Duncan Stewart in Tennessee

Duncan in Tennessee



In 1794 (even before his term ended in 1795 in the North Carolina Senate) Duncan and his brother Charles left for Tennessee.  With knowledge of surveying they surveyed land from Nashville on the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee along the Cumberland River to the present Kentucky state line.  They explored areas along the Cumberland River and the Red River as it flows westward to join the Cumberland at Clarksville, and they explored the Wells Creek and Long Creek areas of now Stewart County, west of Clarksville.  They probably made their base in Clarksville.



The Tennessee country had only recently been settled.  The first permanent settlers arrived in the 1760’s.  The first settler may have been William Bean who built a cabin on the Watauga River in 1769 in the far eastern portion of what is now the state of Tennessee. By 1772 four groups had settled along the rivers of northeastern Tennessee.  These settlers organized themselves into the Washington District in 1775 and petitioned North Carolina to make them a part of that state which it did in 1777.  All of the Tennessee country became Washington County, North Carolina. 



Although hunters and traders had been in the central Tennessee area earlier, the first permanent settler probably arrived in 1776. In 1779 James Robertson of the Watauga settlement in East Tennessee and eight companions traveled through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and then overland by trails to the French Lick on the Cumberland, the present site of Nashville.  In 1780 a larger group under the direction of John Donelson made the trip by flat boat and canoes down the Tennessee River to the Ohio, then up the Ohio and Cumberland to Nashville.  On 12 April 1780 Moses Renfroe of the Donelson group ascended the Red River and established a short lived settlement ending with the massacre in the summer of 1780.[1]  This was the beginning of the settlement of Clarksville and Montgomery County where Duncan Stewart and his family would make their home fourteen years later.



There were troubles with Indians but James Robertson held the group together when in 1783 North Carolina made this middle Tennessee settlement a part of Davidson County and Fort Nashborough became Nashville. 



With the Revolution over, North Carolina secured the Tennessee Territory as her own.  Paying soldiers who had fought in the War was difficult.  North Carolina set aside several thousand acres of land on the north side of the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee as a military reservation.  Revolutionary veterans were issued military land warrants amounting from 640 acres to several thousand as compensation for their services.  If a veteran did not want to move to his new land, there were speculators to buy the land with the hope of reselling it as a profit.



Following the end of the Revolution in 1783 many settlers flocked across the mountains into the Tennessee country.  In 1784 the town of Clarksville was laid off and lots were sold.  In 1784 representatives of the eastern counties declared themselves independent of North Carolina and established the new state of Franklin.  Neither North Carolina nor the United States recognized the new state and it collapsed. On 29 Dec 1785 North Carolina established Clarksville as a town. In 1790 North Carolina gave her western country to the new United States and Congress organized it into the Southwest Territory.  This new territory was made up of two groups of counties: four counties in the east made up the Washington District and in the central section Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee counties became the Mero District.  The short life of the Southwest Territory was filled with Indian trouble.  In 1793 the Southwest Territory had enough settlers to entitle it to a legislature and it first assembled in 1794 in Knoxville in east Tennessee.



Despite the Indian wars the settlements grew.  In 1795 the territorial legislature ordered a census be taken. There were 77,262 people and 11,000 Negro slaves.  Governor Blount called for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention which met in Knoxville January 11, 1796.  The new state was to be called Tennessee.  The county in Middle Tennessee by that name was divided into two new counties of Montgomery and Robertson.  On 1 June 1796, President Washington signed the bill to make Tennessee the 16^th state in the Union.[2]



In 1796 there were no real roads connecting Tennessee with the older states or the settlements with each other.  Along a few trails the trees had been cut out and rocks thrown into the deepest mudholes. Wagons bumping along on these roads often got hung on high stumps or overturned in deep ruts.  Most travelers went on foot or horseback.[3]



In 1787 Avery Trace or the Wilderness road was blazed from Clinch Mountain to Beans Lick, from Fort South West Point at Kingston through the Cumberland Mountains to Fort Blount in present day Jackson County, to Bledsoe’s Fort at Castalian Springs (present day Sumner County), then to Mansker’s Fort near present day Goodlettsville and finally to Fort Nashborough.  It was a 300 mile long, 10 foot wide trail for horseback travel.  It was officially opened 25 September 1788.  By 1795 it was called a wagon road but travel was still extremely difficult with mud, stone slabs, rivers to ford and at Spencer’s Mountain the wagon had to have brakes on all four wheels and dragging a tree to get down the mountain.



