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By: William R. Selden
Members of our family have compiled complete and accurate genealogical records which are available to any of us. In fact, we have far better information than our grandparents and great-grandparents ever knew. But there are those personal characteristics about our forebears, which fade with time; and, as those who were there die, they are lost and forgotten. It is my intention to put in writing my knowledge of our ancestors who came to McMinn County to start what has become a very large and scattered family. I will repeat what my grandmother, who was the youngest child of Mary and Andrew Hutsell, told me over a fifteen year span. A very happy association it was. So often her idea of her background was colored with stories of aristocratic ancestors to whose families she referred as FFV's... First Families of Virginia. I am disappointed that I must refute her innocently conceived idea; I don't know why she assumed this because she was never one to "put on airs." In the first place, our ancestors settled in the Western part of Virginia, in those rolling hills so like that part of Germany where they had lived for hundreds of years before they came to America, and very similar to the topography of McMinn County. Then, too, they were not educated people. They were second generation and third generation immigrants who had not even learned to write in English, and who had very little, or no, material wealth until they had worked and saved and bought land. One of Andrew Hutsell's oldest books was an Old Dutch Bible that had come from his family. He read from it all his life. I believe it was actually German, though he referred to it as his Dutch Bible. These were hard working people who had very little of the materials things of life, but they were industrious and frugal. Andrew's mother, Christina Hounshell, brought some property with her when and after she married John Hutsell. Her father, John Hounshell, had started with very little. He served in the Revolutionary War, accumulated some wealth and left an estate that provided his children with real property, slaves or cash settlements. John Hounshell and his wife, Susannah Messerschmitt are buried in the cemetery at St. Paul's Lutheran Church near Rural Retreat, Virginia. I have recently visited their graves. The brick church building is a hundred years old, but a plaque on the church tells us it is the oldest Lutheran congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains.. Founded in 1767. The Hutsells and Hounshells were Lutherans. I think the Earhearts and Painters were, too, since they were of German or Dutch descent. The Hutsells and Hounshells settled in Wythe County, Virginia, on and near Reedy Creek, which winds throughout the county. When I first started researching our family, I looked in the telephone directory of Wytheville, chose a Hounshell, and wrote him, explaining we were Hounshells and I would like some information. I never had a reply, but I later learned it was negro to whom I had written! Descendent of slave, I suppose. John Hutsell and Christina Hounshell were married April 12, 1803. They had eleven children. The oldest of these was Andrew (named for his mother's brother) who was born January 2, 1805. Now, to look at the Earhearts. Mary Earheart's parents were John and Margaret (Painter) Earheart. They lived in Montgomery County, Virginia, a few miles out of Christiansburg. Their house, built in 1820, was still there a few years ago when I visited the area. Close by is a small family cemetery, enclosed with a stone wall and an iron gate.. Locked many years ago and not opened since. I believe that last grave put there was in the early 1920's. John and Margaret and other Earheart relatives are buried there. This, too, is pretty hilly countryside like the southwestern part of Germany known as the Palatinate . which they left to come to America. Margaret Painter's father was Adam. A story in the family says that Adam had worked long and hard to save money to buy his own farm. When he had enough to pay for the farm that he wanted, he took the cash, started out for the owners to make his payment, and was murdered and robbed. John and Margaret Painter Earheart were married January 4, 1791. They had six children. The two girls were Mary and Margaret, known as Polly and Peggy. Margaret married a Mr. Davis. They had no children. She was always known as Aunt Peggy Davis. One of Mary and Andrew's daughters was named for her, Ursula Davis Hutsell, who married Joseph Rucker. Aunt Peggy had her portrait painted and gave it to her daughter, Blanche. It was stored in a warehouse in Chattanooga when the warehouse burned, so the portrait is gone. Andrew and Mary used to go by train to Christiansburg to visit. Particularly to visit Mary's brother, Adam; and to her relatives, the Montagues and Charltons. Her mother had died two years earlier and it was quiet and lonely at home. She was lighthearted and bright, with a happy outlook----a contrast to the quiet, stern Andrew, who was 27 at the time of the marriage. They left immediately for Tennessee where Andrew bought a farm a mile or two from Athens. We know this as Uncle Harrison's place, but it is now a part of Athens where North City grocery is, North City School, etc. Here Andrew farmed and operated an overnight stand for families who were migrating west. He was equipped to keep herds of cattle, pigs, turkeys or horses----or whatever the migrants were driving through. He accumulated enough to purchase more land, he did---and at one time was one of the largest landowners in the county. Their first child was