going back in time…

Historic Home of Cherokee Leaders Confirmed

We are but Humble Caretakers

For decades, a beautiful old house (now known as Minnies House), in Gordon County was known simply as Daffodil Farm.  Then an owner discovered evidence linking it to leaders of the Cherokee Nation.  

Was Daffodil Farm in fact the birthplace of Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie?

By William E. Bray

During my senior year in high school, I took my girlfriend on a drive to Lily Pond, near Calhoun, to show her the home places of my ancestors. On that beautiful, warm Sunday afternoon in May 1955, we visited the cemetery where my grandfather’s first wife is buried.  Nearby, I had enjoyed childhood fishing trips to Oothcaloga Creek and family picnics.  Then, my girlfriend and I drove by the homes of my grandfather, great-grandfather, and cousin Minnie.

Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, Minnie had planted 25 acres of daffodils and shipped the bulbs and flowers to northern markets from the train station at Lily Pond.  Everybody called Minnie’s place Daffodil Farm and for years we thought that was its main claim to fame.

When we drove by Minnie’s house that day, I was horrified to see that the front porch was falling in. The house was in disrepair, and I feared that it might be gone within a few years. Upon returning home to Dalton, I asked my father what had happened. He didn’t know, but we soon learned that Minnie had passed away and that the farm had been sold at public auction. For the next year, I crusaded to try to get my father to buy back a farm he didn’t want in order to save it from ruin.

Back in the Family

That fall, I enrolled at the University of Georgia and spent countless nights in the basement archives of the University library, diligently researching Daffodil Farm’s history.  I learned that Cousin Minnie had inherited the farm from her father who, in turn, had inherited it from his father. This would have been my father’s great-grandfather who owned the farm by 1840.

My persistent plea became, "You have to buy it – as an obligation to your ancestors." My campaign was successful. On May 17, 1956 – 92 years from the day General Sherman’s troops passed through on their way south – my father, James Wellborn Bray, Sr., relented and acquired Daffodil Farm, becoming the fourth generation in the Bray family to own it.

Having achieved my goal – saving the farm from imminent destruction – I was satisfied that my mission was accomplished. I soon stopped digging through musty old records, but not before discovering that my great-great-grandfather, Reverend Bannister R. Bray, sold his home in Henry County in 1837 and next appeared in the 1840 census in Gordon County, where he owned the property that later became Daffodil Farm.

A Methodist minister, Bray left Gordon County in 1847 and moved to what was to become Atlanta, where he "preached from the stumps of Marthasville" before the first church was built there. William A. Bray, Rev. Bray’s eldest son and Minnie’s father, was the next Bray to own the farm.  That proved to be the extent of my knowledge about the history of the property for many years to come.

Off to Experience the World

My father’s enthusiasm for the farm increased once he took title to the property, and we moved there as soon as he had renovated the main house. Summers and weekends spent on the farm convinced me that its acres of daffodils, century-old oaks surrounding the glen, and antebellum house combined to make it an ideal location for an arts center or arts school. Upon graduating from the University of Georgia, I decided I would go to the cultural centers of the world, get the best education I could, and return, using my education and the farm as resources to try to make this a better world for the next generation.

My educational odyssey lasted 15 years.  Finally, in 1975, I returned with graduate degrees from Yale and Johns Hopkins and independent study at Oxford. After I founded the Georgia Fine Arts Academy, more than 1,000 students studied at the farm during the 1980s and ‘90s, just as I had hoped.

Hinting at History

During my research into the history of Daffodil Farm, I had concluded that Bannister R. Bray built the house when he moved to Gordon County from Henry County in 1837. When historian Jewell B. Reeve visited the farm in 1959, while she was writing Climb the Hills of Gordon, my parents suggested she contact me. I wasted no time in enthusiastically sharing my research, as she records in her book: "I received a special delivery, air mail package from William E. Bray, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He had sent me his entire script with generous permission to use it all.”  Thus my early conclusions about the house’s origins were repeated in at least one history book.

