Kingsport Spirit

I took a trip down memory lane this weekend to my grandmother’s birthplace, McPheeter’s Bend, just across the Holston River from Church Hill in Hawkins County, Tennessee. We used to call it ‘the country’ when I was growing up, but it’s literally 10 minutes from Allandale Mansion on the western border of Kingsport.

I saw a prominent obelisk-style monument in the church cemetery that commemorated the burial of Samuel McPheeters and his wife, Margaret Seawright. The latter caught my attention, because I knew I had a Seawright in my lineage. It turns out they were sisters. Mary Polly Seawright was my 4G grandmother, so Margaret Seawright McPheeters was my 4G grandaunt. Mary Polly Seawright was the wife of Samuel Curry, Sr.

I found a land grant to Samuel Curry, Sr. (my 4G grandfather) from the State of North Carolina in the county of Sullivan in 1790. Why? Tennessee wasn’t a state until 1796. The land was located south of Bays Mountain in the Beech Creek community, which is a short distance through Blair’s Gap to McPheeters Bend.

But Curry & McPheeters aren’t common names around here anymore. I wondered why. Turns out they were wiped out by an 1830 epidemic of ‘river fever’ (cholera). The 1905 Nashville Banner said the epidemic “swept the upper end of Hawkins County from Ross’s Bridge (Rotherwood) to four or five miles south of Surgoinsville”. The only remaining male Curry or McPheeters moved on to Middle Tennessee and Kansas. When you see it on Ancestry.com, it jumps out at you. 47 people died in 1829 or 1830. These were my ancestors:

Mary Polly Seawright Curry (1765-1830) — 4G grandmother

George Curry (1785-1830) – 3G granduncle

Samuel Curry (1797-1830) – 3G granduncle

Anna Mary Seawright Curry (1794-1830) – 3G grandmother

Margaret Seawright McPheeters (1742-1829) – 4G grandaunt

Rev. Samuel Brown McPheeters (1737-1829) – husband of 4G grandaunt

John McPheeters (1766-1830) – cousin

Isabella McPheeters (1775-1830) – cousin

Samuel McPheeters Jr. (1783-1829) – cousin

Can you imagine these families losing their heads of household and several siblings all at once? And in their own home suffering without medicines. Makes me appreciate their pioneer spirit and the long line of people who eventually made–me. The river was a wild, precious resource. But it could also be deadly, especially before harnessed by TVA more than a hundred years later.