The Birthing Tree

This Old Tree with Doug Still
The Birthing Tree (Transcript)
​Season 1, Episode 11 
Published February 27, 2023

Doug Still: [00:01] 
The Birthing Tree. A huge, gorgeous 350-year-old plus white oak in McMinnville, Tennessee. It's not only a city landmark, it's the pride of all of Tennessee and plays a part in the state's early Pioneer history. It's more than just a big tree. So, how did it get its name and what's its story? In this episode, we visit with Warren County historian, Jimmy Haley, as well as Tom Simpson, who gave its official state historic designation when he was a regional urban forester. We’ll also follow Celia Wilson and her family on the Settler's Trail. Who? You'll find out. Join me to discover The Birthing Tree. I'm Doug Still, and this is This Old Tree.

[This Old Tree theme]

Doug Still: [01:04] 
I'd like to start with two important acknowledgments. The first is that the original inhabitants and stewards of the land where we now find McMinnville, Tennessee, were clans of the Greater Cherokee Nation. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the mass migration of Cherokee to the west, to territory that the government had designated. Although there were many routes, collectively, this was the tragic Trail of Tears, which comes up during today's episode.

The second acknowledgment is that we cannot separate our story from the terrible history of slavery which impacted contemporary events, the Civil War, and a legacy of inequality. I thank my guests for their forthright discussion. And now to our show.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson Story): [02:03] 
Celia Wilson, or Selah as most people called her, was unsure that leaving Rutherfordton, North Carolina, to head west was a good idea. It was summer, it was hot, and she was pregnant with her first child. She'd just married her husband, John Wilson, last year in September of 1844. Her whole family, the Norvells, would remain in Rutherfordton, at least for now, and she'd be leaving them behind. She was just 21 and had never seen the world outside of Rutherford County. But John insisted because they were starting a family. He was 28, but they didn't have land of their own. They needed that if they were going to be farmers and support themselves. She agreed. It seemed the best choice under the circumstances. Besides, lots of people were heading west. The trail had been blazed, so to speak.

They heard there was open land with good soil to be had. They packed up their possessions, and her family helped stock the wagon that John had, and he had horses too. There was nothing but a canvas cover to keep out the rain. At least there were other young families going too, they wouldn't be going it alone. On an agreed-upon day, they left, most likely passed Asheville and then a gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Selah was sad, nervous, and excited all at the same time.

We'll come back to Celia and the Wilsons wagon train in a bit. But jumping into the present, I'd like to introduce Jimmy Haley. He was a teacher of economics and government at Warren County High School in Tennessee, the former mayor of McMinnville, and the official Warren County historian. Jimmy is the right person to talk to about The Birthing Tree and the history of McMinnville.

[music]

Well, Jimmy, welcome to the show.

Jimmy Haley: [03:59] 
Thank you for having me.

Doug Still: [04:00] 
We're here today to talk about The Birthing Tree, which is an icon in McMinnville, Tennessee. And I've seen pictures of it. It's just fantastic. But I have a few questions for you. Are you a native Tennessean?

Jimmy Haley: [04:13] 
I'm a native Tennessean, and I'm a native of Warren County. I was born and raised here, and so I've been here my whole life.

Doug Still: [04:20] 
Native to McMinnville or nearby McMinnville?

Jimmy Haley: [04:22] 
McMinnville. Yes.

Doug Still: [04:24] 
When you were growing up, when did you first become aware of The Birthing Tree and its significance?

Jimmy Haley: [04:30] 
It's on a major highway running through the county, and so anyone and everyone that travels that Highway 70 goes by that tree. So, even as a small child, I understood the significance of the tree because it was so large, and they redirected the highway when they were building it just to avoid cutting the tree because it was already kind of an iconic representation of who we are as Warren County people.

Doug Still: [04:58] 
And when did that happen?

Jimmy Haley: [05:01] 
It was like in the 1950s.

Doug Still: [05:03] 
1950s, it was such an important tree, and they just rerouted the highway around it.

Jimmy Haley: [05:09] 
They moved it, the highway over just to avoid coming any closer to the tree than they had to.

Doug Still: [05:15] 
I was wondering if you could describe The Birthing Tree for our listeners. Where is it situated and what does it look like and what does it feel like to stand underneath it?

Jimmy Haley: [05:26] 
Well, it's not very far from downtown. It's actually across from the birthing unit from our local hospital. Like I said, it's on the Sparta Highway, the Old Kentucky Road, Broadway of America, Highway 70s. It goes by a variety of names, but it's been a major thoroughfare since the early settlers' days. So, it's a majestic tree. It's a white oak. It's almost 90ft tall. The branches are sprawling, and they hover toward the ground. And so, it's kind of gnarled looking. It's so majestic in the width and the girth of the base of the tree that it's almost impossible not to recognize the importance of it.

As a small child, I would ask my father to stop, and I would get out and go under and stand under the tree because you have a special feeling when you're under the tree. It's hard to describe but anybody that's ever been there, you can feel it. It's just an awesome, overwhelming feeling of history and the powers of Mother Nature to create a tree that's that tall and that wide and those sprawling branches that hover toward the ground.

Doug Still: [06:45] 
Everyone in McMinnville knows this tremendous tree, and as I said before, it's caught the attention of tree lovers and experts across the state. Here is how Tom Simpson describes it, the former East Tennessee Regional Urban Forester within the Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry.

Tom Simpson: [07:04] Well, it is an extremely impressive tree. It is a huge white oak tree that's on the entrance to McMinnville from the state right away, the town of McMinnville. You can see this tree from a great distance away as you drive down the highway. I can't even fathom what it looked like when they were doing it on wagons and horseback, but this gigantic tree has a crown spread of 130ft.

Doug Still: [07:31] 
Wow.

Tom Simpson: [07:33] 
Its height is not so impressive. It was only 81ft when we entered it in 2000, it's probably not that much higher now, but the diameter of the tree was in the neighborhood of 7ft. So, it was a very large circumference area tree with a huge canopy that broadened out and covered a large area of surface. So, when you walked under it, you felt like you were in a forest by itself. There was one limb that came off of it that's still there that grew out and angled down toward the ground and then grew back up. Yeah. Just kind of convoluted out. And that one limb is larger than a lot of trees.

Doug Still: [08:16] 
And that limb is still there, or it fell?

Tom Simpson: [08:18] 
That limb is still there to my knowledge, yes.

Doug Still: [08:22] 
Oh, great. Kids play on that and climb on it.

Tom Simpson: [08:25]
Sure. [they laugh]

Doug Still: [08:29]
Is there a fence around it?

Tom Simpson: [08:31] 
No. Not to my knowledge and I haven't seen it in a couple of years. What happened is that the tree was so significant to the community, a developer was going to develop some property nearby and the city became concerned that we might lose the tree just from the standpoint of encroachment of construction. So, they wrangled a deal to purchase the footprint of the tree. So, the tree became actual property of the city of McMinnville, and they erected a plaque.

Doug Still: [09:07] 
And so, it's surrounded by private property?

Tom Simpson: [09:10] 
Yes, it is.

Jimmy Haley: [09:12] 
I used to climb on it. They don't recommend anybody climbing on it now because the branches are somewhat fragile, and they've been cabled up. Dr. Neil Schultz, a local retired orthodontist, fell in love with that tree as a young man himself, growing up here in McMinnville, and coveted the protection of that tree to the point where when a developer bought the property and was going to build a clinic there, we all rallied behind not cutting the tree, which we were afraid was going to happen, just to protect it. Dr. Schultz then spent his own money to help stabilize the tree and cable it and get some professional arborists in to make sure that we were doing everything we could to increase the longevity of the tree since it's 300 years old perhaps, or even older.

Doug Still: [10:03] 
The land underneath the drip line of the tree is now city property and protected. Is that correct?

Jimmy Haley: [10:10] 
It is. It's like a pocket park for the city of McMinnville. We have a sign there saying such and asking people not to climb on the tree and not to do anything destructive. People drive far and wide. I see people there all the time. If I'm able, I will stop and talk a little bit about the tree and find out where they're from. But people from all over the country come on some of their little side trips, they want to come see the tree.

Doug Still: [10:39] 
It's nice to be welcomed by the mayor underneath The Birthing Tree.

Jimmy Haley: [10:42] 
Well, I don't always announce myself as the mayor, so I just kind of go incognito on that one.

Doug Still: [10:48] 
Right.

Jimmy Haley: [10:49] 
I've loved the tree my whole life, and it's just a special place. It was a special place for the early settlers. It was on the old Kentucky Road and so anyone traveling into Warren County passed through a grove of very large oak trees at that time.

Doug Still: [11:07] 
I see. So, there was a grove, there wasn't just the one?

Jimmy Haley: [11:10] 
No, there was a grove of oak trees there. That Old Kentucky Road came right down through the middle of them. It was a natural place, according to legend, for settlers to water their horses or oxen and to gather there under the trees to rest before they came into town. Hence the story and the legend of children being born under the tree for refuge in those wagon trains before they came into town. Hence The Birthing Tree.

Doug Still: [11:41] 
What's the basic story behind The Birthing Tree?

Tom Simpson: [11:44] 
Well, the one story is that many of the old settlement trails in Tennessee, one of them was called the Kentucky Trail, the other one was called the Old Walton Trail, which was in Middle Tennessee. This tree stands in Middle Tennessee. But the confluence of several of those trails came right up under The Birthing Tree. So, as settlers would move down the trail going toward Alabama or coming back from Alabama, going toward Kentucky or Virginia, they knew about this place. They had it as a meeting place for many, many years. Parties would wait for other parties to hook up with them on the trail. As they were waiting, some of the women would deliver babies underneath the trees. Hence the name, Birthing Tree. There are many stories in Middle Tennessee of families, their grandparents, parents who still know are all born under the tree itself.

Doug Still: [12:47] 
So, these were wagon trains, just like in the old movies?

Tom Simpson: [12:50] 
Yes. Of course, horseback and foot traffic as well. One of the other stories was this tree was near the Trail of Tears originally, the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears as they went out to Oklahoma. We've not been able to confirm that exactly, but we know it's in the vicinity of the old Trail of Tears in Middle Tennessee.

Doug Still: [13:20] 
I found a relevant map on the National Park Service website. One spur of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee came directly through McMinnville. 

The trail, the Old Kentucky Trail?

Tom Simpson: [13:33] 
Mm-hmm. Right.

Doug Still: [13:34] 
You said then comes down to Alabama, and then it sort of swings west, of people heading west.

Tom Simpson: [13:41] 
Yes. One of the trails peeled off and went westward. The Old Walton Trail was a connection between East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee that went up through Cookville and areas up into Kentucky. So, like I said, there was a confluence of trails going east and west and north and south and they all met somewhere right at The Birthing Tree.

Doug Still: [14:02] 
So, not all of the Pioneers that might have stayed under the tree were heading west. They might have just been heading south.

Tom Simpson: [14:08] 
Correct.

Doug Still: [14:09] 
And vice versa.

Tom Simpson: [14:10] 
Yes. Vice versa.

Doug Still: [14:12] 
It was sort of like a rest stop.

[laughter]

Tom Simpson: [14:16] 
Well, yeah, one of our modern-day interstate rest stops. But the tree was so large even then in the late 1700s, that the canopy just covered an enormous area, and settlers could rest under there for days. In fact, we've heard stories of a week or so where people would stand under the tree to be shaded from the sun in the summer and perhaps some of the storms that came through there.

Doug Still: [14:43] 
And it just gathered this lore. Right?

Tom Simpson: [14:47] [laughs] Yes.

Doug Still: [14:49] 
After a quick break, we'll hear more from our guests, Tom Simpson and Jimmy Haley, about The Birthing Tree and its part in Tennessee history. You're listening to This Old Tree.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [15:12] 
The wagon train eased out of the Smoky Mountains, moving slowly down the bumpy path into the Cumberland Valley of Eastern Tennessee. It had been over a month and Selah's feet hurt. There may have been wagons, but nobody rode in them unless they wanted to jar their spine and develop a headache. Pregnant or not, she walked most of the way like everyone else. But as the summer was ending, the baby was getting bigger. Another family in the wagon train were the Meltons, and John and Selah got to know Spencer and his wife, Rosanna, very well. They were also from Rutherford County, and they had a son with them, 13-year-old James Melton. I imagine that to him, every day was exciting, running off ahead or exploring the woods nearby with other kids. Perhaps, he helped his father hunt.

The trail in the Flat Valley was a relief after the difficult mountain terrain, and there were towns and settlements along the way to get supplies. When they got near Chattanooga after a few weeks, they were told they needed to head west and climb again and find a past called Hills Trace that led to the Cumberland Plateau of Central Tennessee. There, they would connect with the Kentucky Road, which traversed somewhat in a north-south direction. Many settlers entered Central Tennessee from the north along this well-used road, but the Wilsons approached it from the southern end of the plateau. The Meltons and the Wilsons were heading to Kentucky, where there was good land being offered to settlers, cheap. Selah wondered where she would be when her baby was born.

Who were the Pioneers that were traveling on this road in the wagon trains? We're talking about 1780s, 1790s, and the first few decades of the 1800s. Is that correct? Or was it a longer period of time when the wagon trains came through?

