A Students Tour of
The Rhea House
by
Edith Donnelly Hill
Shouns X Road
Tennesssee
I hear you are going to visit the Rhea house now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Gentry and I want to tell you some or its history.
It was built around l847 by Sammuel E. McQueen and he was my Great-Grandfather. He had two daughters and he built two houses, one the Rhea house and the other where Mrs. Eula Lowe now lives. Soon after he built the Rhea house the states got into a big war--the Civil War with the states of the North on one side and the southern states on the other. Samuel McQueen sympathized with the south while most of his neighbors were for the North. The Bushwhackers, a group of people who were not in the war but just killed and robbed and stole, took Samuel out and shot him and robbed the house of all its contents. The only things left of the furniture was a cherry chest of drawers and Grandfather McQueen's writing desk which an old negro servant of the McQrueen’s took out and hid. She brought it back after the war was over. In one of the rooms you can still see a bullet hole in the ceiling.
The house is built on different levels and you go up and down steps between some of the rooms.
In the yard is still one of the big oak trees which is estimated to be about 500 years old. I remember there used to be a hole in the side of the tree and a big frog lived in it and would come up and sit in the hole. I understand that the hole in the tree has now grown over. The bricks of which the house is made was made at a forge on the place and the walls are made of double brick making them about a foot thick. At this forge was also made all the nails, horseshoes etc. used on the place. The floors ups stairs are the original floors made of wide pine boards.
When I was a little girl my Gandmother and Grandfather lived in this house. My Grandfather was a doctor and he was from Bluff City, Tenn. He came over here to teach school when he was a young man and my Grandmother Rhea fell in love with him and married him. After that he became a doctor. After they were both dead my uncle, Dr. E. Bruce Rhea lived there and at his death the place was left to his youngest sister, Carolyn Rhea Hodge. When she died the place was sold to Mr. George Dowell who later sold it to Mr. and Mrs Gentry.
When I was a little girl my brother, my sister and I went out to Grandmother Rhea's every day. We had a donkey and we all three rode it at the same time out to Grandmother's.
Grandfather McQueen bought a piano for his daughters to learn to play and as there were no trains nor no big trucks it was hauled from Abingdon, Va. on a cart drawn by oxen. (Who has seen oxen?). I think the piano is still in the house. There used to be a hammock hung between two trees and near the hammock were two round spots of lovely fine green grass--much greener than the grass around them. Do you know what we used to do on them----We would stand on our heads on the round spots of grass.
During the war to keep the thieves from stealing the silver knives and forks and the money, the negro servants took them out and buried them and no one ever was able to find them after the war. People have taken up the brick hearths thinking it was buried under the bricks. They have dug around the big tree and in various places around the house but it has never been found. It has been told that ghosts come back and hunt for the treasure at night and when we used to spend the night out there we would think we heard someone digging. It was always best to be sleeping with someone so you could cuddle up in a big feather bed and cover up your head.
There was a "pit" in the side yard. where the flowers were always kept in the winter so they would not freeze and they would be pretty and green when they were brought out in the spring. My Grandmother had a lemon tree which was planted in a wash tub. Every summer it was brought out and set in the yard. It was kept in the big living room in the winter and would have lemons as big as oranges. We made lemonade out of them but they were a little bitter. Back of the kitchen there was an apple house and all through the winter we would have Virginia Beauties and Never Fails.
Every Christmas and Thanksgiving. and many other times we would go out to Grandmother’s for dinner. There were so many grown people that we children would always have to wait until the second table to eat and while the others were eating we would sit on the rug in the parlor and our aunt would tell us stories while the grown folks ate There were always ten or twelve cousins out there listening to the stories.
On the, table in the hall were two dueling. pistols. which Congress man John Rhea carried with him when he traveled between Jonesboro and Washington. He rode a big white horse and made so many trips that after he died they missed the horse and found him on his way to Washington..
I have the grandfather clock that used to set in the hall and the spinning wheel. I also have the compass which was used to first survey Johnson County.
As you all know, there is a creek on the south side of the house and we had great fun wading. there and later pretending to swim---we couldn’t swim. On rare occasions we would get permission and make a. little fire on the little island in the creek and boil eggs.
