(from the archived RCHC Web site)

From: The Rockwood Times, Thursday, 26 Jun 1919, Vol. 39, No. 26.

A lady who was born in Hinds Valley, but is not now a resident of this state, has read in the Rockwood Times some little local sketches of the localities and burial grounds in the vicinity and “wants” to know” something of the early settlers of Hinds Valley.

Before old John Hinds and his four stalwart sons made an entry of one thousand acres of land on the “Cumberland Trace” once known as the Indian trail from the Chickamauga town through Cumberland Gap to the hunting grounds in Kentucky, and on the east prong of White’s creek, now called Camp creek, Joseph Seaton had been given a right by the court of Knox county to establish a ferry across White‘s creek on the Cumberland trace.  His wife was an English, sister of Matthew P. English, who built a cabin near where Albert Smith‘s house now stands.

English and his sister had been taken prisoners by the Indians in childhood and lived with them many years and could talk in the Indian vernacular as easily as any member of the tribe.  They and the Indians from Euchee often visited each other.  Among those who visited English was called “Old Joe” who had had the small pox.  When the flotilla of boats, led by the good boat, Adventure, went down the river on the way to the Cumberland settlement, the small pox developed on one of the boats.  For this reason it was required to float at a distance behind the other boats.  As they passed the Euchee bend the Indians seeing its unprotected situation cut it off and killed its inmates and captured the contents of the boat.  From these the small pox spread among the Indians and practically exterminated the Euchee tribe.

Joe, who was then a boy, recovered as did also Matthew P. English. The Indians believed these two persons were possessed of some kind of a “Great Spirit” and they seemed to have cultivated the belief.  A part of travelers over the Cumberland trace stopped over night at English‘s and one of them was left sick there.  It developed that he had the small pox.  English sent for Old Joe and they nursed him until he died.  His name was Grindstaff.  They selected a place and buried him.  Old Joe put a “spell” on the spot of land declaring, if any one was buried within fifty feet of Grindstaff his family would all die with small pox.  Grindstaff‘s cemetery was not disturbed, even by plowing within fifty feet of his sepulchre for over a quarter of a century.  Illustrative of the superstition of that age.

The Methodists selected a place for an encampment at a spring beyond the station at Roddy on what is now known as the Sallie Patton place.  The campers were called to service by sounding of a bugle.  The bugles of that day were made of Juniper wood and were about three feet long.  They were sort of fog horn.  English claimed that he had the power of calling birds to him and made a ring and began to make some peculiar kind of noise.  I have the world of old man J. C. Able and Mrs. Jane Oliver of Bonham, Texas, that a bird came and lit in the ring.  Thereupon the minister, a Mr. Axley, (may be spelled Achley), sprung upon the platform and sounded the bugle, or fog horn, shouting the devil had come and one of the imps was performing witchcraft.  English was hustled quickly away and prudently stayed away.  But this did not stop him from practicing “Sorcery” in the estimation of the good old minister, because as late as 1820 he was still removing “wens, warts and freckles” by the science of Indian magic.