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A link to Caney Fork’s past
All of us with an interest in Jackson County history can be grateful that Mary Jane Prince Queen has written many of her memories down in her recent book, “The Life and Times of Mary Jane Queen.”
She’s lived in Caney Fork’s Johns Creek community all her life, and she knows quite a bit about the area’s early settlers. She grew up on Brown Mountain, which forms the divide between the Johns Creek and Caney Fork watersheds.
Mary Jane can remember the time when the tannery whistle in Sylva was so loud that she and her family could hear it at their home overlooking the Caney Fork valley and set their clocks by it. She also recalls when Blackwood Lumber Co. headed up Caney Fork with its loggers and trains to harvest the virgin timber there. One tree, a poplar in Jack Cove, was so large that the lumber company had to send to Washington state to get a saw blade big enough to saw through its massive trunk. It took a 12-foot saw for that tree, Mary Jane said.
“We could see the tree from where we lived on the Brown Mountain,” Mary Jane writes in her book. “One log was all they could put on a train car. I went with Dad many times to see the stump – it was the biggest tree they cut here in Jackson County.”
Talking to Mary Jane about her book and her childhood also provided information I’d been trying to track down. My husband Richard had come across a 1930 plat of the W.A. Brown farm in the Jackson County Register of Deeds Office, and he made a copy of it because the name was one he kept encountering in the old deeds. But without some reference, it was impossible for him to pinpoint where on Caney Fork the farm had been.
When I went out to see Mary Jane on Monday to find out all about her book, I also asked her what she knew about Brown, because we knew from the old deed books that he had owned a lot of property in Caney Fork and Canada back around the turn of the last century.
Mary Jane, of course, knew precisely where the man she knew as Albert Brown had lived and that both Brown’s house and barn are still standing. As it turns out, Brown’s old house is next to the home of The Herald’s current Caney Fork correspondent, Norma Coggins, and his former barn across Caney Fork Creek from the house marks the entrance to the Cross Creek Estates subdivision.
Visiting “Uncle Albert” and his wife, “Aunt Lou” were routine events during Mary Jane’s early years.
The “uncle” and “aunt” were courtesy titles; the Browns weren’t related to Mary Jane, though she said they convinced her parents to name one of her older sisters after Albert. They sent word up the mountain to Mary Jane’s mother, Clearsie Prince, that if her expected baby turned out to be a girl that Clearsie should name her “Alberta.” And that’s what happened, though Mary Jane’s sister was usually called “Bertie.”
Mary Jane’s book includes a picture of the Brown barn, and she tells of the dances that were once held there every Saturday night. Her daddy, Jim Prince, often played banjo at those dances.
As best Mary Jane can remember, Albert Brown’s daddy came over from England and settled in Jackson County when Albert was a small boy. She remembers that Albert and Lou were fairly old when she was a little girl – about the same age as her grandparents. The Browns’ children were sons Ed, David and Victor Brown and a daughter named Evvie whose married name was Cannon, she said.
It turns out that in addition to naming her sister, Albert Brown played another part in Mary Jane’s family history. Brown was a justice of the peace, and a young Jim Prince persuaded him to go with him to Mary Jane’s grandpa Bud Nicholson’s house one Saturday night. Once there, Brown performed the ceremony that united Mary Jane’s parents, Jim Prince and Clearsie Nicholson.
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