Jimmy Haley: [17:06] 
Well, the earliest settlers were coming through here in the 1780s and 90s. There were very few people living here at that particular time. Many of them were going down on to Nashville and Fort Nashborough. Here in McMinnville, most of the settlers were coming through after 1800. Many of them were headed further west or further south. The territory was wide open for settlement, and so Warren County quickly grew. A lot of people who came through here decided it was a great place to live. They loved the terrain. It was rich soil. We have four rivers that converge here and surrounded by mountains, and the soil was rich enough to support crops and cattle, and pastureland. So, a lot of people decided to stay.

McMinnville was founded in 1810, and so it grew quite rapidly as the county seat. With the courthouse and court proceedings and just the logistics of business, everyone from the county came into town and of course, anybody that lived in the northern part of the county would travel the Kentucky Road into McMinnville on the Sparta Road into downtown.

Doug Still: [18:19] 
You said four rivers converge there?

Jimmy Haley: [18:21] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [18:22] 
But it also seems like there's the Old Kentucky Road but there are many offshoots and directions people were coming and going. Some are going west, some are going south.

Jimmy Haley: [18:32] 
Yes. People traveling from Kentucky down into Tennessee or from Virginia and particularly into Tennessee. Most of the settlers here, a lot of people came from North Carolina and came across the mountains that way. Many of them came from Chattanooga and came across the mountains that way. So, they didn't travel the Old Kentucky Road. They traveled some other roads, Hills Trace, and others.

Tom Simpson: [18:56] 
Yeah, there were trails over what we now term as Rockwood Mountain. There were trails that went through some gaps through there that went over into Middle Tennessee. I don't even know the name of those gaps anymore, but they knew. There was one trail that came through Rockwood in East Tennessee that had a toll road set up by the Cherokees, and you would pay a toll to go westward from there. That trail took you back up over to the plateau, the Cumberland Plateau, and then on beyond into wherever you wanted to go from that point.

Doug Still: [19:34] 
Who were the settlers?

Jimmy Haley: [19:36] 
A lot of them were what we call Scotch Irish. Like I said, a lot of them came from Virginia and North Carolina. Of course, many of them had emigrated from other colonies into those states early on. But the majority of our stock is Virginia and North Carolina settlers. Many of them were second and third, maybe fourth-generation settlers. The land was starting to play out. They were looking for new fortunes. They were looking for new opportunities in the west. Tennessee was western land at that particular time and didn't cross over the Mississippi quite yet. So, a lot of people sought their fortunes here.

Doug Still: [20:20] 
So, they were not fresh off the boat. They were colonists who had been living elsewhere and were moving west. Some of the men were in the Revolutionary War, I believe?

Jimmy Haley: [20:32] 
Yes, they were. Many of them had land grants to settle here. That brought many of them here to this area, either from serving a lot in the Virginia militia or in the North Carolina army as well.

Doug Still: [20:44] 
What was it that they wanted? What were they dreaming about?

Jimmy Haley: [20:48] 
If it was like my family, they were just looking for a better life, a new opportunity, a new start. The frontier offers a lot to new settlers and so you can start a business, you can start a farm, or you can do both, which is what a lot of settlers did. They would oftentimes have businesses in town and then also have farm operations alongside of that. It was never really a log city. It was a very formally laid out town with brick sidewalks and brick buildings and some very sophisticated people, lawyers and doctors settled here early on and a lot of businessmen profited. With the coming of the railroad in the 1850s, it even made it more opportunity for people to come here.

Doug Still: [21:35] 
To the best of your ability, what do you think life was like on one of those wagon trains? What do you think their biggest hardship was?

Jimmy Haley: [21:45] 
Probably food and water. In the early days, most of the Native American challenges, by the early 1800s were over. In the 1780s and 1790s, that was not the case. Native Americans were still fighting for control and possession of this territory and the land. So, there were several little skirmishes in and around McMinnville and of course in Middle Tennessee, in and around Nashville as well during that period. My grandmother came here a little bit later than that. They moved from Alabama actually to Warren County. They came by wagon and oxen and mules and came across through Chattanooga and had to cross on a ferry boat on the Tennessee River. Just like in the western stories, they make a big circle and a big bonfire in the middle. Children would oftentimes change places on the seats of other people's wagons. They sang songs. Most of the time they took enough provisions to feed them. Fresh water was a little bit of an obstacle and of course, catching diseases and getting ill with dysentery. Those are things that were oftentimes crucial. And of course, if a woman was pregnant or you had small children, it was a bumpy ride.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [23:25] 
The Wilsons' wagon train made their way up over Hills Trace and they saw the plateau. They followed a trail down off the path that loosely saddled the Collins River and went by the location of present-day Irving College. Approaching McMinnville from the south, they crossed Barren Fork, a tributary of the Collins. It is not clear if there was a bridge at that time or they had to ford the stream. Most likely it was October or even early November when they entered McMinnville. Selah was getting closer to giving birth, and she knew they needed to stop. Walking was becoming very difficult and so was riding in the wagon or by horse. She began to receive advice from people they met along the trail that McMinnville might be a good place to stop because it was a growing town with storefronts and a doctor.

The forest all around had been cleared by then but there were several big oak trees they could camp under. One of them had a growing legend. If your baby is born beneath it, that was good luck. They found the big tree. You couldn't miss it from a mile away. Its branches stretched out wide and welcoming. There were other people in wagons beneath it, some community. It was as good a place as any. They set up there, and on November 12th, 1845, Selah gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Wilson.

So, McMinnville was the natural place to stop due to restock and resupply. Was there water here?

Jimmy Haley: [25:02] 
Yes, because of the water and like I said, the businesses that were here.

Doug Still: [25:07] 
So, there were businesses? Could you describe that?

Jimmy Haley: [25:10] 
Oh, there were mercantile stores, we had blacksmiths, which were crucial and stuff in early settlement with horses and mules and oxen. We had cabinet makers, we had people doing construction for homes. We had builders, and attorneys. There was very little that Warren County didn't have early on by 1840 or 1850. By the time the railroad came, we were a fairly sophisticated little town.

Doug Still: [25:39] 
What about around 1800? Was there like a main street with buildings?

Jimmy Haley: [25:43] 
No. McMinnville wasn't founded till 1810 and so the county was founded in 1807. We still had quite a bit of settlers here but McMinnville had not been laid out or was not the county seat at that particular time.

Doug Still: [25:58] 
Now, you said that your ancestors were one of those Pioneers, one of the settlers?

Jimmy Haley: [26:04] 
They were. My early settlers came from Virginia, North Carolina, on both sides of my family and they were here very early. On the Martin side, they were here before 1800 settling here in White County and in Van Buren County. Those are two nearby counties.

Doug Still: [26:25] 
What were their names?

Jimmy Haley: [26:26] 
They were Martins, the last name was Martin. And then, the Haleys came later. They originally settled in Cannon County and then moved to Warren County in the 1820s from nearby. Cannon County at that time was part of Warren County. It didn't become Cannon County till later, so it was all Warren County, but they moved closer in.

Doug Still: [26:48] 
Do you have any items from the Martins when they were here? Like letters or anything?

Jimmy Haley: [26:53] 
I have quite a few-- a whole box of letters, and my family, they also owned, enslaved people. So, I have those papers as well that I've hung on to and plan to give to the state archives so they can be preserved as this is a part of history. I have a spinning wheel from my father's side that dates back to about 1810, 1820. It was my great, great, grandmother's that she spun on. So, I still have that.

Doug Still: [27:24] 
Any old photos that might have the tree in it?

Jimmy Haley: [27:28] 
There are very few photographs that show that tree, and I'm not really sure exactly why. We've tried to identify some, and they just don't exist. Pictures that were taken of the house don't include the tree. They show the house and the trees around the house.

Doug Still: [27:44] 
Just back to the Martins, how many generations back is that?

Jimmy Haley: [27:49] 
Uh, six, I think.

Doug Still: [27:51] 
Wow.

Tom Simpson: [27:53] 
There's local lore that we really didn't even know about. If you live in East Tennessee, you didn't know, you didn't hear about it. It's not published on TV shows or whatever.

Doug Still: [28:03] 
Now, you're in Knoxville, right?

Tom Simpson: [28:04] 
I'm in Knoxville. Right.

Doug Still: [28:05] 
So, that's over the mountains.

Tom Simpson: [28:07] 
Over the mountains, yes.

Doug Still: [28:09] 
Right. It feels very like a different place.

Tom Simpson: [28:14] 
Sure. We had not heard about The Birthing Tree until it was actually nominated. But then, once we got digging into the history behind it, you could pick out many, many, stories and many documentations on this particular tree.

Doug Still: [28:30] 
Do you have any specific stories of families that might have been camped underneath the tree or someone who was born under the tree?

Tom Simpson: [28:38] 
No, I don't particularly have those stories. We've heard of some, and there were some articles published locally in McMinnville for several years over some of those stories. I just don't have access to those right now.

Doug Still: [28:54] 
Jimmy Haley didn't actually know anyone either who claims their ancestor was born under The Birthing Tree. I spoke to several other people in McMinnville, and finding someone with a real story was proving difficult. It seemed that while this was a legend that many people knew about, it may be more legend than fact. Then, I came across an article that mentioned Hobart Massey, a former Warren County historian and a local character who passed away in 1982.

This was probably before your time, but did you have a chance to know Hobart Massey?

Jimmy Haley: [29:29] 
I did know Mr. Hobart Massey. I did quite well. He was big into agriculture extension here and helped with the fair. He was an amazing gentleman who knew history and loved to tell stories and was legendary, really.

Doug Still: [29:48] 
He was an historian?

Jimmy Haley: [29:49] 
He was the county historian, but he called himself a historian. He loved stories. He loved repeating them. He was an amazing, legendary person who loved to spin a good tale and tell a good story.

Doug Still: [30:05] 
My understanding is it might have been him that coined the term, The Birthing Tree.

Jimmy Haley: [30:09] 
That has been said before. When I was a little kid, I didn't call it The Birthing Tree. We just called it the big tree. The big oak tree.

Doug Still: [30:22] 
Right.

Jimmy Haley: [30:23] 
And so then, people started calling it The Birthing Tree for the last 50, 60 years, that's all anyone-- that's the only name that people place upon it now.

Doug Still: [30:33] 
He apparently wrote a few articles in the local paper.

Jimmy Haley: [30:37] 
He wrote several articles, and a lot of those have become-- they've repeated a lot of legends. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to separate legend and lore from fact. There's very little factual information or written information on that tree, which is amazing. So, until it was nominated as a landmark tree by a former urban forester for city member, Nick Kuhn, there was very little research that had been done on it. So, when they started digging, there were more stories and legend than there was actual factual information on it. In fact, some of those stories have been told many times now that people-- [crosstalk]

Doug Still: [31:26] 
They've become fact.

Jimmy Haley: [31:28] 
They'd become fact.

Doug Still: [31:29] 
What was the name of the paper that Hobart Massey would have written in?

Jimmy Haley: [31:33] 
The Southern Standard. Southern Standard has been around since 1870s. So, it's a landmark newspaper.

Doug Still: [31:40] 
Where would I go to find them? Historical Society?

Jimmy Haley: [31:45] 
The library. The Magness Library Downtown has the genealogy room.

Doug Still: [31:50] 
Magness Library?

Jimmy Haley: [31:51] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [31:52] 
Later, after the interview, I called the Magness Library and spoke to Cheryl Watson-Mingle, the genealogist there. She laughed when I asked her if she had information about The Birthing Tree because Jimmy had already called her about it. She was on it. She had found a typewritten transcript for an article written by Hobart Massey in the Warren County News back in 1980 called The Birthing Tree. She emailed it to me. Finally, I found what I was looking for.

It tells the story of Hobart Massey attending a three-day church meeting up in Madisonville, Kentucky, about a three-hour drive north from McMinnville. During that meeting, he met an elderly woman, Mrs. John S. Gibson, and got to know her a bit. Mrs. Gibson knew McMinnville. She said her grandmother was born under a large tree there. Hobart was already familiar with the legend, and he was off and running.

He told her all about the old white oak tree. Mrs. Gibson's maiden name was Sylvester Moseley, but she was known as Vessie to people that knew her. She was the daughter of Sylvester-- yes, she was given her father's name -  and Florence Moseley, known as “Maw Mosley.” This led to finding further information on Ancestry.com. Hey, there's nothing like doing a little research from a home computer. Now, Maw Moseley was the daughter of one James Melton, the 13-year-old boy we met earlier in our story, and you guessed it, Elizabeth Wilson.

[Music]

You're listening to This Old Tree. After another short break, we'll learn about the legacy of McMinnville, Tennessee's historic white oak, The Birthing Tree.

You ran the Heritage Tree Program, or what was the name of that program?

Tom Simpson: [33:48] 
At the time, it was called the Landmark and Historic Tree Program or Register.

Doug Still: [33:53] 
What's it called now?

Tom Simpson: [33:54] 
Well, it's called the Landmark, Historic, and Heritage Tree because in 2009, we added the category of “heritage.”

Doug Still: [34:03] 
How did the tree first come to your attention?

Tom Simpson: [34:05] 
Yeah, The Birthing Tree was nominated by Nick Kuhn, who was the city forester in McMinnville. In 2000, he nominated it to the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council's Landmark and Historic Tree Registry. We have a committee that goes through the process of vetting the nominations, and so they quickly approved that one. That was where we were first exposed to that tree, was in 2000.

