My wife Liz and I have been honored to welcome descendants of the Sellars family for tours of our log cabin and property overlooking the valley on Snow’s Hill this year. They are descendants of freed slaves who called it home in the years after emancipation through 1930.
Stephen Sellars and his only son Lenard were once enslaved to Matthew Sellars up Dry Creek. Working back from U.S. census records, their respective ages match slaves listed in the 1860 Slave Schedule. Young Lenard is also mentioned in Matthew Sellars’ will, drafted before the Civil War.
The 1870 U. S Census records Stephen, his wife Eliza and their six children as all living in the same house. The youngest of their five daughters, born in 1865, the year of emancipation, is named America.
Our first round of visitors included Ernest Sellars, Sr., grandson of Len and son of his son John from Indiana; Ernest Sellars, Jr; and his son John Steven from Florida. In June, Ernest Jr. returned with his wife Marion and all three of their children.
A Farm and Cemetery
In 1873, Stephen Sellars purchased 31 acres “on the north side of the turnpike” from William and Elizabeth Farler for $250. At top of the hill across from the cabin, Stephen, a farmer, devoted much of what little flatland he owned to a cemetery. There the Sellars family, as well as other members of the small black community once clustered along the turnpike on Snow’s Hill, rest in peace.
There are more than 40 graves, most anonymously marked with slabs of eroding slate, gathered from the outcropping by the road further down Snow’s Hill. Of the few tombstones that are engraved, several list birth dates underscoring these people were born into slavery.
By 1930, most blacks had left this area and the Sellars farm was sold to the Harrison Tramel family. He and his wife Lula raised a family and lived there 40 years. When we acquired the property in 1977, though, the weatherboard farmhouse had sat abandoned several years. No water, no electricity, anything of value had been stripped, and the backend was rotting into the bluff.
We discovered, though, that within its living room walls a one room log cabin had been hidden for decades. The Tramels had never seen it. Spring 1978 Liz and I uncovered it and began a lengthy and labor-intensive intensive restoration process.
Eventually we stripped the entire place down to that one room, and built around it. For much of the work we harvested poplar trees off the property, hewed into shape with broadax and adze, then hoisted into place with block and tackle on tripods. The original one room log cabin , now restored, is the heart of our home.
History Lessons
When we came to DeKalb County we knew nothing of the area and its history. As we worked, the curious would stop by to share their memories of the place. We heard the old house had been an early toll house. And, this was where they had set off the cannon to welcome Andrew Jackson when he traveled through here. As described in Will T. Hale’s History of DeKalb County, the cannon wasn’t properly anchored when fired and shot off the road and down the hillside.
The oldest visitors shared stories of Len Sellars, whom they affectionately remembered as “Uncle Rabbit,” and how he turned the home’s location opposite the valley to his advantage. They described his fruit orchard just below the graveyard, and the Sellars selling fruit, vegetables, huckleberries, chestnuts, hand made brooms and sorghum from the porch to those who paused to rest and take in the view.
According to the 1900 census, Len and his wife Bettie raised seven children in the cabin, and two are buried in the cemetery. Their endeavors proved prosperous enough to allow them to expand the house, and cover the cabin. That was sometime around 1913, judging from a scrap of newspaper we found stuck to a board we removed.
Because of the odd way in which the turnpike separates the house and acreage Stephen purchased, I’ve come to believe his family was already occupying the cabin when he bought the land across the road. Somehow, once freed, these ex-slaves were permitted to move into a structure already there.
I’ve never found any suggestion of an earlier home on the place; it makes no sense a farmer would buy land in that era and not live there; and the cabin sits in the coldest spot on the property, with more comfortable sites nearby. Clearly, it was built for the view.
Debates and Evidence
I debated this with county historian Tommy Webb over the years. Although our opinions differed—-he maintained it was built much later—- he did agree this was the most likely place where they had set off that cannon welcoming Andrew Jackson.
