Hey whatever happened to... doing it all by hand?

Back before everything became automatic, the Seviers (and everyone else living in the late 18th/ early 19th centuries) had to make things by hand and use candlelight to see! 

We are gearing up for our final two events of the 2014 calendar (have no fear-- our 2015 calendar will be released soon, and we have a few new events and workshops planned), and we are looking forward to both of them!

We are offering our popular Candle Making Workshop again on December 6. Be sure to call or email us soon for reservations-- spaces have been filling up quickly!

One of our favorite things to ask students who visit is "How are things different here compared to your home?" (or "What is missing?") It never fails-- electricity and video games/ television always come up quickly. During December, we provide an example of how the holidays were different during early statehood compared to today. We have our Candlelight Tours on December 13. Experience the historic site through the soft glow of candle light. The historic buildings will be decorated with fresh greenery. Music, open hearth cooking, baked goods & warm drinks will set your heart aglow with holiday spirit (Details are subject to change.) 

We hope you will join us for these fun events.

John Sevier and William Blount

Thanks to our former intern, Kristin Brig, for leaving us a few blog entries to keep posting!

When William Blount took up his post as Governor of the Territory South of the Ohio River in 1790, he was alien to the population living to the west of North Carolina. Blount, a North Carolina native, traveled across the Appalachian Mountains into this new southwest territory, present-day Kentucky and Tennessee. He set up his government in present-day East Tennessee and quickly made the acquaintance of the popular leaders of the region, most notably John Sevier.

Sevier and Blount got along well, considering Sevier’s heavy influence in the region and Blount’s high-ranking position in government. In addition to appointing Blount governor of the territory, President George Washington placed Blount in the position of Superintendent of Indian Affairs; given Sevier’s clashes with the Overhill Cherokee, Blount saw Sevier as an even more important ally in his new political position.[1] As such, Blount recommended Sevier and another popular territorial leader, James Robertson, to the position of Brigadier General. President Washington agreed with the recommendation and commissioned Sevier and Robertson to the post.[2] Sevier thus recovered his political image after the failure of the State of Franklin, for which he was the governor for a short term.

Political allies now, Blount and Sevier struck up a personal friendship as well. Sevier began recording activities related to Blount in 1793, three years after the governor had taken up his post. The entries began with mainly political relations between the two men, as in one entry discussing a talk Governor Blount gave relating to an event of scalping in Easternoly by Native Americans.[3] By late 1794, Sevier began taking tea with Mrs. Blount and dining with both the Blounts. Sometimes the dining contained merely politics, as when members of the Assembly including Sevier met with Governor Blount and drank wine together.[4] Yet sometimes Sevier and Blount (with Blount’s wife) spent time with one another outside the political realm, such as when they attended church together in September 1794.[5]

When Sevier became the first governor of Tennessee in 1796, the new state elected William Blount as one of its US senators. At first there was controversy over the admittance of the newly-elected Tennessee senators to Congress, since the majority of the state refused to support John Adams as a candidate for the next president after George Washington left the seat. In the end, however, Blount and his fellow Tennessee senator William Cocke took their seats in Congress as representatives for Tennessee.

Blount, expelled from the US Senate in July 1797 on account of illegal land deals with Spain, moved back to Tennessee and was elected to the Tennessee State Senate. John Sevier, still governor of Tennessee, picked up his friendship with Blount. The two visited each other frequently, taking more tea with one another and dining at each other’s houses in Knoxville. Sevier never writes of Blount visiting Marble Springs, but the close relationship of the men means that the Blounts may have been out to the farm to visit.

Blount suddenly fell ill on March 15, 1800. On the 17^th, Sevier visited Blount, as he had just returned to the city of Knoxville after a visit to Marble Springs. Blount died on March 21. Sevier wrote of taking his family with him to Blount’s burial.[6]

While Sevier never wrote much of political events past a few words in his journals, he did record many friendly events with the Blounts. The fact that Blount’s death is recorded in the journal with some details indicates that Sevier and Blount’s relationship had transcended the political and became a personal affair.

