1940 . . .  Fanny Swagerty Eubank, right, and sister Eunice Swagerty Fine stand at the east side of the house in 1940.  These photos are the oldest photos known to exist  of the old house, which by 1940 had stood for almost 160 years.   Fanny and Eunice were daughters of Squire William R. Swagerty, and granddaughters of James Swagerty, Jr. who owned a plantation at Newport during the 19th century.
 

             
            The Old Swagerty Log House at Clear Creek - 1783
                                            by  Iris Teta Eubank Wagner 

According to extant Pennsylvania and North Carolina land and tax records of Frederick Swagerty, the family likely built this house during the year 1783.   A comfortable house for its time and place in the wilderness, it stood for almost 180 years at the top of a knoll surrounded by rolling hills and pasture land.   It stood a few hundred feet  north of the more well-known Swaggerty Fort ( right), which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. 

In 1783 at the time the Swagerty family settled at Clear Creek, the area was a part of Greene County, North Carolina, and now in Cocke County, Tennessee.  

(right) The level knoll shown in the distance of this photo of the Fort  is where the old house stood.  A farm road still leads up to the site.  Clear Creek is about twenty feet from the foundation of the Fort.  The person sitting at the base is Lisa Eubank, a great granddaughter of Fanny Swagerty Eubank.
                                                                                     
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                                                                          The Swaggerty Fort - in the distance the
                                                                           level knoll where the old house stood.

Toward the end of the Revolutionary War the North Carolina legislature made the French Broad River the Cherokee tribal border, south of which no white families could legally settle.  The new federal government in Washington City recognized this border.   Frederick Swagerty brought his family in 1783 from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to settle six miles north of the Cherokee border, and just a mile or so north of Parrottsville, Tennessee, after Jonesborough and Rogersville, the third oldest town in Tennessee.

The old house is a symbol of endurance.  All people who came to the frontier wilderness to live needed this kind of endurance in human terms.  They had to come with the skills for everyday life and with the spirit and will to endure . . . as in their skillful construction of this log house.   Unoccupied for a decade or so before its demise, the structure naturally deteriorated.  But in its regular occupation as a residence, after Frederick's son James sold the house and part of the home tract in the 1850's, the house remained well cared for by  several families.

[Note : Jefferson's Monticello -  It is interesting to note here how such an important and immanent home in  our American history as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello could have been neglected and let fall to ruin during the decade after Jefferson's death.   When Uriah Levy purchased  Monticello and 218 acres in 1836 he "found the house in a deplorable state of ruin . . . the roof had fallen in . . . the splendid drawing room where Jefferson had entertained Madison, Monroe, Webster, Van Buren, Lafayette . . .  was used as a granary . . . exquisitely inlaid floors were littered with corn.  Vandals and weather completed the desolation."  Levy restored and added acreage to the estate.  He died at the height of the Civil War in 1862 and his heirs lost ownership until 1879, when Levy's nephew found the estate and house to have again fallen into ruin. Jefferson's grave monument had been destroyed by vandals. . . . "The roads melted into the hillsides.  Cattle were stabled in the parlor, whose broken windows looked out on desolation." . . .  This information about Levy and Monticello is from  an article by Henry N. Ferguson, writer and photographer living in Kerrville, Texas.   For a very thorough handling of the Levy story, Ferguson suggests reading  Navy Maverick : Uriah Phillips Levy by Donovan Fitzpatrick and Saul Saphire.]
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East End of the house . . . (shown in the 1940 photo above, and at right)
It is evident in these two photos that a chimney was intact at the time board siding was added to the house.  Exposed logs can be seen adjacent to the right of the  boarded-up second floor fireplace.  Just above those logs the evident lines of the chimney begin to slant upward and toward each other, but end on a line with the eave of the house.  

The high vertical part of the Chimney may have separated slightly from the house . . . . leaving a gap just wide enough to slide boards in place behind it.  The chimney ending at the eave could also mean that there was originally a structural space between  this  high  part  of the chimney  and the house.

                                                                                         Fanny Eubank and son James Eubank, 1940
                                                                                                                                                                      
That the siding boards end at the eave might also mean  that the house was originally constructed in the wilderness of the 1780's with a more shallow roof.  Settlers so near border territory  would have wanted to get the shelter up and protecting the family within a few days' time.   Several men of the family, and perhaps men from neighboring farms . . . as was customary in a settlement area .  . . would have gotten the walls up and a roof overhead within a few days.   The gabled roof may well have been added at the time exterior  siding and porches were added.

  (above) West End of the house - 1958  
The house faced south down this slope to Clear Creek and the Swaggerty Fort.  Both the back and front porches were probably added at the time siding was added.