Doug Still: [34:33] 
There are three different categories, right?

Tom Simpson: [34:35] 
Sure. Yeah. There was Landmark and Historic. These are living trees. Landmark trees are trees that are familiar to the community. They're commonly recognized by the community, and they're confirmed to be significant to the community's heritage. We can use that term interspersedly. And then, the historic trees are trees, they're living trees that have witnessed some historic event either regionally, statewide, nationwide, or in the community itself.

Doug Still: [35:08] 
I see. Then, you have a third category, which is “heritage trees.”

Tom Simpson: [35:12] 
Right. Well, the program started in 1998, but Gene Hyde, who was president of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council at the time, Nick Kuhn was a member of the council. So, in 2009, we had looked at nine years of the program and realized that some of the trees that we were entering into that registry had a lifespan that might not last forever. Most trees don't live forever. So, the stories and the historical significance of the trees would be lost once those trees passed away because the landmark and historic categories only have living trees.

Doug Still: [35:53] 
I see. So, heritage trees are trees of the past.

Tom Simpson: [35:56] 
Yes. We also want to be able to pick up trees that have passed away but were famous trees, except for the fact that they didn't survive up until the 1998 creation of the program.

Doug Still: [36:12] 
When a tree is recognized, what happens? Is there an award ceremony?

Tom Simpson: [36:18] 
There is an award ceremony, yeah. At the annual Tennessee Urban Forestry Council Meeting, we recognize the nominators or the owners of the trees. We have a plaque made, an inside plaque, a walnut plaque made for the one who nominated it or at least owns the tree. Then, we place the tree with its story, a picture of the tree in the story onto our website.

Doug Still: [36:46] 
That's great. So, if anyone wants to look these up, they can go to the website for the Tennessee Urban Community Forestry Council?

Tom Simpson: [36:53] 
tufc.com will take you to the website, and then it's listed under Programs then.

Doug Still: [37:02] 
Now, this all got compiled into a book, right?

Tom Simpson: [37:04] 
Yes. The book was called Trees of Tennessee. The council published this book and it's lacking of so many trees that we've put on the registry since then but it's a great coffee table hardcover book.

Doug Still: [37:21] 
It looks fantastic. I haven't held a copy of it in my hands, but it looks wonderful. Now, was The Birthing Tree one of the first trees designated in your program?

Tom Simpson: [37:32] 
It was not the first, but it was one of the first trees. It was one of the first trees. It is significant though because its size has been shown on many, many pictures that show the famous trees. It is a landmark tree in itself just from our program.

Doug Still: [37:51] 
What are a few other trees that have been recognized?

Tom Simpson: [37:55] 
Oh, my goodness. We could go on for a long time on that. To me, the “Moon Trees” are some of the most famous trees. Those are the trees as seeds that were on the Apollo 14 moon flight. Stuart Roosa, who had been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service in his past life, then he became an astronaut, and Apollo 14 was allowed-- the astronauts were allowed to take on some private individual objects. If you remember, Alan Shepard took golf clubs and had the longest golf drive on the moon.

But Stuart Roosa was a command module pilot and circled the moon while they were down on playing on the surface. After they returned, he let the US Forest Service take those into two laboratories and raise them into seedlings. In 1972, in our Bicentennial for our state, the US Forest Service donated four of those trees to our state that had been around the moon, and we planted those four trees, and it was a treasure hunt to find all four of those trees. But we did find all four of them, two sycamores and two loblolly pines.

There are other trees that are fascinating. There's a tree very close to The Birthing Tree in West Tennessee that is the Cherokee Oak. It was named because a woman that was on the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee lady, as the wagon broke down, she escaped and hid out in a cave near the tree. Later on, she married a white man in Middle Tennessee and formed many of the-- the union formed many of the citizens of Middle Tennessee from that family. That tree was also famous because the Cherokee Oak was the scene of a resting place for one of the last US Postal horseback riders who had a 26-mile route, and he would stop and rest his horse under that tree for many, many years until he retired.

Doug Still: [40:14] 
What's the Daniel Boone Tree? 

Tom Simpson: [40:16] 
The Daniel Boone Tree. Originally, 'D. Boon killed a bar', that's the famous one that in history books have. That was at Jonesboro, and it was on a beech tree that he carved, and it has since fell back in the storms.

Doug Still: [40:32] 
I'm sorry. He carved into the bark of a beech tree, what did he carve?

Tom Simpson: [40:38] 
'D. Boon killed a bar.'

Doug Still: [40:40] 
[chuckles] I see. You must have a picture of that.

Tom Simpson: [40:44] 
Well, we do.

Doug Still: [40:45] 
It's remarkable to me that those carvings would last that long.

Tom Simpson: [40:51] 
Well, sure.

Doug Still: [40:52] 
The bark didn't grow over them.

Tom Simpson: [40:55] 
No, the bark won't. It sometimes will be hard to read, but the bark won't cover all the way over the carvings themselves.

Doug Still: [41:02] 
More about that program. Why do you think that program is so important?

Tom Simpson: [41:06] 
Well, it shows a connection of what trees do for mankind and the connection that we have to trees. Those trees that live long enough and are significant enough to stand there, are living stories by themselves of the history of mankind around it, but not only the trees, but then they'll discover the history behind the trees.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [41:39] 
Back to the story of the Wilsons. We don't know how long they stayed in McMinnville after the birth of Elizabeth under the tree, but it may actually have been for a few years. Many people did settle in the McMinnville area. It was a promising place to be. However, the family shows up in the 1850 census, John, Celia, Elizabeth, and a new brother John had moved to East Tennessee, to McMinn County, not to be confused with McMinnville in Central Tennessee. Selah's extended family, most of the Norvell clan are shown to be living in McMinn County as well. So, they had moved from North Carolina. John and Selah met them there and lived a number of years. The Meltons, on the other hand, the family that had been traveling with them, kept on to Kentucky, and the 1850 census shows them living as farmers in Henderson County.

The 1860 census shows John, Celia, and the Wilson family in Ozark, Missouri. But then, other records show that they moved to Central Kentucky in the mid-1860s. The beginning and end of the civil war might have had something to do with these movements. Obviously, the Wilsons and Meltons met up again because James and Elizabeth were married on January 1, 1867, in Henderson County, Kentucky. They ended up having eight children together, six of whom survived childbirth. The Birthing Tree brought them pretty good luck after all.

Years later, after Hobart Massey met Vessie Gibson in Madisonville, he invited her back to McMinnville to see The Birthing Tree. Before she arrived, he painted a picture of it in oil and presented it to her underneath the spreading, marvelous oak tree her grandmother was born under.

[music]

Doug Still: [43:37] 
What makes The Birthing Tree so special, and why is it important to you?

Jimmy Haley: [43:42] 
I think part of the reason it's so special is because it survived. It survived the urbanization and development all around there. There's hospitals, there's hotels, there's clinics all around that area. The State Area Technology School is there. Motlow campus is there. There's several factories in and around. So, within just a quarter mile, there's a lot of development and there's a lot of asphalt, and there's a lot of pavement, and a four-lane highway running within just a few feet of the tree. So, just that it survived when the all the other trees around it have gone, to me, makes it a little special. It does.

Doug Still: [44:27] 
And six generations of your family have stood underneath that tree?

Jimmy Haley: [44:32] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [44:33] 
Most likely.

Jimmy Haley: [44:34] 
Most likely.

Tom Simpson: [44:36] 
Well, it's just the history of these trees is just fascinating to me, I guess.

Doug Still: [44:41] 
Yeah.

Tom Simpson: [44:42] 
Yeah, I love trees because I went to college and learned about forestry, and I've spent my life in forestry, but my second love was history. And to combine those two--

Doug Still: [44:55] 
Yeah, that's exactly why I do this.

Tom Simpson: [44:58] 
Yeah. [laughs]

Doug Still: [45:00] 
Just the combination - it's a living link to the past…

Tom Simpson: [45:04] 
It is indeed. Yes, sir.

Doug Still: [45:05] and historical events. I think that has a lot of inspiration for people.

Jimmy Haley: [45:11] 
The majesty of the tree and how it just hugs the ground, and you can walk in and amongst those gnarled limbs that are curled down toward the ground, you just feel almost encapsulated. It's almost like a cocoon, and you're just wrapped in a part of history, and it makes a very special feeling inside of you. And other people feel it too. When we did our Bicentennial for the county in 2007, The Birthing Tree was our symbol. We have a monument on Court Square that embellishes the story of really The Birthing Tree. Our phrase was, "Our roots run deep." So, not only do the roots of that oak tree run deep, but the roots of Warren County run similarly, in many cases, side by side through the generations.

Doug Still: [46:05] 
Well, I want to thank you for talking with me today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for sharing all of that history.

Jimmy Haley: [46:12] 
Thank you for wanting to share our history. We're very proud of it. Like I said our roots do run deep, and The Birthing tree is symbolic.

Doug Still: [46:22] 
And that's what The Birthing Tree is all about. I want to thank Jimmy Haley, the historian of Warren County, and Tom Simpson, the retired urban forester of Eastern Tennessee, for spending time with me to tell its story and for all of the contributions they made behind the scenes. What fantastic guests.

In preparing this episode, it was not lost on me that there is some tension in telling this story that explores and celebrates the act of giving birth to wanted children under this tree in Tennessee. At the same time, a debate is going on in that state as well as nationally, about women's rights to manage their own pregnancies. I support these rights. I think it only right to acknowledge this tension and allow you, the listener, to wrestle with it as you see fit.

And I have some other news. I've had the pleasure to connect with Elizabeth Wilson Melton's great, great, granddaughter, Elizabeth Benton, who was named after her. She's a hoot and a super nice person. She provided some of the top-notch genealogy I found that helped explain some of the family ties and stories. She also has photos of Elizabeth and James, which I have permission to share on Facebook and Instagram. And remember that oil painting that Hobart Massey gave to Vessie under The Birthing Tree? She tracked it down with some phone calls. Her cousin, Dana, had it. They sent a picture of that too. Thank you very much, Elizabeth and Dana.

[music]

Doug Still: [48:09] And thank you, tree lovers, for joining me again today. Please share the show far and wide and check out the revamped website at thisoldtree.show. All the episodes are there with show notes and transcripts. There's a way to donate through Patreon, and you can even buy a T-shirt. I'm Doug Still, and I'll see you next time with This Old Tree.



[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]
The Birthing Tree
Season 1, Episode 11 (Feb 27, 2023)
Transcript


Doug Still: [00:01] 
The Birthing Tree. A huge, gorgeous 350-year-old plus white oak in McMinnville, Tennessee. It's not only a city landmark, it's the pride of all of Tennessee and plays a part in the state's early Pioneer history. It's more than just a big tree. So, how did it get its name and what's its story? In this episode, we visit with Warren County historian, Jimmy Haley, as well as Tom Simpson, who gave its official state historic designation when he was a regional urban forester. We’ll also follow Celia Wilson and her family on the Settler's Trail. Who? You'll find out. Join me to discover The Birthing Tree. I'm Doug Still, and this is This Old Tree.


[This Old Tree theme]


Doug Still: [01:04] 
I'd like to start with two important acknowledgments. The first is that the original inhabitants and stewards of the land where we now find McMinnville, Tennessee, were clans of the Greater Cherokee Nation. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the mass migration of Cherokee to the west, to territory that the government had designated. Although there were many routes, collectively, this was the tragic Trail of Tears, which comes up during today's episode.


The second acknowledgment is that we cannot separate our story from the terrible history of slavery which impacted contemporary events, the Civil War, and a legacy of inequality. I thank my guests for their forthright discussion. And now to our show.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson Story): [02:03] 
Celia Wilson, or Selah as most people called her, was unsure that leaving Rutherfordton, North Carolina, to head west was a good idea. It was summer, it was hot, and she was pregnant with her first child. She'd just married her husband, John Wilson, last year in September of 1844. Her whole family, the Norvells, would remain in Rutherfordton, at least for now, and she'd be leaving them behind. She was just 21 and had never seen the world outside of Rutherford County. But John insisted because they were starting a family. He was 28, but they didn't have land of their own. They needed that if they were going to be farmers and support themselves. She agreed. It seemed the best choice under the circumstances. Besides, lots of people were heading west. The trail had been blazed, so to speak.


They heard there was open land with good soil to be had. They packed up their possessions, and her family helped stock the wagon that John had, and he had horses too. There was nothing but a canvas cover to keep out the rain. At least there were other young families going too, they wouldn't be going it alone. On an agreed-upon day, they left, most likely passed Asheville and then a gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Selah was sad, nervous, and excited all at the same time.


We'll come back to Celia and the Wilsons wagon train in a bit. But jumping into the present, I'd like to introduce Jimmy Haley. He was a teacher of economics and government at Warren County High School in Tennessee, the former mayor of McMinnville, and the official Warren County historian. Jimmy is the right person to talk to about The Birthing Tree and the history of McMinnville.


[music]


Well, Jimmy, welcome to the show.


Jimmy Haley: [03:59] 
Thank you for having me.


Doug Still: [04:00] 
We're here today to talk about The Birthing Tree, which is an icon in McMinnville, Tennessee. And I've seen pictures of it. It's just fantastic. But I have a few questions for you. Are you a native Tennessean?


