Transcribed from microfilm and contributed by: Charles A. Sherrill, 1992
A project of the Bradley County Historical Society

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Year 1853, Petition Number 20_

[This petition was refered to the Committee on Improvements Dec. 1, 1853. The cover sheet bears this notation: “The Internal Improvement to whom was referred Memorial No. 91 have had the same under consideration and reccommend that the pray[er] or the Memorial be granted. Jno. Hugh Smith, Chairm.”]

To the Honorable General Assembly of the State of Tennessee now in session at Nashville Tennessee:

Your petitioners, memorialists, and citizens of the counties of Bradley and Polk, in the state of Tennessee, would respectfully represent unto your body, that upwards of two years ago, a company was organised called the Ocoee Turnpike, and Plank Road Company, for the purpose of constructing and building a Turnpike and Plank Road, from the North Carolina line at or near the point of connection of the States of Tennessee, Georgia and North Carlina, to run down the North East bank of the Ocoee River, to Shields’ Mills in Polk County Tennessee, and to run thence the most suitable and practicable route to the Town of Cleveland Bradley County Tennessee thce to intersect the East Tennessee and Georgia Rail Road. Said company was formed in pursuance to a law passed by the Legislature of the State of Tennessee for the formation of Turnpike companies passed perhaps on the 7th day of February 1850.

Your Memorialists further represent and shew to your body that Twenty miles of said Road is now completed so far as to answer the object of its consideration. Said Twenty miles of said Road which is now completed consitutes the whole mountain part of said Road and cost an expenditure of Tweny Thousand dollars to complete it. And in Justice to the company and for information to your body, it is proper to state, that said company, in the completion of said Road through the Mountain, have accomplished what was believed and held to be impossible until said compnay undertook and accomplished it.

Your Memorialists further state to your body that in consequence of the wild, mountainous and extremely rough and baren country in which said Road has been constructed and built, that the company have suffered immense privations and difficulties in doing said work. The Great and ostensible object said company has in view, in constructing and building said Road, was in its inception, and still is, for the transportation of Coper ores from the Mines in Polk County Tennessee to the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road, at Cleveland, which will be the nearest point to said Rail Road from said Copper mines. The

distance of said Road yet to be completed is about Twenty miles from the mouth of Greesey Creek in Polk County to Cleveland Bradley County Tennessee. It will require at least Twenty Thousand dollars to complete said Road in addition to what has already been expended. That part of the road that is completed is now good McAdmised road and in order to ship and transport the amount of coper ore required to be transported, it will be required that the remaining Twenty miles shall be planked.

Your Memorialists, in view of the importance and utility of said road, and the immense value and advantage it will be to the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road Company, and the value and utility it would be to that portion of the State of Tennessee through which it passes would humbly pray and ask you honorable body to grant to said Ocoee Turnpike & Plank Road Company said sum of Twenty Thousand dollars as a loan to complete said road. It is proper and expedient that the state of Tennessee should aid in building and completing said Road. No company, it is believed, was ever organised under a law of your state that had stronger claims upon the state for aid, to carry out any enterprise within her limits, than said company has to complete the road in question. The mineral wealth not only of Polk County but of East Tennessee, and a part of Georgia & of North Carolina, are being rapidly developed and their mines successfully opened and worked. All the coper ore and other minerals would necessarily have to be shiped over the road in question and thnce be shiped on the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road. Some Thierty or Forty Tons of Coper ore would be shiped on the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road per day, which would be worth immense sum[s] to said Rail Road company, and particularly to the state of Tennessee because the state is the largest stock holder in said Rail Road. Hence the propriety in the state to aid in building said Turnpike & Plank Road.

John Caldwell a member of the company procured a law to be passed by the Legislature of Tennessee in 1849 and 1850, authorising school lands in the mineral region to be leased out and a law authorising all revenue of this state arising from mineral lands in this state to be applied to the common school fund. A lease was taken and a mine opened and now in successful operation yielding an immense profit, and seven precent going to the Township as a school fund. Said fund will be sufficient to sustain large and valuable schools in the mountains. Thirteen tracts or lots of land in the same Township were given for taxes in 1849 at $5000 which have all since turned out to contain mineral and have been sold for half a Million of dollars adding at once the Revenue of $495,000 to the school fund.

In view of education, and an enterprise of such vital importance to the state, your Memorialists humbly ask for the aid aforesaid as a law and if in your wisdom, you should deem that sum too much, then we ask such aid as the wisdom of your body may dictate. The work already done will afford the state ample security until the money is refunded. And for this they will ever pray.

Two coper mines are now opened in Polk County and they alone would ship on said Rail Road said Thirty or Forty Tons per day, and in a very short time, ten more coper mines will be in successfuly operation which are now opened and are believed to be as rich as the two now in operation and if the road in question was completed the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road would ship at least Two hundred tons per day in a verry short time, which would be worth an immense sum of money to said Rail Road company.