Edward
Walker, Jr.,
known as Ned, and his wife Mahala, known as Haley, settled
on Mulberry Creek around
1816; both died there, and Ned's second wife continued
to live there for almost two decades after his death.
Remarkably, the home is still standing and has been
carefully restored.
Soon after purchasing the property in the early 1990s,
the then-owners received a call from a person they remember
as a heart surgeon in Houston, although the name has
now been lost. He described to them details of the house,
including the fireplace, that they themselves did not
find until they restored the home. He also described
the exact locations of the graves, which the homeowner
was able to find after more than a day of searching
in the weeds. The identity of the caller of course would
be of great value to know, but clearly, whoever he was,
he knew details passed down by someone who had been
in the house before the 1920s.
Age of the House
The Houston caller traced the home and the Walker possession
of it to a land grant issued to an Elijah Walker in
1789, who the caller claimed was the father of Edward
B. Walker, Sr. Such a land grant has not been found
and does not appear in major indices; in addition, Edward
B. Walker was not even married until a year later and
was married in Sullivan County, and Ned married a woman
from Sullivan County as well. Quite possibly, the grant
mentioned by the Houston caller had been issued to Elisha
Wallen, a name easily confused in the old handwriting
as Elijah Walker, and was sometimes even written that
way; he was not related to the Walkers, but he was a
long hunter and a land speculator in the area and had
a large number of early land grants in the Mulberry
area.
Still, the house itself may well date to 1789 or around
that time. Log houses, of course, could be as individual
as their builders, and sometimes older building techniques
were used in newer houses according to the curator of
the Museum of Appalachia. There are several facets to
the Walker house, however, that do suggest a very early
date. According to Mike Walker, a descendant who has
restored a number of these types of homes, people began
using saws in the very early 1800s to finish the squared-off
logs; quite clearly, the logs at the Walker house were
finished with an axe, a very labor-intensive process
that presumably the builders would have avoided if at
all possible.
Other construction techniques, such as the design of
the windows, indicate that the house, or at least the
bulk of it, was built in the late 1700s or very early
1800s at the latest, being consistent with the 1789
date. Several layers of flooring were found, including
clapboards and even a dirt floor; dirt floors were rarely
found after 1800 in that part of Tennessee. Finally,
the homeowners found Kentucky papers from 1823 lining
a wall, indicating a very early occupation in any event.
The University of Tennessee or other research group
could date the logs in the house exactly by analyzing
the tree rings or with carbon dating.
Walker Occupancy
When the Walkers first settled the area, presumably
around 1816, Ned and his brother Joseph were married.
If emerging research can be confirmed, brother William
was also married and moved to Claiborne County about
the same time. Martha may have been; in fact, evidence
is accumulating that Martha never left Sullivan County,
although proof is lacking. All of the other children
of Edward Sr. and Jane Horn were unmarried and ranged
in age from 17 to 3. It may have been Edward Sr. and
not Ned who first settled on the land, or they may have
settled together. Married couples often lived with parents
the first few years of their marriage, especially before
children were born.
So who built the home and when are certainly questions,
but the newspapers in particular prove a very early
date, making the house probably one of the older still-standing
log homes in all of Appalachia. Adding to the mystery,
though, is the fact that the house was probably not
built entirely at the same time in any case; according
both to the owners and even the untrained eye, one side
of the house is different from the other and may even
reflect different builders. Both sides, though, use
American chestnut wood with an occasional poplar log.
Dogtrot Style
The house as it currently stands appears to be the
dogtrot style, namely two different houses that shared
a chimney and were later connected. The original front
of the house is now the back; in the 1920s, a paved
road was laid where the current road runs, but the older
road known to the Walkers ran along the creek. When
the owners in the 1920s started using the back as the
front, they also built an addition on to the original
front which destroyed many of the architectural details
of it.
By the time that the Walkers presumably settled the
land, neighbors on both sides had been well-settled
for about 10 years, suggesting that they moved to an
established farm regardless who established it and whether
relatives had owned it earlier. Typically, when a family
settled on new land, they would build quite hastily
a log cabin where they would live for a few years until
they had the time to build a more permanent home. The
current Walker home, both sides of it, are clearly the
latter and would each have taken months to build; both
sides are two stories with finished logs on full limestone
foundations.
The late date established by the Kentucky newspapers,
1823, seemingly would have given the Walkers the time
necessary to construct their finished house after having
occupied the land for some time. However, one side if
not both may have already been built when they moved
to the property; perhaps the Walkers themselves bought
the house and then built the second side immediately
given that Edward Sr. and Edward Jr. may have been sharing
the home, or they built it later as other children married.