Although we think Duncan Stewart is in Tennessee in 1794 we have some suggestion  that all interests in North Carolina had not been settled.  2 Feb 1796, Sampson Co., NC ordered a new road laid off from John Treadwell’s to James Stewart’s on South river.  Enoch Harris, Gabriel Herring, Richard Herring, John Treadwell, William Robertson, Bennett Smith, Jesse Herrick, Edward Curry, Duncan Stewart, Mary Bailey (her husband David Bailey died in 1794 and she may have been in charge of her family land) and John Haney and their hands work on the same under James Stewart, overseer.



Duncan’s first purchase was in Davidson County on June 6, 1796.  He bought two plots each with 640 acres.  In the first couple of years in Tennessee Duncan purchased over 30,000 acres.[4]



Land grant books show a total of 49 land grants for Duncan Stewart.  In 1796 there were four in Davidson and Tennessee Counties (Tennessee County would become Montgomery and Robertson Counties when Tennessee was given as the name for the state in 1796.)  In 1797 there were 35 land grants, five in Sumner County, 13 in Davidson County, and 15 in Tennessee County; all were assignee of some other person; most were for 640 acres, a few less, some for a 1000 acres and one for 3000 acres The next activity  was six transactions in 1809 and four in 1810, all in Montgomery County with 320 acres being the largest parcel.[5]



One transaction is noted on 22 May 1804 when Thomas Brown of Bladen County, North Carolina appointed Col. Duncan Stewart of Tennessee as my lawful attorney to authorize him to make a deed from me to Thomas Dillon of Tennessee, for 640 acres being part of a 2,560 acre tract patented by Jacob Missack on the south side of Cumberland River.[6]



In 1797 Duncan returned to North Carolina and at age 34 married Penelope Jones, age 18, on October 19, 1797.  He married in Wake County with the marriage bond signed also by John Haywood, fellow bondsman.[7]  According to a descendant, Penelope’s family did not want the two to marry.  However in 1798, Duncan’s brother Charles married Penelope’s sister Polly (April 11, 1798).  They also went to Tennessee.  Duncan’s twin James (and his wife and children) and his sister Elizabeth and a nephew Walter also moved to Tennessee.



In 1804 Duncan’s sister Elizabeth, age 35, married Lovick Ventress.  This was a second marriage for him.  When he died in 1822 in Tennessee while on a visit from Mississippi he would be buried next to his first wife on their Sycamore Creek farm.



“In 1797, we returned to North Carolina among our friends and relatives…Duncan married a Miss Jones, of one of the first families in the state.  My new sister-in-law had a younger sister Polly and in a few months after I made my proposal to her she accepted and we joined our fates together.  We then moved our families the same year and in company to our new country, a distance of seven hundred miles.  We there settled within a few miles of each other and lived in the utmost tranquility but in a way in which you would have no idea.”[8]



Duncan’s brother Charles wrote “Duncan and myself left that country (North Carolina) and located ourselves in then a territory, now the state of Tennessee.  There we soon got an appointment as surveyors.  We have encountered all the hardships that could be conceived from the Indians who were then at open war with us.  We have often been two or three months in the woods and never seen a human except the chain carriers.  We were not certain of our lives at any one moment.  In 1796 we got a peace with the Indians.  We subsidized our families out of the woods with our guns and feasted our delicate raised wives with the flesh of bear, buffalo, deer and wild turkey.  Our wives never complained of the hardships they underwent, but appeared happy and looked forward to better times, which soon arrived.” [9]



Duncan Stewart at one time or another owned a lot of land in Tennessee, most of this was in speculation.  Where he lived is not entirely clear and he may have lived at more than one place.