Over the years I continued to tell my story based on the historical research I had done, but when I would tell historians, "My great-great-grandfather built the main house in 1837,” some disagreed and claimed, "It is much older than that. I think it was built in the 1790s.”  Over the ensuing years, knowledgeable historians insisted that the structure dated from the 1790s, some forty years before the first white settlers reached this part of Georgia.

One memorable visit was by a man who lived in Dalton.  He bought and tore down old houses in Tennessee and Kentucky and used the logs to build new houses. When he looked at Daffodil Farm’s chimney, he exclaimed, "This is the oldest chimney I’ve ever seen."

Finally, Dan Biggers, then director of the Oak Hill Museum at Berry College in nearby Rome, visited the house and joined the chorus proclaiming that Daffodil Farm dated from the late 18th century. I decided it was time to take these comments seriously, so the following day I drove to New Echota State Historic Site, the restored capital of the Cherokee Nation just nine miles up the road.

The historic site staff informed me that during the 1830s all Cherokee property had been itemized, described, and valued.  Since Daffodil Farm is located in the area known as the Oothcaloga District, which whites renamed Lily Pond in 1850, I looked through the records for houses that matched the dimensions and description of the house my great-great-grandfather acquired in 1837.  What I found came as quite a surprise.

Humble Caretakers

Three Cherokee houses seemed to fit the details of the Daffodil Farm residence:  those belonging to Archy Rowe, Isabella Hicks, and Stand Watie. None of those names meant anything to me at the time, so I dutifully transcribed notes on each property to scrutinize at home that evening.

Long after darkness settled over Daffodil Farm, I was sitting in my den reading the ancient descriptions of outbuildings, pastures, and other features of these Cherokee estates.  Those of Rowe and Hicks did not seem to fit, but when I got to Stand Watie’s property and read "Yard and spring Lot 2 Acres," I jumped to my feet. It was a perfect account of Daffodil Farm. In the dark, I ran outside the house and walked off two acres (each 210 feet square) encompassing the house, glen, and springs. Could this indeed be the home of Stand Watie?

The next day, I eagerly phoned Dan Biggers to report my discovery. "Dan,” I said, “I believe the house was owned by some Cherokee named Stand Watie." There was a long pause on the other end of the line.  Then Dan said slowly and emphatically, "Bill, your ancestors were but humble caretakers compared to the Cherokees who lived there."

That surprised me since I didn’t know anything about Stand Watie, and it spurred me to further research. I soon learned that Stand Watie’s father, Oo-watie, came to Oothcaloga with his brother The Ridge at exactly the time historians estimated that the house was built.  One historian explained that it would have been standard for Stand’s name to appear on property originally owned by his father.

If so, then Daffodil Farm has a remarkable lineage.  Not only would Stand Watie have been born there, but so would his brother Buck (who later changed his name to Elias Boudinot). These discoveries led me to appreciate all the more the significance of Dan Biggers’ remark.

Suddenly, the pyramid-shaped rock piles on both sides of the front and back entrances to the property had new meaning.  These were grand entrance gates more than 200 years ago. I also discovered that the original driveway curved around behind the place so that visitors would have enjoyed a remarkable view as they approached the house.

The giant boxwoods surrounding the house – some 10 to 15 feet high – which grow at the rate of an inch a year are links to events that took place on the grounds two generations earlier than I previously believed.  Not only were the fireplace stones old, they also matched those at Elias Boudinot’s house at New Echota. Then I scraped off paint in the front room, examined the woodwork, and discovered that it matched the design of the Chief Vann House in Spring Place and that the paint was consistent with colors favored by the Cherokee – red, green, and blue.

It is hard to believe that the existence of Oo-watie’s home remained unknown for more than a century.  It took the good sense and perseverance of Betty Snyder, a director of the Milledgeville-Baldwin Arts Council and a historian in her own right, to first point out to me that the house dated to the 1790s.  She recognized that the fireplace mantels were distinctive, matching only a few others in Georgia, and were built long before the Civil War.

Her insistence, along with input from other historians, including Dan Biggers, started me on my quest.  With the assistance of Jeff Stancil, then the manager at New Echota, I consulted the historic site’s library where I found the real estate description that linked Stand Watie’s property and Daffodil Farm.  Then, upon discovering that the front room was originally painted in colors favored by the Cherokee – similar to those at the Vann House in Spring Place – I decided to seek as much authoritative verification as possible.