Jimmy Haley: [04:13] 
I'm a native Tennessean, and I'm a native of Warren County. I was born and raised here, and so I've been here my whole life.


Doug Still: [04:20] 
Native to McMinnville or nearby McMinnville?


Jimmy Haley: [04:22] 
McMinnville. Yes.


Doug Still: [04:24] 
When you were growing up, when did you first become aware of The Birthing Tree and its significance?


Jimmy Haley: [04:30] 
It's on a major highway running through the county, and so anyone and everyone that travels that Highway 70 goes by that tree. So, even as a small child, I understood the significance of the tree because it was so large, and they redirected the highway when they were building it just to avoid cutting the tree because it was already kind of an iconic representation of who we are as Warren County people.


Doug Still: [04:58] 
And when did that happen?


Jimmy Haley: [05:01] 
It was like in the 1950s.


Doug Still: [05:03] 
1950s, it was such an important tree, and they just rerouted the highway around it.


Jimmy Haley: [05:09] 
They moved it, the highway over just to avoid coming any closer to the tree than they had to.


Doug Still: [05:15] 
I was wondering if you could describe The Birthing Tree for our listeners. Where is it situated and what does it look like and what does it feel like to stand underneath it?


Jimmy Haley: [05:26] 
Well, it's not very far from downtown. It's actually across from the birthing unit from our local hospital. Like I said, it's on the Sparta Highway, the Old Kentucky Road, Broadway of America, Highway 70s. It goes by a variety of names, but it's been a major thoroughfare since the early settlers' days. So, it's a majestic tree. It's a white oak. It's almost 90ft tall. The branches are sprawling, and they hover toward the ground. And so, it's kind of gnarled looking. It's so majestic in the width and the girth of the base of the tree that it's almost impossible not to recognize the importance of it.


As a small child, I would ask my father to stop, and I would get out and go under and stand under the tree because you have a special feeling when you're under the tree. It's hard to describe but anybody that's ever been there, you can feel it. It's just an awesome, overwhelming feeling of history and the powers of Mother Nature to create a tree that's that tall and that wide and those sprawling branches that hover toward the ground.


Doug Still: [06:45] 
Everyone in McMinnville knows this tremendous tree, and as I said before, it's caught the attention of tree lovers and experts across the state. Here is how Tom Simpson describes it, the former East Tennessee Regional Urban Forester within the Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry.


Tom Simpson: [07:04] Well, it is an extremely impressive tree. It is a huge white oak tree that's on the entrance to McMinnville from the state right away, the town of McMinnville. You can see this tree from a great distance away as you drive down the highway. I can't even fathom what it looked like when they were doing it on wagons and horseback, but this gigantic tree has a crown spread of 130ft.


Doug Still: [07:31] 
Wow.


Tom Simpson: [07:33] 
Its height is not so impressive. It was only 81ft when we entered it in 2000, it's probably not that much higher now, but the diameter of the tree was in the neighborhood of 7ft. So, it was a very large circumference area tree with a huge canopy that broadened out and covered a large area of surface. So, when you walked under it, you felt like you were in a forest by itself. There was one limb that came off of it that's still there that grew out and angled down toward the ground and then grew back up. Yeah. Just kind of convoluted out. And that one limb is larger than a lot of trees.


Doug Still: [08:16] 
And that limb is still there, or it fell?


Tom Simpson: [08:18] 
That limb is still there to my knowledge, yes.


Doug Still: [08:22] 
Oh, great. Kids play on that and climb on it.


Tom Simpson: [08:25] Sure. [they laugh]


Doug Still: [08:29] Is there a fence around it?


Tom Simpson: [08:31] 
No. Not to my knowledge and I haven't seen it in a couple of years. What happened is that the tree was so significant to the community, a developer was going to develop some property nearby and the city became concerned that we might lose the tree just from the standpoint of encroachment of construction. So, they wrangled a deal to purchase the footprint of the tree. So, the tree became actual property of the city of McMinnville, and they erected a plaque.


Doug Still: [09:07] 
And so, it's surrounded by private property?


Tom Simpson: [09:10] 
Yes, it is.


Jimmy Haley: [09:12] 
I used to climb on it. They don't recommend anybody climbing on it now because the branches are somewhat fragile, and they've been cabled up. Dr. Neil Schultz, a local retired orthodontist, fell in love with that tree as a young man himself, growing up here in McMinnville, and coveted the protection of that tree to the point where when a developer bought the property and was going to build a clinic there, we all rallied behind not cutting the tree, which we were afraid was going to happen, just to protect it. Dr. Schultz then spent his own money to help stabilize the tree and cable it and get some professional arborists in to make sure that we were doing everything we could to increase the longevity of the tree since it's 300 years old perhaps, or even older.


Doug Still: [10:03] 
The land underneath the drip line of the tree is now city property and protected. Is that correct?


Jimmy Haley: [10:10] 
It is. It's like a pocket park for the city of McMinnville. We have a sign there saying such and asking people not to climb on the tree and not to do anything destructive. People drive far and wide. I see people there all the time. If I'm able, I will stop and talk a little bit about the tree and find out where they're from. But people from all over the country come on some of their little side trips, they want to come see the tree.


Doug Still: [10:39] 
It's nice to be welcomed by the mayor underneath The Birthing Tree.


Jimmy Haley: [10:42] 
Well, I don't always announce myself as the mayor, so I just kind of go incognito on that one.


Doug Still: [10:48] 
Right.


Jimmy Haley: [10:49] 
I've loved the tree my whole life, and it's just a special place. It was a special place for the early settlers. It was on the old Kentucky Road and so anyone traveling into Warren County passed through a grove of very large oak trees at that time.


Doug Still: [11:07] 
I see. So, there was a grove, there wasn't just the one?


Jimmy Haley: [11:10] 
No, there was a grove of oak trees there. That Old Kentucky Road came right down through the middle of them. It was a natural place, according to legend, for settlers to water their horses or oxen and to gather there under the trees to rest before they came into town. Hence the story and the legend of children being born under the tree for refuge in those wagon trains before they came into town. Hence The Birthing Tree.


Doug Still: [11:41] 
What's the basic story behind The Birthing Tree?


Tom Simpson: [11:44] 
Well, the one story is that many of the old settlement trails in Tennessee, one of them was called the Kentucky Trail, the other one was called the Old Walton Trail, which was in Middle Tennessee. This tree stands in Middle Tennessee. But the confluence of several of those trails came right up under The Birthing Tree. So, as settlers would move down the trail going toward Alabama or coming back from Alabama, going toward Kentucky or Virginia, they knew about this place. They had it as a meeting place for many, many years. Parties would wait for other parties to hook up with them on the trail. As they were waiting, some of the women would deliver babies underneath the trees. Hence the name, Birthing Tree. There are many stories in Middle Tennessee of families, their grandparents, parents who still know are all born under the tree itself.


Doug Still: [12:47] 
So, these were wagon trains, just like in the old movies?


Tom Simpson: [12:50] 
Yes. Of course, horseback and foot traffic as well. One of the other stories was this tree was near the Trail of Tears originally, the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears as they went out to Oklahoma. We've not been able to confirm that exactly, but we know it's in the vicinity of the old Trail of Tears in Middle Tennessee.


Doug Still: [13:20] 
I found a relevant map on the National Park Service website. One spur of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee came directly through McMinnville. 


The trail, the Old Kentucky Trail?


Tom Simpson: [13:33] 
Mm-hmm. Right.


Doug Still: [13:34] 
You said then comes down to Alabama, and then it sort of swings west, of people heading west.


Tom Simpson: [13:41] 
Yes. One of the trails peeled off and went westward. The Old Walton Trail was a connection between East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee that went up through Cookville and areas up into Kentucky. So, like I said, there was a confluence of trails going east and west and north and south and they all met somewhere right at The Birthing Tree.


Doug Still: [14:02] 
So, not all of the Pioneers that might have stayed under the tree were heading west. They might have just been heading south.


Tom Simpson: [14:08] 
Correct.


Doug Still: [14:09] 
And vice versa.


Tom Simpson: [14:10] 
Yes. Vice versa.


Doug Still: [14:12] 
It was sort of like a rest stop.


[laughter]


Tom Simpson: [14:16] 
Well, yeah, one of our modern-day interstate rest stops. But the tree was so large even then in the late 1700s, that the canopy just covered an enormous area, and settlers could rest under there for days. In fact, we've heard stories of a week or so where people would stand under the tree to be shaded from the sun in the summer and perhaps some of the storms that came through there.


Doug Still: [14:43] 
And it just gathered this lore. Right?


Tom Simpson: [14:47] [laughs] Yes.


Doug Still: [14:49] 
After a quick break, we'll hear more from our guests, Tom Simpson and Jimmy Haley, about The Birthing Tree and its part in Tennessee history. You're listening to This Old Tree.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [15:12] 
The wagon train eased out of the Smoky Mountains, moving slowly down the bumpy path into the Cumberland Valley of Eastern Tennessee. It had been over a month and Selah's feet hurt. There may have been wagons, but nobody rode in them unless they wanted to jar their spine and develop a headache. Pregnant or not, she walked most of the way like everyone else. But as the summer was ending, the baby was getting bigger. Another family in the wagon train were the Meltons, and John and Selah got to know Spencer and his wife, Rosanna, very well. They were also from Rutherford County, and they had a son with them, 13-year-old James Melton. I imagine that to him, every day was exciting, running off ahead or exploring the woods nearby with other kids. Perhaps, he helped his father hunt.


The trail in the Flat Valley was a relief after the difficult mountain terrain, and there were towns and settlements along the way to get supplies. When they got near Chattanooga after a few weeks, they were told they needed to head west and climb again and find a past called Hills Trace that led to the Cumberland Plateau of Central Tennessee. There, they would connect with the Kentucky Road, which traversed somewhat in a north-south direction. Many settlers entered Central Tennessee from the north along this well-used road, but the Wilsons approached it from the southern end of the plateau. The Meltons and the Wilsons were heading to Kentucky, where there was good land being offered to settlers, cheap. Selah wondered where she would be when her baby was born.


Who were the Pioneers that were traveling on this road in the wagon trains? We're talking about 1780s, 1790s, and the first few decades of the 1800s. Is that correct? Or was it a longer period of time when the wagon trains came through?


Jimmy Haley: [17:06] 
Well, the earliest settlers were coming through here in the 1780s and 90s. There were very few people living here at that particular time. Many of them were going down on to Nashville and Fort Nashborough. Here in McMinnville, most of the settlers were coming through after 1800. Many of them were headed further west or further south. The territory was wide open for settlement, and so Warren County quickly grew. A lot of people who came through here decided it was a great place to live. They loved the terrain. It was rich soil. We have four rivers that converge here and surrounded by mountains, and the soil was rich enough to support crops and cattle, and pastureland. So, a lot of people decided to stay.


McMinnville was founded in 1810, and so it grew quite rapidly as the county seat. With the courthouse and court proceedings and just the logistics of business, everyone from the county came into town and of course, anybody that lived in the northern part of the county would travel the Kentucky Road into McMinnville on the Sparta Road into downtown.


Doug Still: [18:19] 
You said four rivers converge there?


Jimmy Haley: [18:21] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [18:22] 
But it also seems like there's the Old Kentucky Road but there are many offshoots and directions people were coming and going. Some are going west, some are going south.


Jimmy Haley: [18:32] 
Yes. People traveling from Kentucky down into Tennessee or from Virginia and particularly into Tennessee. Most of the settlers here, a lot of people came from North Carolina and came across the mountains that way. Many of them came from Chattanooga and came across the mountains that way. So, they didn't travel the Old Kentucky Road. They traveled some other roads, Hills Trace, and others.


Tom Simpson: [18:56] 
Yeah, there were trails over what we now term as Rockwood Mountain. There were trails that went through some gaps through there that went over into Middle Tennessee. I don't even know the name of those gaps anymore, but they knew. There was one trail that came through Rockwood in East Tennessee that had a toll road set up by the Cherokees, and you would pay a toll to go westward from there. That trail took you back up over to the plateau, the Cumberland Plateau, and then on beyond into wherever you wanted to go from that point.


Doug Still: [19:34] 
Who were the settlers?


Jimmy Haley: [19:36] 
A lot of them were what we call Scotch Irish. Like I said, a lot of them came from Virginia and North Carolina. Of course, many of them had emigrated from other colonies into those states early on. But the majority of our stock is Virginia and North Carolina settlers. Many of them were second and third, maybe fourth-generation settlers. The land was starting to play out. They were looking for new fortunes. They were looking for new opportunities in the west. Tennessee was western land at that particular time and didn't cross over the Mississippi quite yet. So, a lot of people sought their fortunes here.


Doug Still: [20:20] 
So, they were not fresh off the boat. They were colonists who had been living elsewhere and were moving west. Some of the men were in the Revolutionary War, I believe?


Jimmy Haley: [20:32] 
Yes, they were. Many of them had land grants to settle here. That brought many of them here to this area, either from serving a lot in the Virginia militia or in the North Carolina army as well.


Doug Still: [20:44] 
What was it that they wanted? What were they dreaming about?