As such, John Sevier and William Blount became fast friends, beginning with Blount’s rise to governor of the Territory South of the Ohio River and ending with a personal visit to the old governor’s burial by Sevier.

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[1] Marcus Joseph Wright, Some Account of the life and Services of William Blount (1884), 9.

[2] Wright, Some Account, 11-12.

[3] John Sevier, Journal, October 24, 1793.

[4] Sevier, Journal, July 30, 1794.

[5] Sevier, Journal, September 21, 1794.

[6] Sevier, Journals, March 1800.

Upcoming Events

We are gearing up for our busy fall season here at Marble Springs State Historic Site!

Join us at the East Tennessee History Fair in downtown Knoxville on August 16. We will be there with the other Historic Homes of Knoxville.

On August 23, we will be hosting a Soap Making Workshop (10am-2pm).

On September 20 (10am-5pm) and September 21 (12pm-5pm), we will host our annual John Sevier Days. Join us for period demonstrations, militia drills, historic lectures, and more.

On September 20, come back to our site for our 2nd annual Sevier Soiree in the evening. This fundraising event will involve food, music, and a silent auction.

Details are subject to change. We will keep you posted about other fall events soon!

All money raised at these events benefits educational programming at Marble Springs. Programming assistance for these events is provided by the Arts & Heritage Fund and Knox County. Marble Springs is funded under an agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Tennessee Historical Commission, and supplemented by additional funds raised by the Governor John Sevier Memorial Association.

Sevier Family Coat of Arms

This post was written by our summer intern, Kristin Brig. Thanks, Kristin!

In the medieval era, the coat of arms developed as a way for families to distinguish themselves and to broadcast ties to nobility or as well-to-do. All sorts of colors and shapes went into making a coat of arms, each with a specific task in mind. Even the background of the coat of arms meant something important.

On the Sevier family crest, two colors make up the background: gold and red. Gold indicates generosity and lifting one’s mind to higher thoughts than oneself. Red, on the other hand, demonstrates a belonging to a warrior class and to the military. Sometimes it means martyr.

Although no thick cross sits on the shield, the crest clearly divides into four areas. Such division therefore indicates a will toward faith and protection. In each of the four areas, there are symbols: two areas carry three boxes each in the same pattern, while the other two areas carry the same man’s head.

There are no indications of rectangular boxes carrying any significance on family crests, yet there is a symbol called the carpenter’s square that exists on certain crests. This square represents the family’s loyalty to the law of righteous and equity in society, which would further confirm the faith and protection division of the crest.

The most common question visitors give us when it comes to the crest, however, is why the human head with a turban is on there. According to family crest symbolism, this symbol points to prowess during the Crusades, actually naming the symbol the head of a Moor (a Spanish name for Muslim in the medieval era).

As for the writing at the bottom of the crest, “pro patria,” the phrase is Latin for “for country.” A flexible phrase for a flexible, ever-moving and ever-changing family.

If we read the Sevier family coat of arms via the meanings of these symbols, we discover something new about Sevier’s ancestors. Clearly the Seviers fought in the Crusades during the medieval era, due to the colors and Moor’s head chosen. They held true to their faith as well, even leaving their first homeland, France, in favor of a society in which they could practice their Huguenot faith. They believed in equality of persons, faith to their God and country, and even a warrior spirit in times of trouble. Each of these qualities showed in John Sevier during his life here in Tennessee, and his descendants still pass on these centuries-old qualities that we can find today in a simple coat of arms hanging in a corner of an old cabin.

The War of 1812: John Sevier’s Involvement

This post was written by our summer intern, Kristin Brig. Thanks, Kristin!

On the eve of the start of the War of 1812, Congressman John Sevier found himself in the middle of an on-going argument between pro- and anti-war advocates. Although pro-war himself, Sevier kept track of the argument through his letters to his son George Washington Sevier, discussing major players and key events in the days leading up to the war.