So I telephoned Don L. Shadburn, a leading authority on Cherokee history in Georgia.  For nearly two hours, he listened while I related the evidence I had accumulated pointing to Oo-watie as the builder of the house.  Shadburn, the author of Cherokee Planters in Georgia, then stated:  “Bill, with all this evidence you would be derelict not to make this claim.”

A Noble Line

The field just beyond the 15-acre daffodil field may have been the one described in Thurman Wilkins’ book Cherokee Tragedy: "That summer [1825] a national ball-play had been held near the home of Boudinot’s parents in Oothcaloga."[i]I sought more information about this event thinking it might confirm mounting evidence that this was the site and read that Moody Hall, a Moravian missionary, had been extremely upset with Elias Boudinot for participating.  Stickball games, it seems, were riotous events that lasted several days and nights.  The missionaries believed they were sinful and Hall scolded his wayward pupil.

As I continued piece by piece to put together my findings what emerged was this:

In the 1790s, The Ridge moved to Oothcaloga from Pine Log, perhaps to be closer to his political allies James Vann and Charles Hicks. Oothcaloga was described as a "garden spot" where many of the chiefs built homes to be close to the Cherokee capital city, New Echota. The Ridge built his house near Oothcaloga Creek and, shortly thereafter, his brother Oo-watie built a house two miles to the west, just over the rise from the creek. Oo-watie’s residence was obviously modeled after his brother’s and was virtually identical except for The Ridge’s original log rooms.  Oo-Watie’s house was built of cut lumber.

Oo-watie farmed more intensively and developed his property more elaborately than The Ridge, who soon moved to Rome where he built a fine house (today’s Chieftain’s Museum) and operated a ferry on the Oostanaula River.  Oo-watie added the boxwoods, elaborate entrance pyramids of rocks, and the graceful grand entrance drive to the house. The columns on the south façade were made from hand-hewn lumber, and garden walkways led down to several springs which bubbled from the ground in the glen.

Children of Kings

As the story continued to unfold with each historical document unearthed, I began to see the farm as a seat of this royal family of the Cherokee Nation, a virtual wilderness palace of Native American nobility.

The Ridge (He Who Walks on the Mountaintops) and his brother Oo-watie (The Ancient One) traced their lineage in direct descent from King Attakullakulla, the solon of the Cherokees, who with Cherokee leaders visited King George II in England in 1730. Their family tree included virtually every major leader in Cherokee history including Old Hop, Dragging Canoe, Nancy Ward, Doublehead, and Old Tassel, as well as Sequoyah, who achieved fame by inventing the Cherokee syllabary.

Buck Watie was born here in 1802 and Stand Watie in 1806. As boys, they would have enjoyed playing the fields, fishing in the creek, and drinking the cold spring water on a warm day just as I did a century-and-a-half later. As young men, they would have marveled when visiting chiefs and other dignitaries from throughout the Cherokee Nation attended national council meetings at New Echota.

Seeking the best education for their children as future leaders of the nation, The Ridge sent his son John and Oo-watie sent his son Buck to the finest Moravian School in the United States at Cornwall, Connecticut. So impressed were the Moravians with the intelligence of 16-year-old Buck Watie that on his way north he was taken to meet three U.S. presidents – Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, James Madison at Montpelier, and James Monroe at the White House in Washington, D.C..

In New Jersey, Buck Watie met Elias Boudinot, former president of the Continental Congress and president of the American Bible Society, who was so taken with the young Cherokee that he asked Buck to assume his name, which Buck did once he arrived in Cornwall. Later, the Cherokee Elias Boudinot became editor of the national newspaper the Cherokee Phoenix and worked beside Moravian missionary Rev. Samuel A. Worcester to translate Christian hymns into the Cherokee language and to begin translating the Gospel of Matthew.

Cherokee Civil War

A near civil war erupted in the Cherokee Nation when Georgia sought to seize the Cherokees’ land after the discovery of gold in 1829.  A split developed between the John Ross faction, which opposed removal, and the Ridge-Watie faction, which advocated moving west.  Intent on leading the Cherokee people out of harm’s way to a land where they could live unmolested, the Ridge-Watie family departed Georgia in March, 1837 for Oklahoma, where they joined earlier "old settlers" who had preceded them.