Jimmy Haley: [20:48] 
If it was like my family, they were just looking for a better life, a new opportunity, a new start. The frontier offers a lot to new settlers and so you can start a business, you can start a farm, or you can do both, which is what a lot of settlers did. They would oftentimes have businesses in town and then also have farm operations alongside of that. It was never really a log city. It was a very formally laid out town with brick sidewalks and brick buildings and some very sophisticated people, lawyers and doctors settled here early on and a lot of businessmen profited. With the coming of the railroad in the 1850s, it even made it more opportunity for people to come here.


Doug Still: [21:35] 
To the best of your ability, what do you think life was like on one of those wagon trains? What do you think their biggest hardship was?


Jimmy Haley: [21:45] 
Probably food and water. In the early days, most of the Native American challenges, by the early 1800s were over. In the 1780s and 1790s, that was not the case. Native Americans were still fighting for control and possession of this territory and the land. So, there were several little skirmishes in and around McMinnville and of course in Middle Tennessee, in and around Nashville as well during that period. My grandmother came here a little bit later than that. They moved from Alabama actually to Warren County. They came by wagon and oxen and mules and came across through Chattanooga and had to cross on a ferry boat on the Tennessee River. Just like in the western stories, they make a big circle and a big bonfire in the middle. Children would oftentimes change places on the seats of other people's wagons. They sang songs. Most of the time they took enough provisions to feed them. Fresh water was a little bit of an obstacle and of course, catching diseases and getting ill with dysentery. Those are things that were oftentimes crucial. And of course, if a woman was pregnant or you had small children, it was a bumpy ride.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [23:25] 
The Wilsons' wagon train made their way up over Hills Trace and they saw the plateau. They followed a trail down off the path that loosely saddled the Collins River and went by the location of present-day Irving College. Approaching McMinnville from the south, they crossed Barren Fork, a tributary of the Collins. It is not clear if there was a bridge at that time or they had to ford the stream. Most likely it was October or even early November when they entered McMinnville. Selah was getting closer to giving birth, and she knew they needed to stop. Walking was becoming very difficult and so was riding in the wagon or by horse. She began to receive advice from people they met along the trail that McMinnville might be a good place to stop because it was a growing town with storefronts and a doctor.


The forest all around had been cleared by then but there were several big oak trees they could camp under. One of them had a growing legend. If your baby is born beneath it, that was good luck. They found the big tree. You couldn't miss it from a mile away. Its branches stretched out wide and welcoming. There were other people in wagons beneath it, some community. It was as good a place as any. They set up there, and on November 12th, 1845, Selah gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Wilson.


So, McMinnville was the natural place to stop due to restock and resupply. Was there water here?


Jimmy Haley: [25:02] 
Yes, because of the water and like I said, the businesses that were here.


Doug Still: [25:07] 
So, there were businesses? Could you describe that?


Jimmy Haley: [25:10] 
Oh, there were mercantile stores, we had blacksmiths, which were crucial and stuff in early settlement with horses and mules and oxen. We had cabinet makers, we had people doing construction for homes. We had builders, and attorneys. There was very little that Warren County didn't have early on by 1840 or 1850. By the time the railroad came, we were a fairly sophisticated little town.


Doug Still: [25:39] 
What about around 1800? Was there like a main street with buildings?


Jimmy Haley: [25:43] 
No. McMinnville wasn't founded till 1810 and so the county was founded in 1807. We still had quite a bit of settlers here but McMinnville had not been laid out or was not the county seat at that particular time.


Doug Still: [25:58] 
Now, you said that your ancestors were one of those Pioneers, one of the settlers?


Jimmy Haley: [26:04] 
They were. My early settlers came from Virginia, North Carolina, on both sides of my family and they were here very early. On the Martin side, they were here before 1800 settling here in White County and in Van Buren County. Those are two nearby counties.


Doug Still: [26:25] 
What were their names?


Jimmy Haley: [26:26] 
They were Martins, the last name was Martin. And then, the Haleys came later. They originally settled in Cannon County and then moved to Warren County in the 1820s from nearby. Cannon County at that time was part of Warren County. It didn't become Cannon County till later, so it was all Warren County, but they moved closer in.


Doug Still: [26:48] 
Do you have any items from the Martins when they were here? Like letters or anything?


Jimmy Haley: [26:53] 
I have quite a few-- a whole box of letters, and my family, they also owned, enslaved people. So, I have those papers as well that I've hung on to and plan to give to the state archives so they can be preserved as this is a part of history. I have a spinning wheel from my father's side that dates back to about 1810, 1820. It was my great, great, grandmother's that she spun on. So, I still have that.


Doug Still: [27:24] 
Any old photos that might have the tree in it?


Jimmy Haley: [27:28] 
There are very few photographs that show that tree, and I'm not really sure exactly why. We've tried to identify some, and they just don't exist. Pictures that were taken of the house don't include the tree. They show the house and the trees around the house.


Doug Still: [27:44] 
Just back to the Martins, how many generations back is that?


Jimmy Haley: [27:49] 
Uh, six, I think.


Doug Still: [27:51] 
Wow.


Tom Simpson: [27:53] 
There's local lore that we really didn't even know about. If you live in East Tennessee, you didn't know, you didn't hear about it. It's not published on TV shows or whatever.


Doug Still: [28:03] 
Now, you're in Knoxville, right?


Tom Simpson: [28:04] 
I'm in Knoxville. Right.


Doug Still: [28:05] 
So, that's over the mountains.


Tom Simpson: [28:07] 
Over the mountains, yes.


Doug Still: [28:09] 
Right. It feels very like a different place.


Tom Simpson: [28:14] 
Sure. We had not heard about The Birthing Tree until it was actually nominated. But then, once we got digging into the history behind it, you could pick out many, many, stories and many documentations on this particular tree.


Doug Still: [28:30] 
Do you have any specific stories of families that might have been camped underneath the tree or someone who was born under the tree?


Tom Simpson: [28:38] 
No, I don't particularly have those stories. We've heard of some, and there were some articles published locally in McMinnville for several years over some of those stories. I just don't have access to those right now.


Doug Still: [28:54] 
Jimmy Haley didn't actually know anyone either who claims their ancestor was born under The Birthing Tree. I spoke to several other people in McMinnville, and finding someone with a real story was proving difficult. It seemed that while this was a legend that many people knew about, it may be more legend than fact. Then, I came across an article that mentioned Hobart Massey, a former Warren County historian and a local character who passed away in 1982.


This was probably before your time, but did you have a chance to know Hobart Massey?


Jimmy Haley: [29:29] 
I did know Mr. Hobart Massey. I did quite well. He was big into agriculture extension here and helped with the fair. He was an amazing gentleman who knew history and loved to tell stories and was legendary, really.


Doug Still: [29:48] 
He was an historian?


Jimmy Haley: [29:49] 
He was the county historian, but he called himself a historian. He loved stories. He loved repeating them. He was an amazing, legendary person who loved to spin a good tale and tell a good story.


Doug Still: [30:05] 
My understanding is it might have been him that coined the term, The Birthing Tree.


Jimmy Haley: [30:09] 
That has been said before. When I was a little kid, I didn't call it The Birthing Tree. We just called it the big tree. The big oak tree.


Doug Still: [30:22] 
Right.


Jimmy Haley: [30:23] 
And so then, people started calling it The Birthing Tree for the last 50, 60 years, that's all anyone-- that's the only name that people place upon it now.


Doug Still: [30:33] 
He apparently wrote a few articles in the local paper.


Jimmy Haley: [30:37] 
He wrote several articles, and a lot of those have become-- they've repeated a lot of legends. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to separate legend and lore from fact. There's very little factual information or written information on that tree, which is amazing. So, until it was nominated as a landmark tree by a former urban forester for city member, Nick Kuhn, there was very little research that had been done on it. So, when they started digging, there were more stories and legend than there was actual factual information on it. In fact, some of those stories have been told many times now that people-- [crosstalk]


Doug Still: [31:26] 
They've become fact.


Jimmy Haley: [31:28] 
They'd become fact.


Doug Still: [31:29] 
What was the name of the paper that Hobart Massey would have written in?


Jimmy Haley: [31:33] 
The Southern Standard. Southern Standard has been around since 1870s. So, it's a landmark newspaper.


Doug Still: [31:40] 
Where would I go to find them? Historical Society?


Jimmy Haley: [31:45] 
The library. The Magness Library Downtown has the genealogy room.


Doug Still: [31:50] 
Magness Library?


Jimmy Haley: [31:51] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [31:52] 
Later, after the interview, I called the Magness Library and spoke to Cheryl Watson-Mingle, the genealogist there. She laughed when I asked her if she had information about The Birthing Tree because Jimmy had already called her about it. She was on it. She had found a typewritten transcript for an article written by Hobart Massey in the Warren County News back in 1980 called The Birthing Tree. She emailed it to me. Finally, I found what I was looking for.


It tells the story of Hobart Massey attending a three-day church meeting up in Madisonville, Kentucky, about a three-hour drive north from McMinnville. During that meeting, he met an elderly woman, Mrs. John S. Gibson, and got to know her a bit. Mrs. Gibson knew McMinnville. She said her grandmother was born under a large tree there. Hobart was already familiar with the legend, and he was off and running.


He told her all about the old white oak tree. Mrs. Gibson's maiden name was Sylvester Moseley, but she was known as Vessie to people that knew her. She was the daughter of Sylvester-- yes, she was given her father's name -  and Florence Moseley, known as “Maw Mosley.” This led to finding further information on Ancestry.com. Hey, there's nothing like doing a little research from a home computer. Now, Maw Moseley was the daughter of one James Melton, the 13-year-old boy we met earlier in our story, and you guessed it, Elizabeth Wilson.


[Music]


You're listening to This Old Tree. After another short break, we'll learn about the legacy of McMinnville, Tennessee's historic white oak, The Birthing Tree.


You ran the Heritage Tree Program, or what was the name of that program?


Tom Simpson: [33:48] 
At the time, it was called the Landmark and Historic Tree Program or Register.


Doug Still: [33:53] 
What's it called now?


Tom Simpson: [33:54] 
Well, it's called the Landmark, Historic, and Heritage Tree because in 2009, we added the category of “heritage.”


Doug Still: [34:03] 
How did the tree first come to your attention?


Tom Simpson: [34:05] 
Yeah, The Birthing Tree was nominated by Nick Kuhn, who was the city forester in McMinnville. In 2000, he nominated it to the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council's Landmark and Historic Tree Registry. We have a committee that goes through the process of vetting the nominations, and so they quickly approved that one. That was where we were first exposed to that tree, was in 2000.


Doug Still: [34:33] 
There are three different categories, right?


Tom Simpson: [34:35] 
Sure. Yeah. There was Landmark and Historic. These are living trees. Landmark trees are trees that are familiar to the community. They're commonly recognized by the community, and they're confirmed to be significant to the community's heritage. We can use that term interspersedly. And then, the historic trees are trees, they're living trees that have witnessed some historic event either regionally, statewide, nationwide, or in the community itself.


Doug Still: [35:08] 
I see. Then, you have a third category, which is “heritage trees.”


Tom Simpson: [35:12] 
Right. Well, the program started in 1998, but Gene Hyde, who was president of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council at the time, Nick Kuhn was a member of the council. So, in 2009, we had looked at nine years of the program and realized that some of the trees that we were entering into that registry had a lifespan that might not last forever. Most trees don't live forever. So, the stories and the historical significance of the trees would be lost once those trees passed away because the landmark and historic categories only have living trees.


Doug Still: [35:53] 
I see. So, heritage trees are trees of the past.


Tom Simpson: [35:56] 
Yes. We also want to be able to pick up trees that have passed away but were famous trees, except for the fact that they didn't survive up until the 1998 creation of the program.


Doug Still: [36:12] 
When a tree is recognized, what happens? Is there an award ceremony?


Tom Simpson: [36:18] 
There is an award ceremony, yeah. At the annual Tennessee Urban Forestry Council Meeting, we recognize the nominators or the owners of the trees. We have a plaque made, an inside plaque, a walnut plaque made for the one who nominated it or at least owns the tree. Then, we place the tree with its story, a picture of the tree in the story onto our website.


Doug Still: [36:46] 
That's great. So, if anyone wants to look these up, they can go to the website for the Tennessee Urban Community Forestry Council?


Tom Simpson: [36:53] 
tufc.com will take you to the website, and then it's listed under Programs then.


Doug Still: [37:02] 
Now, this all got compiled into a book, right?


Tom Simpson: [37:04] 
Yes. The book was called Trees of Tennessee. The council published this book and it's lacking of so many trees that we've put on the registry since then but it's a great coffee table hardcover book.


Doug Still: [37:21] 
It looks fantastic. I haven't held a copy of it in my hands, but it looks wonderful. Now, was The Birthing Tree one of the first trees designated in your program?


Tom Simpson: [37:32] 
It was not the first, but it was one of the first trees. It was one of the first trees. It is significant though because its size has been shown on many, many pictures that show the famous trees. It is a landmark tree in itself just from our program.


Doug Still: [37:51] 
What are a few other trees that have been recognized?


Tom Simpson: [37:55] 
Oh, my goodness. We could go on for a long time on that. To me, the “Moon Trees” are some of the most famous trees. Those are the trees as seeds that were on the Apollo 14 moon flight. Stuart Roosa, who had been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service in his past life, then he became an astronaut, and Apollo 14 was allowed-- the astronauts were allowed to take on some private individual objects. If you remember, Alan Shepard took golf clubs and had the longest golf drive on the moon.


