THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Happenings
Along the Famous Logan Turnpike
Charles Roscoe
Collins, who himself traveled with his father as a lad, and made his
first solo trip on the Logan Turnpike at age 17, points to the site
where two Runyon brothers were hanged by Confederate Home Guards during
the Civil War. Mr. Collins shared many stories of happenings
along the Logan Turnpike.
Mr.
Charles Roscoe Collins was my guide in 1992 for a delightful day back
into
history as he pointed out where the Logan Turnpike was located and told
me
significant happenings along the famed toll road. I
couldn’t have had a better mentor, for he
himself had traveled the road as a lad with his father, James Johnson
Collins. Then as a responsible teenager
of 17, he was trusted to take his first wagon load of produce to
“This is the place the Runyon boys
were hanged from a strong limb of a large chestnut tree during the
Civil War,”
Collins stated as he pointed to the site.
We could still see the old Logan Turnpike roadbed, but the
chestnut tree
had long since disappeared, hit by the blight that took those
once-productive
trees from the mountain soil.
“I used to be afraid when my father
and I passed by here,” he said. “I was
afraid the ghosts of the Runyon boys would come out of the woods to
haunt us.”
He explained that the Runyon brothers
met their deaths at the hands of the Home Guard, self-appointed
vigilantes who
hunted down and often disposed of those who hid out in the mountains to
escape
conscription into the Confederate Army.
Mr. Collins also noted that many in the mountain region were
pro-Union,
siding with the North in “the late unpleasantness” as the Civil War was
sometimes called.
I looked at the spot where the
chestnut tree once stood and had a gruesome picture in my mind of a sad
chapter
in the area’s history as the young men met their deaths in such a
cruel,
untimely fashion.
“I’ll have to tell you about Jack
Shuler and his boys and how they were hired to keep the north stretch
of the
Logan Turnpike passable,” Mr. Collins stated.
“Jack Shuler operated his farm and the
Ponder Post Office near the present-day
“And this is Big Spiva Bend,” Roscoe
Collins said. “Near here is the place
where Newt Spiva hid out during the Civil War.
The Home Guard found him and ordered him to surrender. He refused, preferring death to
conscription. He was shot at a rock
outcropping here. This place was named
Spiva Bend after him.”
Spiva Bend was hard to manipulate with
four-wheeled vehicles. Mr. Collins told
of the time when his own older brother, Tom Collins, together with
Perry Hood
and Tom Calloway, had been hired by a Mr. Jarrard to transport a huge
steam
boiler from the gold mines of Coosa District in
When they came to Spiva Bend, they had
problems getting the large implement and the specially constructed
four-horse
wagon vehicle with extensions around the bend.
The young men considered whether they would have to disassemble
the
engine and put it back together again.
However, the men placed winches in strategic locations, and with
their
mountain ingenuity managed to get their load around the hazardous Spiva
Bend
without taking the engine apart. The
next day the three men delivered the steam engine, all in one piece, to
Mr.
Jarrard at his place on Town Creek near
That day with Mr. Collins, we did not
walk the seven-plus miles across
That route afforded more rich stories
from Mr. Collins’s repertoire which I will retell at another time. Our destination was the south stretch of
Logan Turnpike which we accessed by going Kellam Valley Road leading
off
Highway 129/19 north of Cleveland, Georgia.
Homer Nix and a
Miss Satterfield are pictured in front of the old Logan Inn on the
south end of the Logan Turnpike in 1920. Records show
that the fiery South Carolina senator, and later vice-president of the
U. S., John C. Calhoun of SC, made this inn his place to spend nights
as he traveled to and from Lumpkin County to check on his gold
interests there.
There, at the spot of the old
Logan Inn,
which today is the location of a private dwelling, we were welcomed
inside by
the owner, Mrs. Marion Crawford who looked after her 98-year old
mother, Mrs.
Sarah Mathis Ethier. They knew the
history of the old turnpike and were glad to share their knowledge and
show us
pictures.
Shadows of
trees make an "X" marking the beginning of the old Logan Turnpike, a
toll road that crossed Tesnatee Gap mountain from White County into
Union County. This picture
shows the south access of the old road that operated from 1821 through
1925.
We went to a tree, still marked
with a sign
reading “Logan Turnpike. Pay tolls
here.” We were told that John C.
Calhoun, famous in
Mrs. Roxane E.
Durfee drove her Overland Country Club Roadster over the Logan Turnpike
in 1917. The car
overheated several times on the steep grades, but Ms. Durfee arrived
safely at Blairsville and lodged at the old Christopher Hotel on the
square. (Picture
courtesy Union County Historical Society)
A milestone in deciding toll
fees came as a
spunky lady named Roxanne Durfee of Atlanta came chugging northward in
her
Overland Country Club Roadster in 1917.
When she stopped to pay the toll, the gatekeeper didn’t know
what to
charge her because hers was the first car and driver to seek access to
the toll
road. Finally, a fee of fifty cents was
set, and Mrs. Durfee paid and went along her way. She
somehow managed the hazardous curves,
overheated brakes, frequent stops and frazzled nerves to arrive later
at the
As I walked portions of the old Logan
Turnpike, I sensed a strong touch, a nexus
with the past. Over this same road my
grandfathers, Francis Jasper Collins and Elisha Bluford Dyer, and my
own
father, Jewel Marion Dyer, had taken wagon loads of produce from their
Choestoe
farms to barter on the market at
I thought back even farther to the Old
Union and Unicoi Turnpikes, parallel roads into the mountain region,
over which
earlier ancestors had traveled to settle on 160-acre land lots in the
early
1830s.
I thanked Charles Roscoe Collins for
being my excellent guide on the journey back into history, a delightful
time-warp.
I heard a faint rattle in the bushes,
and there, hopping along the old roadbed, was a gray rabbit, intent on
getting
as far away from us as possible.
Choestoe in the Cherokee language
means “the dancing place of rabbits.”
Poet Byron Herbert Reece wrote in his poem about the place:
We
could believe they danced and wish them dancing;
They came to sport forever in the name our country bears,
One that the Indians gave it.
Even more real than the dance of
the
rabbits was hope that ‘sprang eternal’ in the hearts of mountain men
and
women—my ancestors, your ancestors. An
old roadbed lies as a symbol of their faith and optimism, of their
dreams, of
the harsh realities they faced. All
combined to make us, their descendants, what we are today.
If you go to seek out the old Logan
Turnpike roadbed, closed to traffic in 1925 when Neal Gap (now Hwy
129/19)
opened, maybe you, as I, will have a deeper appreciation of your roots
and the
forces that made us uniquely a proud and industrious mountain people.
[Ethelene
Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and historian.
She may be reached at e-mail [email protected];
phone 478-453-8751; or mail
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