a girl, born March 10, 1833. They named her Margaret Isabella for Mary's mother and Andrew's grandmother. She died in infancy. Next, they had a boy, John Earheart Hutsell, named for Mary's father---and then another boy whom they named George Washington, which was always a popular name. Another boy, Elijah Montgomery, named for his pleasant memory for Mary. Then another girl, Clemanda Virginian, named for the state of Virginia. And another girl, Ellen Missouri, for the state of Missouri. Another girl, Aphelia Burns, Apehila for a neighbor, (Mrs. Musroe) and Burns for another neighbor. She died in infancy and was buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Athens, TN in 1845. Then another son, William Harrison, named for President William Henry Harrison. Harrison was his mother's favorite son. Then Erasmus Taylor. Erasmus for the German (Dutch) theologian and scholar and Taylor for Zachary Taylor. The rest were girls. Ursula David---Ursula, a good German name and Davis for Mary's sister, Aunt Peggy Davis. Mary Etta, Mary for Uncle Sam's wife; Artimisa Roxina, for then they must have run out of names. The last, Helen Vernon. Some relative wrote and suggested that they name her Helen, which they pronounced, as Heelen and Vernon for Mt. Vernon. It was unusual that Helen died in 1945 and was buried in the same cemetery, Cedar Grove, where her sister was buried 100 years earlier. Some years before this last child was born, Andrew had bought a farm several miles down in the country on Spring Creek. They built a four-room house on a hill in a grove of large oak trees. He and the young sons would go down there to work, often staying a week or two at a time. Andrew had acquired several slaves at the time even though he was opposed to slavery. He was an Unionist and a Methodist. Before the Civil War he moved his family to Spring Creek. It was his intention to build a nice home for Miss Polly, which is what he usually called his wife. But the economy was so unsettled and troops were often coming through foraging and stealing---both sides---that he decided to wait. More than once troops came to his Spring Creek house looking for whatever they could find as well as for men to serve in the Army. Uncle Harrison hid out more than once before he joined the Union forces: Mary buried her silver. With the War over, Andrew fired his brick kiln and with help on the place, built a handsome two story, four rooms with hall and stairs onto the existing four rooms. This was enhanced by a tall columned porch in front and a boxwood walk to the lane leading up from the road passing below. There is a fine spring at the foot of the hill below the garden and a well under the back porch. Beside what remains of the house today is a large holly tree, which Mary planted when she moved there. During this time, Andrew went to Nashville to buy furniture for the new addition to his home. Those things they had not bought in Athens or Calhoun where he picked them up. A set of cane bottomed chairs which he bought were painted with "A. Hutson" (misspelled) on the bottom. The mirror for the parlor survives; it, too, is in good condition today. The loom house was one of those buildings out in the side yard. I'm sure Mary spun on her flax wheels, but she did not know how to weave. Someone came once a year to weave for the family needs. She stayed two or three months, or whatever time was necessary for her to supply the family needs for blankets, towels, bedspreads and homespun. One of the family (through Mary Etta Hutsell) has one of the flax wheels. The Selden family (through Helen V. Hutsell) has the other wheel, as well as some of the coverlets, blankets, and a couple of linen towels. I have a pair of Andrew's gloves, a silk handkerchief and his straight-blade razor from this period. While Andrew and Mary were living in Athens, they were active members of the Methodist Church, and he appears as a trustee of the present Keith memorial United Methodist Church in 1842. He was active in the organization of Tennessee Wesleyan College where he served as one of its incorporators and one of its first trustees. He was succeeded in this appointment by his brother, Sam, from Meigs County. It was during this period that he came to know W. G. Brownlow---known as Parson Brownlow, from Knoxville, who was a strong Unionist, Methodist, and Governor. At the time of the disagreement in the Methodist Church, Andrew early allied himself with the anti-slavery group which became the "Northern" Methodist Group. He sent three of his daughters to Grant University. Some went to Sweetwater to the Female Academy there. That's where Clemie and Artie met their husbands. After his move to Spring Creek, he offered a plot of ground with a spring to be used for a Methodist Church. A frame building was built by other interested members of the community. This became Union Chapel Cemetery. Traveling Indian doctors were not uncommon at this time. And Andrew subscribed to one of these who came every year to treat whatever ailed him. Just such a prescription of medicine proved to be his undoing because the medicine gave Andrew dysentery. His condition worsened and he died within the week----there at home. By this time he had given all of his sons a good farm. (George had gone to Cincinnati to work during the Civil War. While he was there he had a "fever" and died. He was buried there.) Harrison had the original farm just north of Athens. John too. Elijah had the farm close-by, which is today the J. G. Layman farm, and Razzie kept the Spring Creek Farm. Artie and Helen got a little property off of the farm, which Harrison had. Mary and Artie were married soon