Ruralite Cafe: Published 04/17/03

By Lynn Hotaling - Associate Editor

Farther down the Little Tennessee

Before she knew I was going to write about her dad's book, Sandy (Cowan) Murray of Florence, Ala., sent a note to add a few more tidbids to my limited knowledge of Wilson Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority's largest conventional hydroelectric facility.

Though I had not heard of Wilson Dam before finding its name on a survey marker on the headwaters of Wolf Creek (see March 20 Ruralite Cafe), Sandy and her husband Tom live near the giant dam.

Their house is on the Tennessee River along the route of a canal that allowed some river traffic to bypass the treacherous Muscle Shoals before Wilson Dam was constructed. A ledge where horses walked as they pulled boats through the canal is still visible in places, Sandy said.

Because her grandfather Roystan Cowan worked on some of the TVA dams (but not Wilson), Sandy says she feels a link to family and to her Jackson County roots when she looks out her window at the river.

"That link is the water," Sandy wrote in her e-mail. "The very water that you hiked beside on Wolf Creek, the very water that runs beside Leo's (Cowan) farm in Tuckasegee, flows by my house as it makes its way to the Mississippi.

Sandy was not the only one of Leo Cowan's relatives to respond to a recent column. It turns out that Leo, whose book "It Was This Way" was spotlighted in the April 3 Cafe, is not the only writer among the local Cowans.

His brother Lloyd, younger by a couple of years than 80-year-old Leo, wrote me a letter to tell me that he had compiled a history of East Fork community. Lloyd sent along a copy of the manuscript he prepared some 21 years ago on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of East Fork Church.

Former East Fork resident Sam Beck helped Lloyd publish the account, titled "East Fork of Savannah," Lloyd sold a few but mostly gave the booklets away, he said in his letter. Anyone wishing to obtain a copy can contact him at 44 Josephine St., Sylva, N.C. 28779.

In addition to an East Fork geography lesson, Lloyd's work includes some detailed genealogical research on the families that settled the creek.

Lloyd's history doesn't just include names and dates; it features notes that help the reader visualize the Halls, Cowans and Deitzes who once populated the 5-mile long valley.

"James Jasper (Cowan), 1879-1974, who lived to be the oldest (95) of the 'East Fork Cowans,' lived with his 'new bride,' Hicks Ashe, at the Roaring Hole on the very headwaters of East Fork, where he was saw-milling and making wood with the aid of a large, black yoke of oxen," reads an entry Lloyd wrote about one of his father's brothers.

"Roystan Duffield 'Duff' (1857-1940) and Amanda Jane (Bradley) (1857-1945) reared their nine children just below the forks of the creek on upper East Fork," reads one about his grandparents.

What's striking from just a quick study is the way the creek figures in most of the descriptions.

Sandy's right. The water is the link.

Lloyd's book chronicles the people who lived and worked along East Fork, just as generations of mountaineers have sought out Jackson County's waterways - big and small - to raise their families while farming the bottom land beside the creeks.

As generations come and go, drops of water continue to collect high on the mountains before making their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, some of that water flows by the benchmarks on Wolf Creek while other droplets pass the old home places on East Fork to reach Savannah Creek. The Tuckaseigee collects water from both and sends it on to the Little Tennessee, the Tennessee and the mighty Mississippi.

"I've often wondered how long it takes the Tuckaseigee's water to make its way here to Alabama," Sandy wrote. "However long its journey, that water links me to Jackson County, to home."

Back to Archive: 04/17/03.