In any case, both sides were clearly constructed and
connected by the Civil War, as that connection was necessary
to form the secret room they used to hide food and valuables
from the soldiers of all stripes passing through the
area.
Assuming that the original house was only one side
of the existing house, it may have been built in the
English "hall and parlor" style, with two
rooms on the first floor separated by a staircase and
a single room on the second floor; nearly every two-story
home of the era was built in this fashion. The only
known early staircase, though, was in front of the chimney,
possibly external to the first side of the house built.
Fireplaces and Spring Box
One side of the double fireplace; the other side
is similar but now contains a wood stove. Photo
by Phillip A. Walker 9/2/2005.
The chimney is made of limestone cut from the yard
and was located at the back of the original house between
the two halves of the house; two fireplaces, one in
each half of the house, open to the same chimney. Presumably,
when the second half of the house was built, the existing
chimney was opened up to create the second fireplace.
To the untrained eye, at least, the stone appears to
be roughly cut and the construction quite old.
The hearth on the original left side of the house was
quite large, taking up much of the room; it then curved
around to the other fireplace on the other side of the
house. This design begs for further research as to the
possible uses of such a large hearth. According to the
Houston caller, Ned was a leatherworker, and the homeowners
found evidence of leatherworking in the house near the
hearth. Ned's son William was definitely a leatherworker.
Spring box. Photo by Phillip A. Walker 9/2/2005.
One of the more interesting features of the house still
exists but is not currently operational. According to
the homeowners, at least six natural springs flow from
the ridge across the creek from the original front of
the house. They had not yet found evidence of the actual
piping, but the Walkers or some previous owner had tapped
one of those springs to keep a supply of water running
through a spring box inside the house.
Such a supply of spring-fed water would help to keep
items cool and may have been used for drinking water
as well. Evidence of various outbuildings has been found
on the property as well, as would be expected.
Occupancy Document Chain
Proof that Ned Walker at least lived in this house
does not rely on an unknown caller from Houston. The
house is clearly on the land that Ned owned at the time
of his death as mapped from the 1852 survey and the
1881 Bishop deed; the Bishop deed still referred to
the land as the Edward Walker place as the restorers
indicate that their deed still does; they own 100 acres
of the original farm.
Deed map; click for larger view
Not only is the house clearly on his land, other evidence
provides overwhelming proof that this particular house
was exactly the house in which Ned lived and was not
a replacement house built after a fire or some other
catastrophe. Census records including neighbors are
always consistent, but Sallie (Crumley) Walker talked
about the house specifically in her 1878 pension
application. In that application, she said that
she was still living in the same house where she was
married in 1848 and where Haley died in 1842, although
Haley actually died in 1844 apparently.
Additional evidence extends the existence of the original
house into the 20th century. Melbourn Green Walker,
one of Ned and Haley's grandchildren, wrote in a 1929
letter that he had had dinner in Ned's house when he
lived no more than a mile from there and had even eaten
from his table. Meb lived at Mulberry, practicing medicine
there from 1898-1902, dating his visit to that era.
Although the house had left Walker hands about 20 years
before, no reason exists to doubt his identification;
Bill, Ned and Sallie's son, still lived nearby, and
Meb's own father, John Gilmore Walker, the son of Ned
and Haley who also grew up in the house, was still living
as were other children.
No further documentation has been found that specifically
references the house after that period, and, in fact,
local residents in the latter half of the twentieth
century came to believe that Ned's son Bill or perhaps
his brother James had built it. However, the house itself
provides two bits of evidence proving that it is the
original Walker house. James' granddaughter, who knew
him only briefly but his wife much longer, was told
of a secret room where food was hidden during the Civil
War. The house most definitely has that secret room,
including two shotgun holes, perhaps a later addition.
John Gilmore Walker signature. Photo by Phillip
A. Walker 9/2/2005..
Overwhelming and unexpected confirmation, however,
was found on the outside of the house on one of the
logs on the original back of the house: the signature
"John G. Walker" carved into the log. John
G. was John Gilmore Walker, and the carving closely
matches his known signature; in addition, extensive
tracing has found no other John G. Walker ever living
in the area; the signature was covered up in the renovation
in the 1920s but is now fully visible.
The house is privately-owned and not open to the public;
it is readily viewed from the street, and the cemetery
where Ned and Haley are buried is on a hill across the
creek behind the house.
