There once was a time, outside the Prohibition Era, of course, that it was illegal to sell beer, wine or spirits of any sort on Election Day. While it still exists in some places, that was rolled back in Tennessee at some point during my lifetime (dry counties being the obvious exception).
The reason for this was preventing campaign chicanery. Anyone hand-wringing over mail-in ballots obviously never heard tales of men rounded up the day before an election, wined and dined, then marched to the polls the next day under armed escort to choose whom they were told.
One such story comes out of Carter and Johnson counties in the years immediately following the Civil War. A letter to the Nashville Union & American from October 1869 tells the tale of a “motley crew” working hard to keep Elijah Simerly and Lt. Col. James W. M. Grayson (Union) from winning election to the state legislature. The “Herculean effort” was to put Capt. James I. R. Boyd (Union) and another fellow named Singletary (no first name provided) into the state house instead.
Emissaries for Boyd/Singletary came into Hampton and rounded up every man they could lay a hand on: They were collected together and brought to Elizabethton and put in a large storehouse, where they were well fed and liquored, and additions continued to be added to their number until the crowd became so dense – the effluvia rising from such a compact body of radicalism – it became necessary to turn them out and corral them as you would mules, until the hour for voting when they were formed in double file with music in front, and marshals on either side with swords or clubs in their hands and marched to the polls and voted in solid phalanx for Boyd and Singletary, thus defeating Grayson and Simerly.
That’s quite a letter to the editor and run-on sentence all in one. It was simply signed “No Radical,” but its author was in high dungeon and demanding correction from the powers that were in Nashville. He would remain unsatisfied. Such was the rough and tumble life in upper East Tennessee in the years following The War.
When the rain stopped: flood waters from Hurricane Helene surround the Butler Mansion in Hampton (Photo courtesy Kim Mullenix).
Hampton, recently battered by Hurricane Helene, still has many buildings left from those times, most notably Simerly’s beautiful Italianate brick mansion, alternately known today as the Simerly-Butler House or the Butler Mansion. Simerly is considered the founder of the small town, giving it his wife Mary’s maiden name as well as laying out the streets.
Simerly had served as the high sheriff of Carter County from 1854-1860. Like most people in the region leading up the Civil War, Simerly was a staunch Unionist and anti-secessionist.
Once the war began, he was a rebel against the rebels and part of the East Tennessee bridge-burning brigade under the orders of President Abraham Lincoln. After the war, he served in the state legislature from 1865-1867.
During that time, the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad was founded, and Simerly became its president in 1867, the same year he finished construction of his exquisite home. The E.T. & W.N.C., nicknamed the “Tweetsie,” was a narrow-gauge line built specifically to haul iron ore from the mines at Cranberry, North Carolina, just over the border, down into Johnson City. Simerly remained the railroad’s president until 1871.
By 1910, the home was owned by Nathaniel Edwin Harris, a confederate veteran and 61st governor of Georgia. In his spare time, he was the founder of Georgia Tech University. In 1936, the home was purchased by Ralph U. Butler, who operated manganese mines in Cedar Hill and Shady Valley. The home remained in his family for decades and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
It is now owned and lovingly restored by Jim and Kim Mullenix (Kim is a Hampton native). While the home took a few hits during the flood, it has survived, and soon will be decorated for Christmas. A reminder, though, it is not open to the public, but you can learn more about it here.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: The Elizabethan Star 2020, Nashville Union & American 1869, McClung digital archives-Knox County Library
