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Need help in Locating an old cabin site near the base of LeConte


Ed,

I learned about you from a friend at the Dallas Public Library. He suggested that I contact you.

I am trying to retrace my family's history which brings me to you. I want to locate a cabin site near the base of Mt. LeConte and eventually visit it.

I'll tell you the story and provide the information I have and I hope you can help or refer me. What I relay here is from my father who is dead and his sister who is 83.

My father's father was a Methodist minister who was sent to Knoxville in the fall of 1928 to help rebuild the Church Street Methodist Church. The family spent the summers camping in remote areas. A church member, whose name I do not know, let my grandfather and family rent his cabin for three summers beginning in 1929.

What I know:

The cabin was about 100 feet off of Orchard Road. There was an orchard nearby. The cabin had been enlarged to include two rooms, a big room in the front and an a narrow room which was a kitchen. The main cabin had a huge pioneer fireplace used for heating and cooking. There was a front porch where my father usually slept. I have a picture of Daddy on the porch. The cabin was made of huge tulip tree logs about 2 feet square.

There was a creek in the front of the house with a foot bridge. The family used it as a refrigerator and stored milk, butter and eggs there to keep cool. The only running water to the cabin was a pipe which had been laid from the cabin, "up the mountain" beyond dwellings, and into a creek or river. The pipe opened into the kitchen.

The creek behind the house fed into the Pigeon River.

My father cut wood for a neighbor, Mr. Bradley. I have a photograph from ca 1931 of Mr. Bradley, his wife and child. I have a photograph of a young woman in front of a cabin. The name by the door is McBirney. I do not know if it is from the area, but it looks like it could be.

My aunt was there in 1950 and found the site. The cabin was overgrown with kudzu. Daddy found the site in about 1983. He said not much was left but the floor.

I know this is not much to go on, but wondered if you had any thoughts as to how I might find the place.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance.

Ann Grimes
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