But Stuart Roosa was a command module pilot and circled the moon while they were down on playing on the surface. After they returned, he let the US Forest Service take those into two laboratories and raise them into seedlings. In 1972, in our Bicentennial for our state, the US Forest Service donated four of those trees to our state that had been around the moon, and we planted those four trees, and it was a treasure hunt to find all four of those trees. But we did find all four of them, two sycamores and two loblolly pines.


There are other trees that are fascinating. There's a tree very close to The Birthing Tree in West Tennessee that is the Cherokee Oak. It was named because a woman that was on the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee lady, as the wagon broke down, she escaped and hid out in a cave near the tree. Later on, she married a white man in Middle Tennessee and formed many of the-- the union formed many of the citizens of Middle Tennessee from that family. That tree was also famous because the Cherokee Oak was the scene of a resting place for one of the last US Postal horseback riders who had a 26-mile route, and he would stop and rest his horse under that tree for many, many years until he retired.


Doug Still: [40:14] 
What's the Daniel Boone Tree? 


Tom Simpson: [40:16] 
The Daniel Boone Tree. Originally, 'D. Boon killed a bar', that's the famous one that in history books have. That was at Jonesboro, and it was on a beech tree that he carved, and it has since fell back in the storms.


Doug Still: [40:32] 
I'm sorry. He carved into the bark of a beech tree, what did he carve?


Tom Simpson: [40:38] 
'D. Boon killed a bar.'


Doug Still: [40:40] 
[chuckles] I see. You must have a picture of that.


Tom Simpson: [40:44] 
Well, we do.


Doug Still: [40:45] 
It's remarkable to me that those carvings would last that long.


Tom Simpson: [40:51] 
Well, sure.


Doug Still: [40:52] 
The bark didn't grow over them.


Tom Simpson: [40:55] 
No, the bark won't. It sometimes will be hard to read, but the bark won't cover all the way over the carvings themselves.


Doug Still: [41:02] 
More about that program. Why do you think that program is so important?


Tom Simpson: [41:06] 
Well, it shows a connection of what trees do for mankind and the connection that we have to trees. Those trees that live long enough and are significant enough to stand there, are living stories by themselves of the history of mankind around it, but not only the trees, but then they'll discover the history behind the trees.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [41:39] 
Back to the story of the Wilsons. We don't know how long they stayed in McMinnville after the birth of Elizabeth under the tree, but it may actually have been for a few years. Many people did settle in the McMinnville area. It was a promising place to be. However, the family shows up in the 1850 census, John, Celia, Elizabeth, and a new brother John had moved to East Tennessee, to McMinn County, not to be confused with McMinnville in Central Tennessee. Selah's extended family, most of the Norvell clan are shown to be living in McMinn County as well. So, they had moved from North Carolina. John and Selah met them there and lived a number of years. The Meltons, on the other hand, the family that had been traveling with them, kept on to Kentucky, and the 1850 census shows them living as farmers in Henderson County.


The 1860 census shows John, Celia, and the Wilson family in Ozark, Missouri. But then, other records show that they moved to Central Kentucky in the mid-1860s. The beginning and end of the civil war might have had something to do with these movements. Obviously, the Wilsons and Meltons met up again because James and Elizabeth were married on January 1, 1867, in Henderson County, Kentucky. They ended up having eight children together, six of whom survived childbirth. The Birthing Tree brought them pretty good luck after all.


Years later, after Hobart Massey met Vessie Gibson in Madisonville, he invited her back to McMinnville to see The Birthing Tree. Before she arrived, he painted a picture of it in oil and presented it to her underneath the spreading, marvelous oak tree her grandmother was born under.


[music]


Doug Still: [43:37] 
What makes The Birthing Tree so special, and why is it important to you?


Jimmy Haley: [43:42] 
I think part of the reason it's so special is because it survived. It survived the urbanization and development all around there. There's hospitals, there's hotels, there's clinics all around that area. The State Area Technology School is there. Motlow campus is there. There's several factories in and around. So, within just a quarter mile, there's a lot of development and there's a lot of asphalt, and there's a lot of pavement, and a four-lane highway running within just a few feet of the tree. So, just that it survived when the all the other trees around it have gone, to me, makes it a little special. It does.


Doug Still: [44:27] 
And six generations of your family have stood underneath that tree?


Jimmy Haley: [44:32] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [44:33] 
Most likely.


Jimmy Haley: [44:34] 
Most likely.


Tom Simpson: [44:36] 
Well, it's just the history of these trees is just fascinating to me, I guess.


Doug Still: [44:41] 
Yeah.


Tom Simpson: [44:42] 
Yeah, I love trees because I went to college and learned about forestry, and I've spent my life in forestry, but my second love was history. And to combine those two--


Doug Still: [44:55] 
Yeah, that's exactly why I do this.


Tom Simpson: [44:58] 
Yeah. [laughs]


Doug Still: [45:00] 
Just the combination - it's a living link to the past…


Tom Simpson: [45:04] 
It is indeed. Yes, sir.


Doug Still: [45:05] and historical events. I think that has a lot of inspiration for people.


Jimmy Haley: [45:11] 
The majesty of the tree and how it just hugs the ground, and you can walk in and amongst those gnarled limbs that are curled down toward the ground, you just feel almost encapsulated. It's almost like a cocoon, and you're just wrapped in a part of history, and it makes a very special feeling inside of you. And other people feel it too. When we did our Bicentennial for the county in 2007, The Birthing Tree was our symbol. We have a monument on Court Square that embellishes the story of really The Birthing Tree. Our phrase was, "Our roots run deep." So, not only do the roots of that oak tree run deep, but the roots of Warren County run similarly, in many cases, side by side through the generations.


Doug Still: [46:05] 
Well, I want to thank you for talking with me today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for sharing all of that history.


Jimmy Haley: [46:12] 
Thank you for wanting to share our history. We're very proud of it. Like I said our roots do run deep, and The Birthing tree is symbolic.


Doug Still: [46:22] 
And that's what The Birthing Tree is all about. I want to thank Jimmy Haley, the historian of Warren County, and Tom Simpson, the retired urban forester of Eastern Tennessee, for spending time with me to tell its story and for all of the contributions they made behind the scenes. What fantastic guests.


In preparing this episode, it was not lost on me that there is some tension in telling this story that explores and celebrates the act of giving birth to wanted children under this tree in Tennessee. At the same time, a debate is going on in that state as well as nationally, about women's rights to manage their own pregnancies. I support these rights. I think it only right to acknowledge this tension and allow you, the listener, to wrestle with it as you see fit.


And I have some other news. I've had the pleasure to connect with Elizabeth Wilson Melton's great, great, granddaughter, Elizabeth Benton, who was named after her. She's a hoot and a super nice person. She provided some of the top-notch genealogy I found that helped explain some of the family ties and stories. She also has photos of Elizabeth and James, which I have permission to share on Facebook and Instagram. And remember that oil painting that Hobart Massey gave to Vessie under The Birthing Tree? She tracked it down with some phone calls. Her cousin, Dana, had it. They sent a picture of that too. Thank you very much, Elizabeth and Dana.


[music]


Doug Still: [48:09] And thank you, tree lovers, for joining me again today. Please share the show far and wide and check out the revamped website at thisoldtree.show. All the episodes are there with show notes and transcripts. There's a way to donate through Patreon, and you can even buy a T-shirt. I'm Doug Still, and I'll see you next time with This Old Tree.




[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]
The Birthing Tree
Season 1, Episode 11 (Feb 27, 2023)
Transcript


Doug Still: [00:01] 
The Birthing Tree. A huge, gorgeous 350-year-old plus white oak in McMinnville, Tennessee. It's not only a city landmark, it's the pride of all of Tennessee and plays a part in the state's early Pioneer history. It's more than just a big tree. So, how did it get its name and what's its story? In this episode, we visit with Warren County historian, Jimmy Haley, as well as Tom Simpson, who gave its official state historic designation when he was a regional urban forester. We’ll also follow Celia Wilson and her family on the Settler's Trail. Who? You'll find out. Join me to discover The Birthing Tree. I'm Doug Still, and this is This Old Tree.


[This Old Tree theme]


Doug Still: [01:04] 
I'd like to start with two important acknowledgments. The first is that the original inhabitants and stewards of the land where we now find McMinnville, Tennessee, were clans of the Greater Cherokee Nation. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the mass migration of Cherokee to the west, to territory that the government had designated. Although there were many routes, collectively, this was the tragic Trail of Tears, which comes up during today's episode.


The second acknowledgment is that we cannot separate our story from the terrible history of slavery which impacted contemporary events, the Civil War, and a legacy of inequality. I thank my guests for their forthright discussion. And now to our show.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson Story): [02:03] 
Celia Wilson, or Selah as most people called her, was unsure that leaving Rutherfordton, North Carolina, to head west was a good idea. It was summer, it was hot, and she was pregnant with her first child. She'd just married her husband, John Wilson, last year in September of 1844. Her whole family, the Norvells, would remain in Rutherfordton, at least for now, and she'd be leaving them behind. She was just 21 and had never seen the world outside of Rutherford County. But John insisted because they were starting a family. He was 28, but they didn't have land of their own. They needed that if they were going to be farmers and support themselves. She agreed. It seemed the best choice under the circumstances. Besides, lots of people were heading west. The trail had been blazed, so to speak.


They heard there was open land with good soil to be had. They packed up their possessions, and her family helped stock the wagon that John had, and he had horses too. There was nothing but a canvas cover to keep out the rain. At least there were other young families going too, they wouldn't be going it alone. On an agreed-upon day, they left, most likely passed Asheville and then a gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Selah was sad, nervous, and excited all at the same time.


We'll come back to Celia and the Wilsons wagon train in a bit. But jumping into the present, I'd like to introduce Jimmy Haley. He was a teacher of economics and government at Warren County High School in Tennessee, the former mayor of McMinnville, and the official Warren County historian. Jimmy is the right person to talk to about The Birthing Tree and the history of McMinnville.


[music]


Well, Jimmy, welcome to the show.


Jimmy Haley: [03:59] 
Thank you for having me.


Doug Still: [04:00] 
We're here today to talk about The Birthing Tree, which is an icon in McMinnville, Tennessee. And I've seen pictures of it. It's just fantastic. But I have a few questions for you. Are you a native Tennessean?


Jimmy Haley: [04:13] 
I'm a native Tennessean, and I'm a native of Warren County. I was born and raised here, and so I've been here my whole life.


Doug Still: [04:20] 
Native to McMinnville or nearby McMinnville?


Jimmy Haley: [04:22] 
McMinnville. Yes.


Doug Still: [04:24] 
When you were growing up, when did you first become aware of The Birthing Tree and its significance?


Jimmy Haley: [04:30] 
It's on a major highway running through the county, and so anyone and everyone that travels that Highway 70 goes by that tree. So, even as a small child, I understood the significance of the tree because it was so large, and they redirected the highway when they were building it just to avoid cutting the tree because it was already kind of an iconic representation of who we are as Warren County people.


Doug Still: [04:58] 
And when did that happen?


Jimmy Haley: [05:01] 
It was like in the 1950s.


Doug Still: [05:03] 
1950s, it was such an important tree, and they just rerouted the highway around it.


Jimmy Haley: [05:09] 
They moved it, the highway over just to avoid coming any closer to the tree than they had to.


Doug Still: [05:15] 
I was wondering if you could describe The Birthing Tree for our listeners. Where is it situated and what does it look like and what does it feel like to stand underneath it?


Jimmy Haley: [05:26] 
Well, it's not very far from downtown. It's actually across from the birthing unit from our local hospital. Like I said, it's on the Sparta Highway, the Old Kentucky Road, Broadway of America, Highway 70s. It goes by a variety of names, but it's been a major thoroughfare since the early settlers' days. So, it's a majestic tree. It's a white oak. It's almost 90ft tall. The branches are sprawling, and they hover toward the ground. And so, it's kind of gnarled looking. It's so majestic in the width and the girth of the base of the tree that it's almost impossible not to recognize the importance of it.


As a small child, I would ask my father to stop, and I would get out and go under and stand under the tree because you have a special feeling when you're under the tree. It's hard to describe but anybody that's ever been there, you can feel it. It's just an awesome, overwhelming feeling of history and the powers of Mother Nature to create a tree that's that tall and that wide and those sprawling branches that hover toward the ground.


Doug Still: [06:45] 
Everyone in McMinnville knows this tremendous tree, and as I said before, it's caught the attention of tree lovers and experts across the state. Here is how Tom Simpson describes it, the former East Tennessee Regional Urban Forester within the Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry.


Tom Simpson: [07:04] Well, it is an extremely impressive tree. It is a huge white oak tree that's on the entrance to McMinnville from the state right away, the town of McMinnville. You can see this tree from a great distance away as you drive down the highway. I can't even fathom what it looked like when they were doing it on wagons and horseback, but this gigantic tree has a crown spread of 130ft.


Doug Still: [07:31] 
Wow.