after. Mary to Rance A. Ellis and Artie to W. D. Stowe, her brother-in-law Marcus Goddard's nephew. Helen, the last, was married in 1886. Mary (Polly) was visiting her daughter, Mary Ellis, in 1892, in Athens, when she had a seizure (diagnosed as spinal meningitis) I wonder if it were a stroke, and died. After her death the household was divided, though the children didn't seem to want a great deal. While Mary and Andrew were living near Athens, an itinerant artist came to paint their portraits. It was the custom then for the artist to live with his customers while he was sketching or painting. And so this is what Edmund Hacker did in the fall of 1851 when he made pastels of Mary and Andrew. It appears that the artist had the bodies already finished and just added the head of his subject. In McMinn County, there are six other portraits existent, painted by the same artist, and they all have on the same clothes. In 1842 Mary and Andrew entered their products at the County Fair in Athens. Both won prizes. The total premiums amounted to 20 silver dollars which they took to the silversmith-William Seahorn-in Athens to have him make a silver cup. They used it when they went to the watering places-springs. They used to go to Benton springs on Chilhowee Mountain before the Civil War. Helen Hutsell Roberts inherited this cup, and she, too, used to take it to the resorts to use to drink the healthful water. Her granddaughter, Elizabeth Selden Taylor now has the cup, a very handsome, handmade silver beaker with a plain handle. It is engraved "Andrew and Mary Hutsell, 1842". The first of Mary and Andrew's children to marry was Clemmie, who married Marcus Bearden Goddard from Sweetwater. They lived in Sweetwater where their large frame house on Church Street has been made into an apartment house-more than a hundred years later. Just before 1890 the Goddards decided to go west where they lived, and died, in the state of Washington. Two of the Goddard children lived until their late 90's. All of their descendants live in the western states. Then John Earheart Hutsell married Margaret Bonner, daughter of James and Ann (Baker) Bonner. This was a happy home which John's family enjoyed visiting. His sisters were particularly fond of Mag, as they call her. Sulie slipped off to marry Joe Rucker. They were married in the road between her home and Union Chapel. Razzie first married Susan Julian from Bradley County. She was the mother of his surviving daughters. When she died he married Lou Ella Eban. They had one or two children who died in infancy. Harrison married his brother-in-law's sister, Matilda Rucker. She was the mother of his children. He later married Cornelia Atlee, but that proved to be a mistake and they were divorced. Elijah married Harriet Pierce. They lived on the farm over the hill now known as the J. G. Layman farm. They had three sons, Elijah and Hattie moved west with their son, Fred. They died there and are buried at Napa, Idaho. Ellen married a widower who had children almost as old as she. This made for an unpleasant situation. Her family was pleased about the marriage with Charles L. Matlock, but it almost ended in divorce. She went back, made the most of it, and survived him by many years. Ellen, Sulie and Helen lived just over the hills from each other, so they visited often. Mary Etta also married a widower, Ransom (Rance) A. Ellis, several years older than she. His health was bad so she went with him to California (Pasadena) to try another climate for better health. This didn't seem to help, so they returned to the home they had built on Tennessee Wesleyan Campus where he soon died. They had three children. (Helen, Maynard, and Hubert). Artie married at home to Dossie Stowe. She was the first of the children to die, with a malignancy. They had three sons, Luther, Harry, and Dossie. Helen was the last to marry. She had several suitors, but chose the one her brothers least approved of. She, too, was married at home (Spring Creek) in 1886. Her brothers, John and Elijah, did not speak to her after the wedding and this hurt her as well as created a breach in the family, which was not easily forgotten. But Will Roberts, her husband, was good to her and seemed headed for success. When Mary Hutsell died, in 1892, Helen reached across her grave to shake John's hand; he took it and they were friends once again---and Elijah relented, as did the other brothers. Helen died in 1945, the last survivor of 13 children, the first of which was born in 1833---so that one family enjoyed a long span, reaching back to grandparents born in the 18th century to children and grandchildren reaching far into the 20th century and maybe into the 21st. Mary and Artie went to school in Sweetwater, Tennessee---Sweetwater Female Academy; Helen went to Grant University in Athens. Charles L. Matlock and Ellen Missouri had three children: (1) Ida who married Will Millard (2) Mae who married Henry Walker; she died in childbirth (3) Clay Summerfield who married Gertrude Karavinoff. Andrew's mother and father moved to McMinn County before 1850
to live with their daughter Elizabeth who married William Hoback, and close
by two other daughters, Susan Sharitz and Malvina Carlisle. This was in
the Tranquility Community. They are buried there. A brother, Uncle Sam,
lived in Meigs County where he built the colonial brick house on the Kyker
farm. Another brother, Uncle Elijah lived in the Union Chapel area and
Uncle Dave never married. There are many of Uncle George's descendants
here today, and several of Uncle Sam's, the Meigs County group.
SUBMITTED BY: SAMME TEMPLIN
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