Some accounts state Duncan lived at Wells Creek, Yellow Creek and Grices Creek.  He also lived some of the time on the West Fork of the Red River at Fletcher’s Branch (Fletcher Fork reaches the Red River just west of where present day Ft. Campbell Blvd. crosses the Red River) and Barrow Springs.  Charles at one point would live in the Peacher’s Mills Road area.  They also owned tracts of land in the Long, Dyers, Jones, and Saline Creek areas.



The 1798 tax list of Montgomery County lists Charles Stewart whose land was on Salean (Saline) Creek and Duncan Stewart, also on Salean Creek.  Duncan had at least 2000 acres on Saline Creek (State of North Carolina to Duncan Stewart, assignee of Sgt. James Lassiter, 1000 a. on Saline Creek, adjacent to Duncan Stewart’s 1000 a. grant [as assignee of Charles Grisson] 14 Sept 1797).[10] 



In 1798 Duncan Stewart is shown owing 228 acres. On the Piney Fork, 2606 a. on Welses Creek, 2000 a. on Saline Creek, and 1144 a. for James Carraway[11] on the north side of the Cumberland River below Cross Creek.



“Probably the most important personal property on the frontier was slaves.  Brought over the mountains with their masters, the early slaves were rarely traded until the death of their owners.”[12] We can presume the Stewarts did the same.  We do know they owned slaves in North Carolina. In 1801 Montgomery County taxes were paid by Duncan Stewart on 8 slaves.  A bill of sale for a Negro woman called Dinah, about 16 years old, and a mare called Poll was received of James Stewart for $600 from Elizabeth Stewart on July 24^th 1801.[13]



Bryan  Saunders says Duncan lived near Clarksville only a short time before moving to Robertson County (which is east of Clarksville and Montgomery County) where he had over 1,500 acres.[14]



Another commentator mentions Charles and Duncan having lands on Sulphur Fork of Jones Creek, Duncan 640 acres on the South Harpeth River, 1000 acres and 228 acres, east side of Wells Creek.  This is where Duncan lived in Montgomery County, later Stewart County.[15]



In December 1809 Duncan Stewart returned home to Tennessee from the Mississippi Teritory by way of the Natchez Trace.  All the summer of 1810, he surveyed his property and put it up for sale.  In order to be back in Mississippi for the spring planting season, the families left in the winter.  Duncan sold his big home on the Little West Fork of the Red River (which is now part of Clarksville) in January of 1811 for $3,000 for the house and over a thousand acres.[16]



What kind of house is the “big home?”  One historian describes Middle Tennessee homes of the period as double log houses, sometime of two stories, sometimes one with a ten or fifteen foot passageway, porches front and back, and a stone chimney at either end, usually with a cluster of outbuildings such as a kitchen, smokehouse, and barns with often a mill and a blacksmith shop.[17] In 1804 Andrew Jackson lived near Nashville in a log house, two stories with a limestone chimney. The ground floor was one large room (24’x26’) with paneled doors and double-hung sash windows with glass panes. Upstairs there were two rooms. A separate kitchen and slave quarters were added in 1805. They did have wallpaper in the bedrooms and comfortable furniture, some imported from Philadelphia.[18]



Clarksville was incorporated in 1785 and the first cabin was built in 1786. Growth was slow at first.  Duncan apparently never lived in the town but the “big home” site is now in the larger city of Clarksville.