Tom Simpson: [07:33] 
Its height is not so impressive. It was only 81ft when we entered it in 2000, it's probably not that much higher now, but the diameter of the tree was in the neighborhood of 7ft. So, it was a very large circumference area tree with a huge canopy that broadened out and covered a large area of surface. So, when you walked under it, you felt like you were in a forest by itself. There was one limb that came off of it that's still there that grew out and angled down toward the ground and then grew back up. Yeah. Just kind of convoluted out. And that one limb is larger than a lot of trees.


Doug Still: [08:16] 
And that limb is still there, or it fell?


Tom Simpson: [08:18] 
That limb is still there to my knowledge, yes.


Doug Still: [08:22] 
Oh, great. Kids play on that and climb on it.


Tom Simpson: [08:25] Sure. [they laugh]


Doug Still: [08:29] Is there a fence around it?


Tom Simpson: [08:31] 
No. Not to my knowledge and I haven't seen it in a couple of years. What happened is that the tree was so significant to the community, a developer was going to develop some property nearby and the city became concerned that we might lose the tree just from the standpoint of encroachment of construction. So, they wrangled a deal to purchase the footprint of the tree. So, the tree became actual property of the city of McMinnville, and they erected a plaque.


Doug Still: [09:07] 
And so, it's surrounded by private property?


Tom Simpson: [09:10] 
Yes, it is.


Jimmy Haley: [09:12] 
I used to climb on it. They don't recommend anybody climbing on it now because the branches are somewhat fragile, and they've been cabled up. Dr. Neil Schultz, a local retired orthodontist, fell in love with that tree as a young man himself, growing up here in McMinnville, and coveted the protection of that tree to the point where when a developer bought the property and was going to build a clinic there, we all rallied behind not cutting the tree, which we were afraid was going to happen, just to protect it. Dr. Schultz then spent his own money to help stabilize the tree and cable it and get some professional arborists in to make sure that we were doing everything we could to increase the longevity of the tree since it's 300 years old perhaps, or even older.


Doug Still: [10:03] 
The land underneath the drip line of the tree is now city property and protected. Is that correct?


Jimmy Haley: [10:10] 
It is. It's like a pocket park for the city of McMinnville. We have a sign there saying such and asking people not to climb on the tree and not to do anything destructive. People drive far and wide. I see people there all the time. If I'm able, I will stop and talk a little bit about the tree and find out where they're from. But people from all over the country come on some of their little side trips, they want to come see the tree.


Doug Still: [10:39] 
It's nice to be welcomed by the mayor underneath The Birthing Tree.


Jimmy Haley: [10:42] 
Well, I don't always announce myself as the mayor, so I just kind of go incognito on that one.


Doug Still: [10:48] 
Right.


Jimmy Haley: [10:49] 
I've loved the tree my whole life, and it's just a special place. It was a special place for the early settlers. It was on the old Kentucky Road and so anyone traveling into Warren County passed through a grove of very large oak trees at that time.


Doug Still: [11:07] 
I see. So, there was a grove, there wasn't just the one?


Jimmy Haley: [11:10] 
No, there was a grove of oak trees there. That Old Kentucky Road came right down through the middle of them. It was a natural place, according to legend, for settlers to water their horses or oxen and to gather there under the trees to rest before they came into town. Hence the story and the legend of children being born under the tree for refuge in those wagon trains before they came into town. Hence The Birthing Tree.


Doug Still: [11:41] 
What's the basic story behind The Birthing Tree?


Tom Simpson: [11:44] 
Well, the one story is that many of the old settlement trails in Tennessee, one of them was called the Kentucky Trail, the other one was called the Old Walton Trail, which was in Middle Tennessee. This tree stands in Middle Tennessee. But the confluence of several of those trails came right up under The Birthing Tree. So, as settlers would move down the trail going toward Alabama or coming back from Alabama, going toward Kentucky or Virginia, they knew about this place. They had it as a meeting place for many, many years. Parties would wait for other parties to hook up with them on the trail. As they were waiting, some of the women would deliver babies underneath the trees. Hence the name, Birthing Tree. There are many stories in Middle Tennessee of families, their grandparents, parents who still know are all born under the tree itself.


Doug Still: [12:47] 
So, these were wagon trains, just like in the old movies?


Tom Simpson: [12:50] 
Yes. Of course, horseback and foot traffic as well. One of the other stories was this tree was near the Trail of Tears originally, the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears as they went out to Oklahoma. We've not been able to confirm that exactly, but we know it's in the vicinity of the old Trail of Tears in Middle Tennessee.


Doug Still: [13:20] 
I found a relevant map on the National Park Service website. One spur of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee came directly through McMinnville. 


The trail, the Old Kentucky Trail?


Tom Simpson: [13:33] 
Mm-hmm. Right.


Doug Still: [13:34] 
You said then comes down to Alabama, and then it sort of swings west, of people heading west.


Tom Simpson: [13:41] 
Yes. One of the trails peeled off and went westward. The Old Walton Trail was a connection between East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee that went up through Cookville and areas up into Kentucky. So, like I said, there was a confluence of trails going east and west and north and south and they all met somewhere right at The Birthing Tree.


Doug Still: [14:02] 
So, not all of the Pioneers that might have stayed under the tree were heading west. They might have just been heading south.


Tom Simpson: [14:08] 
Correct.


Doug Still: [14:09] 
And vice versa.


Tom Simpson: [14:10] 
Yes. Vice versa.


Doug Still: [14:12] 
It was sort of like a rest stop.


[laughter]


Tom Simpson: [14:16] 
Well, yeah, one of our modern-day interstate rest stops. But the tree was so large even then in the late 1700s, that the canopy just covered an enormous area, and settlers could rest under there for days. In fact, we've heard stories of a week or so where people would stand under the tree to be shaded from the sun in the summer and perhaps some of the storms that came through there.


Doug Still: [14:43] 
And it just gathered this lore. Right?


Tom Simpson: [14:47] [laughs] Yes.


Doug Still: [14:49] 
After a quick break, we'll hear more from our guests, Tom Simpson and Jimmy Haley, about The Birthing Tree and its part in Tennessee history. You're listening to This Old Tree.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [15:12] 
The wagon train eased out of the Smoky Mountains, moving slowly down the bumpy path into the Cumberland Valley of Eastern Tennessee. It had been over a month and Selah's feet hurt. There may have been wagons, but nobody rode in them unless they wanted to jar their spine and develop a headache. Pregnant or not, she walked most of the way like everyone else. But as the summer was ending, the baby was getting bigger. Another family in the wagon train were the Meltons, and John and Selah got to know Spencer and his wife, Rosanna, very well. They were also from Rutherford County, and they had a son with them, 13-year-old James Melton. I imagine that to him, every day was exciting, running off ahead or exploring the woods nearby with other kids. Perhaps, he helped his father hunt.


The trail in the Flat Valley was a relief after the difficult mountain terrain, and there were towns and settlements along the way to get supplies. When they got near Chattanooga after a few weeks, they were told they needed to head west and climb again and find a past called Hills Trace that led to the Cumberland Plateau of Central Tennessee. There, they would connect with the Kentucky Road, which traversed somewhat in a north-south direction. Many settlers entered Central Tennessee from the north along this well-used road, but the Wilsons approached it from the southern end of the plateau. The Meltons and the Wilsons were heading to Kentucky, where there was good land being offered to settlers, cheap. Selah wondered where she would be when her baby was born.


Who were the Pioneers that were traveling on this road in the wagon trains? We're talking about 1780s, 1790s, and the first few decades of the 1800s. Is that correct? Or was it a longer period of time when the wagon trains came through?


Jimmy Haley: [17:06] 
Well, the earliest settlers were coming through here in the 1780s and 90s. There were very few people living here at that particular time. Many of them were going down on to Nashville and Fort Nashborough. Here in McMinnville, most of the settlers were coming through after 1800. Many of them were headed further west or further south. The territory was wide open for settlement, and so Warren County quickly grew. A lot of people who came through here decided it was a great place to live. They loved the terrain. It was rich soil. We have four rivers that converge here and surrounded by mountains, and the soil was rich enough to support crops and cattle, and pastureland. So, a lot of people decided to stay.


McMinnville was founded in 1810, and so it grew quite rapidly as the county seat. With the courthouse and court proceedings and just the logistics of business, everyone from the county came into town and of course, anybody that lived in the northern part of the county would travel the Kentucky Road into McMinnville on the Sparta Road into downtown.


Doug Still: [18:19] 
You said four rivers converge there?


Jimmy Haley: [18:21] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [18:22] 
But it also seems like there's the Old Kentucky Road but there are many offshoots and directions people were coming and going. Some are going west, some are going south.


Jimmy Haley: [18:32] 
Yes. People traveling from Kentucky down into Tennessee or from Virginia and particularly into Tennessee. Most of the settlers here, a lot of people came from North Carolina and came across the mountains that way. Many of them came from Chattanooga and came across the mountains that way. So, they didn't travel the Old Kentucky Road. They traveled some other roads, Hills Trace, and others.


Tom Simpson: [18:56] 
Yeah, there were trails over what we now term as Rockwood Mountain. There were trails that went through some gaps through there that went over into Middle Tennessee. I don't even know the name of those gaps anymore, but they knew. There was one trail that came through Rockwood in East Tennessee that had a toll road set up by the Cherokees, and you would pay a toll to go westward from there. That trail took you back up over to the plateau, the Cumberland Plateau, and then on beyond into wherever you wanted to go from that point.


Doug Still: [19:34] 
Who were the settlers?


Jimmy Haley: [19:36] 
A lot of them were what we call Scotch Irish. Like I said, a lot of them came from Virginia and North Carolina. Of course, many of them had emigrated from other colonies into those states early on. But the majority of our stock is Virginia and North Carolina settlers. Many of them were second and third, maybe fourth-generation settlers. The land was starting to play out. They were looking for new fortunes. They were looking for new opportunities in the west. Tennessee was western land at that particular time and didn't cross over the Mississippi quite yet. So, a lot of people sought their fortunes here.


Doug Still: [20:20] 
So, they were not fresh off the boat. They were colonists who had been living elsewhere and were moving west. Some of the men were in the Revolutionary War, I believe?


Jimmy Haley: [20:32] 
Yes, they were. Many of them had land grants to settle here. That brought many of them here to this area, either from serving a lot in the Virginia militia or in the North Carolina army as well.


Doug Still: [20:44] 
What was it that they wanted? What were they dreaming about?


Jimmy Haley: [20:48] 
If it was like my family, they were just looking for a better life, a new opportunity, a new start. The frontier offers a lot to new settlers and so you can start a business, you can start a farm, or you can do both, which is what a lot of settlers did. They would oftentimes have businesses in town and then also have farm operations alongside of that. It was never really a log city. It was a very formally laid out town with brick sidewalks and brick buildings and some very sophisticated people, lawyers and doctors settled here early on and a lot of businessmen profited. With the coming of the railroad in the 1850s, it even made it more opportunity for people to come here.


Doug Still: [21:35] 
To the best of your ability, what do you think life was like on one of those wagon trains? What do you think their biggest hardship was?


Jimmy Haley: [21:45] 
Probably food and water. In the early days, most of the Native American challenges, by the early 1800s were over. In the 1780s and 1790s, that was not the case. Native Americans were still fighting for control and possession of this territory and the land. So, there were several little skirmishes in and around McMinnville and of course in Middle Tennessee, in and around Nashville as well during that period. My grandmother came here a little bit later than that. They moved from Alabama actually to Warren County. They came by wagon and oxen and mules and came across through Chattanooga and had to cross on a ferry boat on the Tennessee River. Just like in the western stories, they make a big circle and a big bonfire in the middle. Children would oftentimes change places on the seats of other people's wagons. They sang songs. Most of the time they took enough provisions to feed them. Fresh water was a little bit of an obstacle and of course, catching diseases and getting ill with dysentery. Those are things that were oftentimes crucial. And of course, if a woman was pregnant or you had small children, it was a bumpy ride.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [23:25] 
The Wilsons' wagon train made their way up over Hills Trace and they saw the plateau. They followed a trail down off the path that loosely saddled the Collins River and went by the location of present-day Irving College. Approaching McMinnville from the south, they crossed Barren Fork, a tributary of the Collins. It is not clear if there was a bridge at that time or they had to ford the stream. Most likely it was October or even early November when they entered McMinnville. Selah was getting closer to giving birth, and she knew they needed to stop. Walking was becoming very difficult and so was riding in the wagon or by horse. She began to receive advice from people they met along the trail that McMinnville might be a good place to stop because it was a growing town with storefronts and a doctor.


The forest all around had been cleared by then but there were several big oak trees they could camp under. One of them had a growing legend. If your baby is born beneath it, that was good luck. They found the big tree. You couldn't miss it from a mile away. Its branches stretched out wide and welcoming. There were other people in wagons beneath it, some community. It was as good a place as any. They set up there, and on November 12th, 1845, Selah gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Wilson.


So, McMinnville was the natural place to stop due to restock and resupply. Was there water here?


Jimmy Haley: [25:02] 
Yes, because of the water and like I said, the businesses that were here.


Doug Still: [25:07] 
So, there were businesses? Could you describe that?


Jimmy Haley: [25:10] 
Oh, there were mercantile stores, we had blacksmiths, which were crucial and stuff in early settlement with horses and mules and oxen. We had cabinet makers, we had people doing construction for homes. We had builders, and attorneys. There was very little that Warren County didn't have early on by 1840 or 1850. By the time the railroad came, we were a fairly sophisticated little town.