A close study of the logs in this west end view of the house  show the wearing away of the exterior board siding to reveal logs that appear to be in a more deteriorated state than the logs of the Fort cut about 1860.  The corner notches are of a different cut.
                                      
In recent years a scientific analysis of the age of the wood of the Swaggerty Fort logs, and of artifacts found at the site, has proved the cutting dates of the logs to be about 1860.  These pictures show the structural joining at the corners of the house and fort to be of a different style.  The logs in the old house appear to be significantly in greater deterioration.    In the upper back porch (below) the ends of two old logs at the corner of the house can be seen to be structurally different than the logs of the Fort cut in 1860.    The spaces between the logs of the house are wider than those of the fort.  It appears the house logs have shrunken to reveal wider spaces between logs.

                                                                                  
Back Porch of the Old House - 1940 ↑ In the upper back porch (above) the ends of two old logs at the corner of the house can be seen to be structurally different than the notches of the logs of the Fort cut in 1860.  

(above) The Fort in 1940

The Swaggerty Fort ↑                            
The logs of the Swaggerty Fort (above) cut in 1860 are sharply hewn and can be seen as cut in half dovetail corner notches.

East End of the house in 1958 - Our appreciation to Marguerite White Williams,  descendant through James Swagerty, Sr., for her generosity in sharing these 1958 photos of the west and east views of the house. Mrs. Williams and her cousins, Bernice Harned Barger and sister Laduska Harned Kelly, visited the house in 1958, and Mrs. Williams took the photos shown above at that time.  Mrs. Williams and her cousins descend through James Swagerty, Sr.'s daughter Polly Swagerty, who married David Harned.
  
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Frederick Swagerty died  in 1803, and it's likely he was living with his son James Swagerty, Sr.  and family in what would have been the "new" log house at that time.

During the next fourteen years after Frederick's death, seven children were born to James and Delilah Meek Swagerty.   On March 22, 1844 Delilah  died.  She was age seventy-one. 

James Swagerty remarried, and he subsequently sold the tract and home to the Jacob Stephens family in 1851.   Stephens and his descendants lived in the house for a number of years.  Later the place was known as the McCracken farm.  In the early 1920's the Gillespie family bought the farm and house.  Not occupied for a number of years, the old house was torn down some time in the 1960's. 

Mrs. Annice Graddon Eberle's visit to the house in 1948 . . Through its long age and endurance, the house was visited by Swagerty/Swaggerty descendants from time to time.   One visitor of note was Annice Graddon Eberle in 1948.  "Annie" was the daughter of Lora Swagerty Graddon Cook, eldest sister to Fanny and Eunice, shown above.  Mrs. Eberle made a drawing of where the house stood in relationship to the Fort and the Greeneville road, describing features of the house and land.   Using Mrs. Eberle's drawing, and photos from personal visits to the Fort site, and Google's street view of the site, the old house stood on the knoll as indicated in the photo above.

Mrs. Eberle also wrote  a brief description of a few interesting features of the house:

  ". . . [the present owner] happened to be there and showed us all through the house.  Up the stair by the chimney, which was closed off by a door, left a step at the bottom to form a seat by the fireplace where a small child or two could sit on a cold winter day and be nice and warm.  The inside blinds on the windows fascinated me.  They were evidently made by a cabinet maker, and a good one, too."

The kitchen had been originally separate from the house.  When the back porch addition was added, it connected to the kitchen producing a breeze-way.

 Mrs. Eberle explained by 1948 "the kitchen had been torn away to build a barn at another location on the property.  In the back yard was a large smokehouse.  There was also a spring in the yard with a little branch leading down to the creek [Clear Creek] along the road, which had grown up with trees so that the house was hidden from the road and if one did not watch closely they would miss the house entirely.

Marguerite White Williams and her cousins Bernice Harned Barger and sister Laduska Harned Kelly visited the house in 1958, and Mrs. Williams took the photos shown above at that time.  Mrs. Williams and her cousins descend through James Swagerty, Sr.'s daughter Polly Swagerty, who married David Harned.
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Original Narrative and Website © Iris Teta Eubank Wagner 2010

Sources for the Swagerty narratives
James and Delilah Meek Swagerty, The Swagerty Bible, published in Tennessee Ancestors, August 1986, Vol 2, p126-127.  The Bible record was submitted for publication by Mrs. Violet K. Wolfe of Monroe County, Tennessee.  The Bible was owned in 1986 by Mrs. Grace Reid Wear Kirkpatrick of Madisonville, Tennessee, descendant of Susannah Swagerty Johnson, daughter of James Swagerty, Jr. and Nancy Clark Swagerty.