George Washington lived at Fort Hampton in the Mississippi Territory at the time with his wife and children. Like his father, George Washington served as a captain in the United States army, protecting the American frontier. John Sevier tried to keep his far-off son updated on the latest military events in Washington via posted letters. Unfortunately, George Washington failed to receive many of the letters sent to him; what he did receive, however, consisted of tales of his father’s doings in Washington, amongst the doings of other important leaders.

John Sevier had connections in Washington when it came to finding out news on the growing conflict between Britain and the United States. He dined with the Minister of France and attended Mrs. James Madison’s parties at the White House, where he met and talked with those in the higher ranks of Congress and of the Cabinet.[1] Sevier even lived on the same floor as Lieutenant Colonel Smyth, one of the major figures in the Army at the time: “The Colonel and myself have lived on the same floor all the winter, good part of the time in the same room, and on very friendly terms.”[2] With such important connections as these, Sevier determined collect what information he could and to share his information with his family and friends back home instead of waiting for the newspapers to break war news.

Sevier did not merely listen to the brewing wartime spirit in Congress, however. Sevier found himself at the core of the discussion. As early as January 1812, Sevier promoted the prospect of war with his colleagues and family members, warning them of the soon-to-come war with an almost excited fervor. In his letters to George Washington, Sevier stressed the importance of the US Army and for George Washington as well as other sons to look for promotions in the time leading up to war. Finally, along with seventy-eight fellow pro-war congressional supporters, Sevier signed the declaration of war against Great Britain on June 4, 1812, beginning the War of 1812. (His journal for the day read, “Thurs. [June] 4 [1812] Pleasant day wt to the House passed the declaration of war against G. Britain &c &c....")

While he never actually fought in the war himself, unlike in the American Revolution, Sevier maintained a constant presence in communication between anti-British Tennesseans and Congress. Such representative action gave him a way to help the war effort when others, such as his rival Andrew Jackson, gained glory in the battlefield.[3]

As a result, through his letters and rallying cries for war, Sevier involved himself in the war as much as he could, living through one final American-British war before dying three years after it began.

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[1] “The Journal of John Sevier,” 1812.

[2] Letter to George Washington Sevier from John Sevier, April 26, 1812.

[3] Gordon Belt, John Sevier: Tennessee’s First Hero (The History Press: Charleston, SC, 2014): 146-147.

Weather in the Time of John Sevier

Thanks to our volunteer, Kristin Brig, who researched and wrote this blog entry for us!

Today, the sun is shining, the clouds are scattered across a silky blue sky, and the weatherman, who predicted rain this morning, turns out to be wrong in his prediction. But we still have a weatherman we can rely on in dangerous weather, just a click away on the living room television. In John Sevier’s time, no weathermen existed in times of danger, no less televisions to issue warnings. Instead, Sevier, like so many other American colonists, personally had to learn the art of predicting weather, colonial style! 

Unlike today, the colonists had only a few weather tools to use for predicting the weather, among them weather vanes and thermometers. Although the first thermometer reached America in 1715 in Philadelphia,[1] people along the frontier usually solely used wind vanes and almanacs.[2] Almanacs attempted to accurately predict the weather through use of temperature and wind direction tables, which helped farmers decide where and when to sow seed and put plants in the ground. Yet colonists along the frontier like Sevier could more easily find out wind direction via wind vanes: “The settlers often found the weather of their new home rather challenging, so they made ample use of weathervanes to predict the weather and improve their farming practices.”[3] In large towns or cities the town hall usually held the wind vane for the town. If not, farmers would own their own wind vanes, as Sevier might have done at Marble Springs.

