This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/RgB.2ACE/595 Message Board Post: Madisonville Democrat, Wednesday, January 30, 1929, Page 3: “Early Days At Hiwassee---Almost everyone in the county knows something about Hiwassee College and its neighborhood, so I am prompted by Mr. J.W. Slaton’s recent letter to write of some incidents occurring there. I cannot speak from memory regarding my first item, since it occurred about a week before I arrived in America, May 22, 1853, and I did not arrive until May 31st. It is an address by Josiah I. Wright, Esq., upon the death of John Denton and was printed at Loudon by John W., and Sam’s B. O’Brien at the request of members of the Eromathesian Society, signed by a committee composed of J.N. Dunn, W.W. Blair and two others. The address eulogizes the memory of Mr. Denton and is quite a creditable effort, I being the judge. Mention is made of the recent passing of other members of the society, a Rucker, a Patton, a Casteel, a McCroskey and three others. The only one of these whom I remember of hearing spoken of was Benjamin Casteel, who married my aunt, Elizabeth McKenzie. Their son, Benjamin, will be remembered by old timers in Madisonville. He read law under T.E.H. McCroskey, Esq., and went to Missouri in 1872 and was for quite awhile a Judge in St. Joseph, where he died in 1914. My law register for 1853 gives Mr. Wright as one of the lawyers at Madisonville, the others being W.L. Eakin, H.H. Stephens and George Brown. I do not remember Mr. Wright, unless it be that he turned out to be a Methodist preacher, Rev. Josiah Wright, whom I used to know before the war. Preaching then was a bore to me, a very small boy, but I remember the voice, at times so high and loud that it almost split the church rafters and then so low, a mere whisper that one could hardly hear. J.N. Dunn, one of the above signers, became a wholesale grocer in Atlanta and his daughter, Ida, went to school at Sweetwater and married one of my boyhood chums, Prof. Joe K. Brunner, and they later went to Colorado Springs, where Joe passed some twenty years ago. The widow, I am told, now lives at Grand Junction with a daughter. W.W. Blair, another signer, was Wiley Blair, of near Loudon. His sister, Sarah, on Dec. 17, 1856, married Donald A. McKenzie and became the grandmother of Mrs. Anna McKenzie’s children. Wiley went to Missouri and from there to Weatherford, Texas, where I understand he passed many years ago. Forgot to record that I attended the last mentioned wedding, one of the first events I remember. Now, if any old timer can dig up anything more ancient than this concerning Hiwassee, let him trot it out, and some of us, at least, will be very glad to hear it. While waiting for someone else to “speak out in meetin’” about Hiwassee, I will mention the first Commencement there of which I have any record. Though it took place the same year as did the last marriage above, I do not remember it, as I lived in Loudon then and was of quite tender years. It purports to have taken place July 4, 1856. The speakers whom I knew were S.A. Key, J.R. McKenzie, J.J. Blair of Loudon and C.J. Wilborn. There were six others whom I never knew, but presume the valedictorian, R.M. Henderson, lived out in the Henderson neighborhood. S.A. Key, “Squire,” lived with his mother on the place now occupied by Willie Brunner, whose father was a nephew of “Squire.” After the war he joined his brother, Judge D.M. Key, in Chattanooga and later became Chancellor. J.R. McKenzie was a brother of my mother and came to California for gold in 1857 with Douth Axley, father of James there. Jesse Owen and W.L. Clark, father of Charles of Sweetwater. None of them carried back a fortune, I think, though they appear to have mined faithfully. Later, J.R. McKenzie became an assistant surgeon in the 3rd Tennessee Infantry of the Confederacy. Sometime after the war, he removed to Weatherford, Texas, where he died in 1902, after having been honored and having accumulated quite a competence. James Blair became a farmer and also went to Weaherford, where he passed many years ago. C.J. Wilborn, several of whose letters I have, appears to have been something of a masher in his young days, as I think my aunt, Mrs. Casteel, and my step-mother, Mary Brunner prior to her marriage to father, were a trifle “sweet on” “Juane,” as they more or less affectionately called him. Young women then, in the fifties, were just like the young women of today, just like they were in the eighties when they greatly interested me, and so it will ever be, I am glad to believe. “Juane” taught school at Mossy Creek for awhile with S.A. Key, it seems, and after the war was a lawyer at Blairsville, Ga. Some of his relatives reside here in Los Angeles, I think. The programme for this commencement was printed in Augusta, Ga., a long way from home, surely. Now I subside and am ready to listen to the next Hiwassean.” ---W.E. Clark.