The land best suited for development was the Wells, Jones and Grices Creek areas because they were closer to older settlements of Clarksville and Palmyra.  Palmyra in Montgomery County, southwest of Clarksville and south of the Cumberland River on Deason’s Creek was established in 1796 and was the closest place for the early residents of the Stewart County area to mill and trade.  One writer says there was a French settlement at Palmyra in 1777.  However they were still far enough apart to be fearful of Indian attacks.  To provide protection and to help resell the land to settlers the Stewarts built a fort on Wells Creek (located about 4 miles south of Cumberland City on Hwy. 149 where the Little West Fork splits from Wells Creek at or near the Richardson Cemetery.  This is present day Houston County which split from Stewart County in 1871.  The log enclosures were called Stations.  Some had stockades, maybe a trading post and a jail. “Twelve to sixteen foot lengths of tree trunk were split, sharpened on the one end and the other sunk deeply and firmly in the ground, the whole strengthened with cross braces.  Rarely was a station enclosed entirely by pickets; some had cabins at the corners...and a few had a blockhouse at each corner.”[19] 700 acres of Stewarts Station on the south side of Wells Creek was sold to Henry Edwards in 1806 for $2000. This was part of a 1000 acre tract granted to Stewart by North Carolina in 1797.[20]  Duncan owned more than one tract on Wells Creek and his brother Charles and nephew Walter also owned land there.[21] Gause Brinson, Duncan’s friend and surveying partner, built a house near there in about 1795.  This site is just up the road from where Griffey’s Feed Mill in now located.  The house is said to be still in existence but has been moved to Davidson County.  Brinson’s child is said to be the first born in Stewart County.)



The Wells Creek area prospered and when Stewart County was formed in 1803, most of the signers of the petition were from the Wells Creek area.  The land for the county seat was purchased from Robert Nelson, a surveyor and speculator, and a friend of Duncan’s.  Another friend, Henry Small, was appointed the first sheriff.





The Stewarts in Politics



It is not surprising that having served in the North Carolina legislature and being well known throughout the area with his land dealings that Duncan would be elected to public office.  Duncan served in the state senate (1801-1807) in the 4^th, 5^th General Assemblies representing Robertson and Montgomery Counties and in the 6^th General Assembly (1805-1807) his district included also Dickson and Stewart Counties.[22]  The state capital was in Knoxville in east Tennessee until 1812 so Duncan had a long journey to serve in the General Assemblies.



It was during Duncan’s term as senator that a new county was created from the western portion of Montgomery County.  This area had seen an increase in the number of settlers and the 30 miles to travel to Clarksville proved difficult.  In 1803 the state legislature of Tennessee made the western part of Montgomery a separate county.  On November 3, 1803 Stewart County was created and named after Duncan Stewart.  The county included all lands west to the Mississippi River, north to Kentucky and south to Alabama (the entire western third of the state of Tennessee.)   The act passed by the General Assembly divided Montgomery County by a line commencing on the Kentucky line 13 miles west of the meridian of Clarksville and running south to the southern boundary of the state.[23] (In 1818 upon extinguishments of the title of the Chickasaws to the lands in the Western Purchase as this area was then called, Stewart County did indeed contain all of west Tennessee.  Most land was taken in 1821 to create other counties.  The last reduction occurred in 1871 with the formation of Houston County.[24]) The county seat was named Monroe after James Monroe.  The first session of the county court was held in March 1804 at the home of George Martin.  Two years later the land was purchased from Robert Nelson to build the town.  The land was laid off in lots and put up for sale.  Shortly after, the courthouse, jail and stocks were built.  In the first session of court in the new courthouse, the citizens voted to rename the town Dover. Legend goes that the town reminded many of the similar bluffs in Dover, England.



John Sevier was Tennessee’s first governor. He was replaced in 1801 by Archibald Roane, a close ally of Andrew Jackson (who would later become the 7^th president). In 1803 when Roan’s term was coming to an end, Roane announced his intention to run for governor again. But the popular Sevier also put his name in the hat. This was to be one of the most confrontational races in Tennessee history. The hot issue centered on allegations that Sevier had used his earlier power in getting land grants from the state. Governor Roane kept referring to these land deals saying Sevier was deeply and illegally involved in land fraud. Andrew Jackson, already a personal and political enemy of Sevier, began to level charges against Sevier over how he acquired the land. The two sides sparred until the state senate formed a committee to investigate. Duncan Stewart was on the committee. Perhaps Duncan was a follower of Andrew Jackson, or, being a land speculator himself, he might have seen some irregularity in the Sevier land deals. Whatever the reason, Duncan voted against Sevier. The majority voted to acquit him and Sevier went on to be elected and served six more years.[25]



One record is found in the Stewart County minutes from 1806 of Duncan acting as an arbitrator.



