveling west. In 1797, when its mission changed to protecting the Native Americans from the encroaching white settlers, Fort Southwest Point expanded to a hill overlooking the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers.

Did You Know…

• Founded on October 23, 1799, Kingston is the second oldest city in Tennessee. Two years later, in 1801, Roane County was established.
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition planned and recruited frontier soldiers at Fort Southwest Point.
• Fort Southwest Point was manned until 1811. Today, part of the fort’s structure has been reconstructed and is on the National Register of Historic Places. (The fort is open to the public and is free to visit.)

 

The River

Along the Virginia-West Virginia border, near the town of Tazewell, the Clinch River begins its run of over 300 miles from Virginia to Tennessee through the Great Appalachian Valley. It ends in Kingston, where it joins the Tennessee River.

The mussels provided by the Clinch River, were an important source of food for Native Americans. For the Scots-Irish (and later the British), mussels were what they fed their hogs and used as bait.

Did You Know…

• The Clinch River had earlier names. One, “Pellissippi,” was said to mean “winding waters” in Cherokee.
• Before dams were built on the Clinch River, it was one of the largest producers of freshwater mussels and pearls.
• Throughout the southern Appalachians, the freshwater pearl industry flourished from the late 1800s until the early 1900s. The economic heart of the pearl industry centered on the Clinch and Emory Rivers.
• TVA-built dams (Tennessee Valley Authority) killed the mussel-based industries.

 

Final Thought

It amazes me how far people traveled centuries ago. Some even traveled more and further than many people today. And they did so—as hard as it is to believe—all before the invention of cars and even trains!