In fact, while a reporter for the Smithville Review in the early 1980s, one idle afternoon I came across a telling 1956 article by Dr. Wayne Robinson, an amateur historian who wrote much about this area. He states,“John Sellars who used to do a lot of timber cutting in the head of the Farler Hollow where it comes to the top of Snow’s Hill told me he ran into that old cannon they used to fire a salute when Andrew Jackson and party came along on the way to Washington…
“The mounting wasn’t anchored and when they pulled the lanyard the whole thing headed for the hollow.” John is a son of Len and Bettie. Likely born and raised in the cabin, he is the father of Ernest Sr.
There’s also ample evidence for the the house being there well before Stephen Sellars purchased the adjacent land. The cabin is cited in the book Upper Cumberland Historic Architecture on page 28 : ”A log tollhouse in DeKalb County near Snow’s Hill still guards the Knoxville-Nashville toll Road. A single pen structure with a wraparound porch, the house was sited to provide a dramatic view of the valley and wagon road below….”
I’ve also seen a civil war map at the state archives with “Garrison” marked at or in the immediate vicinity of the cabin. There, I obtained a copy of an old hand drawn map by J.F and Charles Roy of Smithville identifying historic sites in the county. On it, they place an old tollgate directly opposite the hilltop where the cemetery sits, identified as “highest point on Highway from Sparta to Nashville.”
An Intriguing Assertion
More recently, in my ongoing research, I came across an intriguing article written by Ed Bell which also suggests a building there well before the newly freed Sellars family moved in.
Bell is the author of Fish on the Steeple, the controversial 1935 novel set in Smithville and DeKalb County. A county native, he was well familiar with the area. When he left, he enjoyed a distinguished career as a writer and editor in Rutherford and Davidson counties before his early passing in 1957.
In a 1952 column for the Tennessean called “The Highway” Bell ruminates on the construction of the new Highway 70 to replace the old turnpike up Snow’s Hill, Highway 26. He’s watching the work from the head of the valley near the house, and writes:
“Up there, where the old turnpike levels off and the horses could stop and drink…what’s left of the tavern at the sign of Two Cranes is tucked against a bluff at the turn of the road…
“It’s just an old piece of a house. Back when I first knew it it wasn’t much better. An old colored man lived there. Believe his name was Len Sullins(sic) but everybody called him Uncle Rabbit. He always would furnish you with a drink of water and a cheerful word at the end of the long haul…
“The old ones say Andrew Jackson spent the night there on his long trip to Washington to be inaugurated president of the United States.”
Clearly, Bell was aware of some tradition which connects the Inn At the Sign of Two Cranes, briefly mentioned in Will T. Hale’s history, with the cabin. If he’s right, that would explain why local citizens gathered there to shoot off the cannon later found by John Sellars in the hollow below.
In fact, Bell situates the Inn At The Sign of Two Cranes there, at the head of the valley, in at least two short stories. One, “The Fame of Pickie Lafevre” is a highly fictionalized account of the building and firing of that cannon, and the ensuing shame for its creator when it blasted off the road.
Whether any of this can be verified remains to be seen. Until I can find two independent sources to prove or disprove Bell’s assertions about the inn, it’s interesting conjecture.
Regardless, the cabin already is already distinguished for its connection with the Sellars family.
The truth is a family of freed slaves set the roots of their American dream in a simple one room log cabin on Snow’s Hill, then moved on to prosper across the country.
Theirs is a uniquely American story.
Stephen Sellars would be proud.
How We Connected
From the time we first walked the “slave cemetery” on our property and heard of Len Sellars,we hoped to learn more. Over the years we asked all the black people we met if they’d could tell us anything, if they knew of anyone who might have a relative buried in the graveyard, if it was connected with some church.
Since these efforts proved fruitless, my wife Liz had the idea of posting something on ancestry.com. Gathering information from census records, she built a a Sellars family tree with hope some relative might one day find it.
It languished there for years until this spring, when we got a “hint” someone else had posted something about Len Sellars. I emailed the person, and we spoke by phone that weekend.
Like me, Ernest Sellars Jr is a history buff, much interested in family history. It turns out he’d made trips here, in search of his roots, asking around Liberty if anyone knew of the Sellars cemetery or their old farm on Snow’s Hill. Until we connected, his search had proven fruitless.
Two weeks after we spoke, Ernest, his father Ernest Sr., and son John were standing in the log cabin, then touring the cemetery.
Were it not for the reach of the Internet ,we might both still be searching.
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