From entries in his diaries, Sevier probably had neither a thermometer nor an almanac, as he often recorded daily weather patterns but not exact predictions or temperatures. At times, he solely records the day’s weather from his own observations; for example, in March 1799 Sevier writes about the daily weather and nothing else for nine days straight![4] As a farmer, Sevier had to watch the weather closely. As such, he put weather descriptions in his diaries every so often to keep up with the ever-changing frontier weather. Sometimes, it wasn’t even for the farming- he would also remark on the weather during his time as a Congressman in Washington, DC. During his time in DC, many times he focuses more on the weather than visiting with foreign ministers and heads of state! On March 13, 1813, he wrote “Visited the President [Madison]. Cold and windy.”[5]

If you want to see the weather descriptions for yourself (in edition to a few “cures” Sevier had for ailments), you can access his diaries here:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/John_Sevier/Journal/home.html

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[1] Thomas L. Purvis, Colonial America to 1763 (New York: Facts on File, 1999), 1.

[2] Fae Moller, “Predicting Weather in the Eighteenth Century,” http://www.history.org/history/teaching/weather.cfm.

[3] “History of Weathervanes,” weathervanesplus.com.

[4] John Sevier’s Diary, March 1799, Penelope.uchicago.edu.

[5] John Sevier’s Diary, March 1813, Penelope.uchicago.edu.

Gardening at Marble Springs

Thanks to our volunteer, Kristin Brig, who researched and wrote this blog entry for us!

Is this a watermelon or a pumpkin?

Is that a watermelon?

We’ve been hearing this question a lot at Marble Springs, in regards to our garden. What you’re actually seeing is a pumpkin!

Our garden isn’t only full of these (currently) green beauties…  We’ve also got corn, squash, onions, tomatoes, and more. In growing true colonial foods, we try to think about what John Sevier might have grown back in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. After all, not all historic preservation has to take place in a museum, or the cabins that you visit here on site; in fact, much historic preservation goes towards maintaining gardens!

Gardens served several purposes in the colonial era. For instance, if you travel up to Colonial Williamsburg or Charleston’s historic homes, you will find gardens teeming with some of the most colorful flowers to be found in the South. In these instances, gardens served a purpose of beauty, of giving serenity to a bustling household, and of showcasing the stately nature of the wealthy inhabitants of said households.[i] Today, much as the colonists did three hundred years ago, visitors to such places enjoy a stroll along the garden paths, studying the colorful flowers and remarking on the geometry used by the colonists.

Yet John Sevier’s gardens went beyond just cultivation of flowers. For Sevier and other colonial settlers along the frontier, gardens meant food, a form of self-sustaining farming. And today, unlike the colonists of three hundred years ago, visitors often wonder why such gardens have fewer flowers and more crops than townhomes do, especially for a man as politically active as John Sevier. Visitors instead should take away a different message from these maintained gardens: the colonists put a lot of work into producing much of the same food for their tables that we only have to purchase at our local grocery stores. According to Therese Ciesinski from Organic Gardening, “What [colonists] grew and how they grew it reveals the differences between then and now…and emphasizes how difficult it was to coax food from the ground.”[ii] As a result, maintaining the gardens here at Marble Springs not only gives visitors something delectable (and sweet-smelling) to look at, but also something to make them think about how difficult the life of a colonist truly was, even in aspects of simply getting food to eat. 

Our herb garden is also undergoing a transformation, as we are currently expanding it and removing the walk-in areas. For a colonist, herbs provided flavoring for food as well as medicine for basic illnesses. Typically, colonists raised their herb garden beds so that water would drain quicker and the soil would warm quicker in the spring and summer.[iii] As such, our herb garden beds here at Marble Springs are raised, as is our vegetable garden. (They are also raised due to the archaeologically sensitive ground that the gardens sit on).

A big thanks to our fantastic volunteers, Jim Buckenmyer, who helps us out with our gardening workshops, and Fran Brown who has been helping us with weeding and cutting back the herbs.

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[i] “The Lure of Colonial Gardens,” JSTOR, 455.

[ii] Therese Ciesinski, “How We Grew,” Organic Gardening.

[iii] “Colonial Herbs,” stratfordhall.org.