James G. M. Ramsey, Annals of Tennesse ; Originally Printed in 1853 for J.G.M. Ramsey, MD, by Walker and Jones, Charleston, South Carolina.  Reprinted 1967 with the addition of a biographical introduction, annotations and index for the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville, Tennessee.  Reprinted 1999 by the Overmountain Press.

www.seviercountylibrary.org/genealogy/cockeco/ccsurvey.htm  Cocke County, Tennessee, Survey Book "A" 1822 - 1854, W. P. A. Transcription by A. R. Mews [?] and Heber[?] Parrott.  Typed by Agnes Mattux and Willis Hutcherson. 

   Fanny Swagerty Eubank and son James Eubank, 1940 photos of the Swagerty log house.

   Annice Graddon Eberle, Swagerty Family File, Stokely Memorial Library, Newport, Tennessee.

   Marguerite White Williams, 1958 photos of the Swagerty log house.

Thomas Perkins Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee : A Study in Frontier Democracy, Chapter: Jackson, Blount, and Sevier, Southern Historical Publications No.12, University of Alabama Press, 1967, p173.

Irene M. Griffey, Earliest Tennessee Land Records & Earliest Tennessee Land History, Clearfield Company, Inc., reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland, 2003, pp384, 385.

G. L. Ridenhour, Land of the Lake : A History of Campbell County, Tennessee, p8.

Henry N. Ferguson, "Uriah Levy - He Saved Monticello."    -  Navy Maverick : Uriah Phillips Levy by Donovan Fitzpatrick and Saul Saphire.]

The National Register of Historic Places - Tennessee, Swaggerty Blockhouse - also known as the Swaggerty Fort,  Building # 73001756

David F. Mann, The Dendroarchaeology of the Swaggerty Blockhouse, Cocke County, Tennessee : A Thesis Presented for the Master of Science Degree, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002.

Greene County, North Carolina, Marriage Bonds, Greene County Courthouse, Greene County, Tennessee, James Swagerty to Delilah Meek, August 30, 1796.

East Tennessee Historical Society, First Families of Tennessee : A Register of Early Settlers and Their Present-Day Descendants, copyright 2000, East Tennessee Historical Society

Tennessee State Land Records, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Microfilm Collection #1177, Chuck Sherrill,  State Historian, Director.

Pollyanna Creekmore, Early East Tennessee Tax Payers,  (Greene County 1783, Cocke County 1839, Map of Cocke County 1832, Bill for Creation of Washington County), Southern Historical Press, Easley, South Carolina, reprint edition 1988.

www.progenealogists.com  The Palatine Project.  Pennsylvania. The Ships' Lists of men who took the Oath of Allegiance and became Naturalized Members of the Colony of Pennsylvania.  Using sources such as books by Burgert, Yoder, and Hacker, some family members of the men, and where the family had originated, are listed.

Bridgett Schneider, online copyright, 1996-2008, List of Taxables in Captain Samuel Gragg's Company for 1796, Greene County, Tennessee, Genealogy, Early Tax Lists.

Sarah Sweigert O'Haver, family information from Bible and papers  given Mrs.O'Haver by her father Frederick Swagerty. (Sarah and Joseph O'Haver moved their family from Cocke County, Tennessee to Greene County, Indiana before 1820. ) 

  Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs, Harrisburg, original surveys.   The Pennsylvania
  Archives, Harrisburg. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission website. Digital Documents,

  Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives, Digital Documents,
  including Land Records (East Side Applications, Westside Applications, Warrant Register,
  Patentee Register), Westside Application Register, April 1767, John Ross entry #3413;
  Frederick Sweikert entry #3414.

  Silas Wright, History of Perry County, in Pennsylvania, from the Earliest Settlement to the Present
  Time, Millerstown, 1872, Wylie & Griest, Printers, Bookbinders and Stereotypers, 1873.

  Ralph Beaver Strassburger and William John Hinke, Pennsylvania German Pioneers, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
  (the signature edition, p466) of the Ships' Lists, Pennsylvania German Society, 1934.

 William Henry Egle, Pennsylvania State Library, Notes and Queries of Pennsylvania: Historical and Biographical, Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1898 (Original from the University of Michigan), Digitized July 14, 2006, by Google Books.

Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, Third Edition, Ancestry Publishing, 2006.

Journal of Captain Hendricks from Carlisle to Boston, Thence to Quebec. 1775.  Contributed to www.footnote.com  by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. Publication Title: Pennsylvania Archives, Series 2, Vol XV, pages 21-58.

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