            John Williams vs. William Outlaw, Case of Fraud.

            We-Duncan Stewart, Charles Polk, J.B.Reynolds and C.D.Humphreys- are arbitrators mutually chosen by Williams and Outlaw to adjust and settle a certain matter of controversy in the County Court.  Williams is the plaintiff and Outlaw is the defendant.  Outlaw is hearby ordered to return to Williams the horse that was swapped for the gray mare.  We do further award and determine that Williams do give and make good on his note the money he owes Outlaw for the sum of eight dollars and one half payable on or before the 1^st day of January next, in cotton or pork, at the market price at the town of Dover. Case dismissed. [26]



Duncan’s brother Charles served in the 4^th General Assembly, representing Montgomery County in the House of Representatives from 1801-1803.   Charles was one of five members of the state legislature to design the state seal.  Charles also donated 50 acres for the county seat of Dickson County that was established a few weeks after Stewart County.  Fifty acres of land was to be purchased and laid off into a town and the sale price to pay for the courthouse and jail.  Problem was there was no money to purchase the land.  Charles’ donation became the town of Charlotte. Charles was noted to have operated a mill in 1810 on the West Fork of the Red River; engaged in the practice of Law.   He was appointed property appraiser by the Montgomery County Court in 1805.[27]

                                                                                                         

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[1] Seedtime on the Cumberland by Harriette Simpson Arnow, 1960, p. 337.

[2] The Story of Tennessee, Parks, Folmsbee.

[3] The Story…..

[4] Duncan Stewart by Bryan Saunders, 1997, pp. 15-16.

[5] Tennessee State Archives

[6] Tennessee State Archives: Will book A, p. 197, Montgomery Co.

[7] Chuck Speed

[8] From Judge Charles Stewart to John Campbell, collector of Customs at Greenock. September 26, 1822.

[9] Stewart County Tennessee, History and Families, Vol II, Rose Publishing Company, Humboldt, Tennessee. 2002. p. 83.

[10] Stewart County Deeds, Book 2 (1806-1809 registration of 1783-1809 deeds), #52.

[11] Duncan’s sister, Ann, married James Carraway.

[12] The Great Leap Westward…..by Walter Durham, p. 180.

[13] Tennessee State Archives:  Will Book A, p. 166 of Montgomery County.

[14] A letter dated June 29, 1996 in the Tennessee State Archives.

[15] Red River Settlers, records of northern Montgomery by Edythe Johns Rucker Whitley.  (Davidson Co., Tn. Deed Boodk D, #4, p. 27).

[16] Saunders, p. 28.

[17] Seedtime on the Cumberland by Harriette Simpson Arnow, 1960, p. 273.

[18] A Being So Gentle (The Frontier Love Story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson) by Patricia Brady, 2011, pp. 87-88.

[19] Seedtime on the Cumberland by Harriette Simpson Arnow, 1960, p. 267.

[20] Stewart County Deeds, Book 2. #28

[21] Stewart County Deeds, Book 2.

[22] Biographical Dictionary of the Tennessee General Assembly, Vol I, 1796-1861.  by Robert McBride, Dan Robinson, 1975. Published by the Tennessee State Archives. P. 698.

[23] Goodspeed History of Tennessee Illustrated: Montgomery, Robertson, Jumphreys, Stewart, Dickson, Cheatham and Houston Counties. P. 901.

[24] Goodspeed, p. 902.

[25] Duncan Stewart, Saunders, p. 24.

[26] Duncan Stewart, Saunders, p. 25.

[27] Biographical Dictionary of the Tennessee General Assembly, Vol. I, p. 698. taken from the Stewart Clan Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 189 and Vol 34, pp. 190-192.