Some Cherokees despised the Ridge and Watie families for the part they played in the removal.  After the horrendous Trail of Tears in 1838-39, John Ross’s allies formed assassination teams to murder the Ridge/Watie leaders. A group of twenty-five assassins were assigned to kill John Ridge. He was awakened from sleep at his home on Honey Creek, Oklahoma.  He was dragged from his bed into the yard and stabbed 25 times, once by each assassin.  Then they threw his body as high as possible into the air and, when it hit the ground, each assassin took turns stomping on his corpse.  All the while, Ridge’s wife and children looked on in horror.

John Ridge’s father, Major Ridge, fell victim too.  He was shot five times in the back of his head and body, while riding his horse.

Another group went after Elias Boudinot.  He and his wife were staying with Samuel Worcester while their house was under construction. While at the site of his new home, Boudinot was called aside by assassins disguised as men in need of medical help.  One stabbed Boudinot in the back.  After he fell, another split his skull.  The carpenters came to his assistance, but seeing it was too late, sent word to Worcester. "Worcester called to a Choctaw Indian working nearby, told him to mount bareback Worcester’s own swift horse, Comet…and ride to the store where Stand Watie worked, to warn him of possible danger to his life."[ii] (Trail of Tears by John Ehle, p. 377.)

Stand Watie escaped the assassins. He became a Cherokee ruler in his own right, and much later a general in the Confederate Army, commanding the last organized Confederate force to surrender at the end of the Civil War.  He has been described by some as the "foremost soldier ever produced by the North American Indians."

Living with History

At the height of my research of the Cherokee history, I awoke at the farm one night with the full moon casting rays of light across my bed. I turned and looked at the moon through the open window. I was awed by the sudden realization that in that same room and through that same window others who looked at that same moon included Oo-watie, Buck Watie, Stand Watie, my great-great-grandfather, and my great-grandfather. Countless children would have been born in the room while others were mourned as they lay on their deathbeds.  The sweep of history seemed to march through the room that night and through my mind.

This was the home of the Watie family and many, if not all, of the principal Cherokee rulers during that momentous time in history likely visited here.  A century after they departed for the last time, their presence here had been forgotten and the place was known simply as the Daffodil Farm.  But for the persistence of a few knowledgeable historians, the house’s remarkable Cherokee history might have been lost forever.

Note:  Today, Daffodil Farm is privately owned.

William E. Bray is an educator and writer in Atlanta.

Captions

Stand Watie: A member of the Treaty Party, Stand Watie (1806-1871) escaped death by a stroke of luck.  He was absent from his home the day Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Buck Watie (Elias Boudinot) were assassinated.  As a young man, he attended the Moravian Mission School at Spring Place, Georgia, and later served as a clerk of the Cherokee Supreme Court and Speaker of the Cherokee National Council prior to removal.  During the Civil War, he reached the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate army. (Courtesy Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma Library).

Buck Watie:  Buck Watie (Elias Boudinot) (1802-1839) was the brother of Stand Watie and editor of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper.  His support for the Removal Treaty caused him to be replaced as editor of the paper and, later, to be brutally murdered at his new home in Park Hill, Oklahoma.  (Courtesy Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma Library)

Major Ridge:  Major Ridge was speaker of the lower house in the Cherokee Council.  He was also chief of the Cherokee police, and a close advisor to Chief John Ross.  Once he realized that hope for keeping the Cherokee land in Georgia was futile, he supported the treaty for removal.  His support for this treaty eventually cost him his life.

John Ross:  John Ross (1790-1866), principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until his death, appeared to have much more white blood than he did Cherokee blood, and in fact, he did.  He was an eighth-blood Cherokee.  He also unflinchingly opposed the treaty which ceded Cherokee lands to the whites.  (Courtesy Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma Library)

Oothcaloga Mission:  The Oothcaloga Moravian Mission building disappeared, sadly, years ago.  The date of this photograph of the structure is unknown.