Doug Still: [25:39] 
What about around 1800? Was there like a main street with buildings?


Jimmy Haley: [25:43] 
No. McMinnville wasn't founded till 1810 and so the county was founded in 1807. We still had quite a bit of settlers here but McMinnville had not been laid out or was not the county seat at that particular time.


Doug Still: [25:58] 
Now, you said that your ancestors were one of those Pioneers, one of the settlers?


Jimmy Haley: [26:04] 
They were. My early settlers came from Virginia, North Carolina, on both sides of my family and they were here very early. On the Martin side, they were here before 1800 settling here in White County and in Van Buren County. Those are two nearby counties.


Doug Still: [26:25] 
What were their names?


Jimmy Haley: [26:26] 
They were Martins, the last name was Martin. And then, the Haleys came later. They originally settled in Cannon County and then moved to Warren County in the 1820s from nearby. Cannon County at that time was part of Warren County. It didn't become Cannon County till later, so it was all Warren County, but they moved closer in.


Doug Still: [26:48] 
Do you have any items from the Martins when they were here? Like letters or anything?


Jimmy Haley: [26:53] 
I have quite a few-- a whole box of letters, and my family, they also owned, enslaved people. So, I have those papers as well that I've hung on to and plan to give to the state archives so they can be preserved as this is a part of history. I have a spinning wheel from my father's side that dates back to about 1810, 1820. It was my great, great, grandmother's that she spun on. So, I still have that.


Doug Still: [27:24] 
Any old photos that might have the tree in it?


Jimmy Haley: [27:28] 
There are very few photographs that show that tree, and I'm not really sure exactly why. We've tried to identify some, and they just don't exist. Pictures that were taken of the house don't include the tree. They show the house and the trees around the house.


Doug Still: [27:44] 
Just back to the Martins, how many generations back is that?


Jimmy Haley: [27:49] 
Uh, six, I think.


Doug Still: [27:51] 
Wow.


Tom Simpson: [27:53] 
There's local lore that we really didn't even know about. If you live in East Tennessee, you didn't know, you didn't hear about it. It's not published on TV shows or whatever.


Doug Still: [28:03] 
Now, you're in Knoxville, right?


Tom Simpson: [28:04] 
I'm in Knoxville. Right.


Doug Still: [28:05] 
So, that's over the mountains.


Tom Simpson: [28:07] 
Over the mountains, yes.


Doug Still: [28:09] 
Right. It feels very like a different place.


Tom Simpson: [28:14] 
Sure. We had not heard about The Birthing Tree until it was actually nominated. But then, once we got digging into the history behind it, you could pick out many, many, stories and many documentations on this particular tree.


Doug Still: [28:30] 
Do you have any specific stories of families that might have been camped underneath the tree or someone who was born under the tree?


Tom Simpson: [28:38] 
No, I don't particularly have those stories. We've heard of some, and there were some articles published locally in McMinnville for several years over some of those stories. I just don't have access to those right now.


Doug Still: [28:54] 
Jimmy Haley didn't actually know anyone either who claims their ancestor was born under The Birthing Tree. I spoke to several other people in McMinnville, and finding someone with a real story was proving difficult. It seemed that while this was a legend that many people knew about, it may be more legend than fact. Then, I came across an article that mentioned Hobart Massey, a former Warren County historian and a local character who passed away in 1982.


This was probably before your time, but did you have a chance to know Hobart Massey?


Jimmy Haley: [29:29] 
I did know Mr. Hobart Massey. I did quite well. He was big into agriculture extension here and helped with the fair. He was an amazing gentleman who knew history and loved to tell stories and was legendary, really.


Doug Still: [29:48] 
He was an historian?


Jimmy Haley: [29:49] 
He was the county historian, but he called himself a historian. He loved stories. He loved repeating them. He was an amazing, legendary person who loved to spin a good tale and tell a good story.


Doug Still: [30:05] 
My understanding is it might have been him that coined the term, The Birthing Tree.


Jimmy Haley: [30:09] 
That has been said before. When I was a little kid, I didn't call it The Birthing Tree. We just called it the big tree. The big oak tree.


Doug Still: [30:22] 
Right.


Jimmy Haley: [30:23] 
And so then, people started calling it The Birthing Tree for the last 50, 60 years, that's all anyone-- that's the only name that people place upon it now.


Doug Still: [30:33] 
He apparently wrote a few articles in the local paper.


Jimmy Haley: [30:37] 
He wrote several articles, and a lot of those have become-- they've repeated a lot of legends. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to separate legend and lore from fact. There's very little factual information or written information on that tree, which is amazing. So, until it was nominated as a landmark tree by a former urban forester for city member, Nick Kuhn, there was very little research that had been done on it. So, when they started digging, there were more stories and legend than there was actual factual information on it. In fact, some of those stories have been told many times now that people-- [crosstalk]


Doug Still: [31:26] 
They've become fact.


Jimmy Haley: [31:28] 
They'd become fact.


Doug Still: [31:29] 
What was the name of the paper that Hobart Massey would have written in?


Jimmy Haley: [31:33] 
The Southern Standard. Southern Standard has been around since 1870s. So, it's a landmark newspaper.


Doug Still: [31:40] 
Where would I go to find them? Historical Society?


Jimmy Haley: [31:45] 
The library. The Magness Library Downtown has the genealogy room.


Doug Still: [31:50] 
Magness Library?


Jimmy Haley: [31:51] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [31:52] 
Later, after the interview, I called the Magness Library and spoke to Cheryl Watson-Mingle, the genealogist there. She laughed when I asked her if she had information about The Birthing Tree because Jimmy had already called her about it. She was on it. She had found a typewritten transcript for an article written by Hobart Massey in the Warren County News back in 1980 called The Birthing Tree. She emailed it to me. Finally, I found what I was looking for.


It tells the story of Hobart Massey attending a three-day church meeting up in Madisonville, Kentucky, about a three-hour drive north from McMinnville. During that meeting, he met an elderly woman, Mrs. John S. Gibson, and got to know her a bit. Mrs. Gibson knew McMinnville. She said her grandmother was born under a large tree there. Hobart was already familiar with the legend, and he was off and running.


He told her all about the old white oak tree. Mrs. Gibson's maiden name was Sylvester Moseley, but she was known as Vessie to people that knew her. She was the daughter of Sylvester-- yes, she was given her father's name -  and Florence Moseley, known as “Maw Mosley.” This led to finding further information on Ancestry.com. Hey, there's nothing like doing a little research from a home computer. Now, Maw Moseley was the daughter of one James Melton, the 13-year-old boy we met earlier in our story, and you guessed it, Elizabeth Wilson.


[Music]


You're listening to This Old Tree. After another short break, we'll learn about the legacy of McMinnville, Tennessee's historic white oak, The Birthing Tree.


You ran the Heritage Tree Program, or what was the name of that program?


Tom Simpson: [33:48] 
At the time, it was called the Landmark and Historic Tree Program or Register.


Doug Still: [33:53] 
What's it called now?


Tom Simpson: [33:54] 
Well, it's called the Landmark, Historic, and Heritage Tree because in 2009, we added the category of “heritage.”


Doug Still: [34:03] 
How did the tree first come to your attention?


Tom Simpson: [34:05] 
Yeah, The Birthing Tree was nominated by Nick Kuhn, who was the city forester in McMinnville. In 2000, he nominated it to the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council's Landmark and Historic Tree Registry. We have a committee that goes through the process of vetting the nominations, and so they quickly approved that one. That was where we were first exposed to that tree, was in 2000.


Doug Still: [34:33] 
There are three different categories, right?


Tom Simpson: [34:35] 
Sure. Yeah. There was Landmark and Historic. These are living trees. Landmark trees are trees that are familiar to the community. They're commonly recognized by the community, and they're confirmed to be significant to the community's heritage. We can use that term interspersedly. And then, the historic trees are trees, they're living trees that have witnessed some historic event either regionally, statewide, nationwide, or in the community itself.


Doug Still: [35:08] 
I see. Then, you have a third category, which is “heritage trees.”


Tom Simpson: [35:12] 
Right. Well, the program started in 1998, but Gene Hyde, who was president of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council at the time, Nick Kuhn was a member of the council. So, in 2009, we had looked at nine years of the program and realized that some of the trees that we were entering into that registry had a lifespan that might not last forever. Most trees don't live forever. So, the stories and the historical significance of the trees would be lost once those trees passed away because the landmark and historic categories only have living trees.


Doug Still: [35:53] 
I see. So, heritage trees are trees of the past.


Tom Simpson: [35:56] 
Yes. We also want to be able to pick up trees that have passed away but were famous trees, except for the fact that they didn't survive up until the 1998 creation of the program.


Doug Still: [36:12] 
When a tree is recognized, what happens? Is there an award ceremony?


Tom Simpson: [36:18] 
There is an award ceremony, yeah. At the annual Tennessee Urban Forestry Council Meeting, we recognize the nominators or the owners of the trees. We have a plaque made, an inside plaque, a walnut plaque made for the one who nominated it or at least owns the tree. Then, we place the tree with its story, a picture of the tree in the story onto our website.


Doug Still: [36:46] 
That's great. So, if anyone wants to look these up, they can go to the website for the Tennessee Urban Community Forestry Council?


Tom Simpson: [36:53] 
tufc.com will take you to the website, and then it's listed under Programs then.


Doug Still: [37:02] 
Now, this all got compiled into a book, right?


Tom Simpson: [37:04] 
Yes. The book was called Trees of Tennessee. The council published this book and it's lacking of so many trees that we've put on the registry since then but it's a great coffee table hardcover book.


Doug Still: [37:21] 
It looks fantastic. I haven't held a copy of it in my hands, but it looks wonderful. Now, was The Birthing Tree one of the first trees designated in your program?


Tom Simpson: [37:32] 
It was not the first, but it was one of the first trees. It was one of the first trees. It is significant though because its size has been shown on many, many pictures that show the famous trees. It is a landmark tree in itself just from our program.


Doug Still: [37:51] 
What are a few other trees that have been recognized?


Tom Simpson: [37:55] 
Oh, my goodness. We could go on for a long time on that. To me, the “Moon Trees” are some of the most famous trees. Those are the trees as seeds that were on the Apollo 14 moon flight. Stuart Roosa, who had been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service in his past life, then he became an astronaut, and Apollo 14 was allowed-- the astronauts were allowed to take on some private individual objects. If you remember, Alan Shepard took golf clubs and had the longest golf drive on the moon.


But Stuart Roosa was a command module pilot and circled the moon while they were down on playing on the surface. After they returned, he let the US Forest Service take those into two laboratories and raise them into seedlings. In 1972, in our Bicentennial for our state, the US Forest Service donated four of those trees to our state that had been around the moon, and we planted those four trees, and it was a treasure hunt to find all four of those trees. But we did find all four of them, two sycamores and two loblolly pines.


There are other trees that are fascinating. There's a tree very close to The Birthing Tree in West Tennessee that is the Cherokee Oak. It was named because a woman that was on the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee lady, as the wagon broke down, she escaped and hid out in a cave near the tree. Later on, she married a white man in Middle Tennessee and formed many of the-- the union formed many of the citizens of Middle Tennessee from that family. That tree was also famous because the Cherokee Oak was the scene of a resting place for one of the last US Postal horseback riders who had a 26-mile route, and he would stop and rest his horse under that tree for many, many years until he retired.


Doug Still: [40:14] 
What's the Daniel Boone Tree? 


Tom Simpson: [40:16] 
The Daniel Boone Tree. Originally, 'D. Boon killed a bar', that's the famous one that in history books have. That was at Jonesboro, and it was on a beech tree that he carved, and it has since fell back in the storms.


Doug Still: [40:32] 
I'm sorry. He carved into the bark of a beech tree, what did he carve?


Tom Simpson: [40:38] 
'D. Boon killed a bar.'


Doug Still: [40:40] 
[chuckles] I see. You must have a picture of that.


Tom Simpson: [40:44] 
Well, we do.


Doug Still: [40:45] 
It's remarkable to me that those carvings would last that long.


Tom Simpson: [40:51] 
Well, sure.


Doug Still: [40:52] 
The bark didn't grow over them.


Tom Simpson: [40:55] 
No, the bark won't. It sometimes will be hard to read, but the bark won't cover all the way over the carvings themselves.


Doug Still: [41:02] 
More about that program. Why do you think that program is so important?


Tom Simpson: [41:06] 
Well, it shows a connection of what trees do for mankind and the connection that we have to trees. Those trees that live long enough and are significant enough to stand there, are living stories by themselves of the history of mankind around it, but not only the trees, but then they'll discover the history behind the trees.


[music]


Doug Still (Wilson story): [41:39] 
Back to the story of the Wilsons. We don't know how long they stayed in McMinnville after the birth of Elizabeth under the tree, but it may actually have been for a few years. Many people did settle in the McMinnville area. It was a promising place to be. However, the family shows up in the 1850 census, John, Celia, Elizabeth, and a new brother John had moved to East Tennessee, to McMinn County, not to be confused with McMinnville in Central Tennessee. Selah's extended family, most of the Norvell clan are shown to be living in McMinn County as well. So, they had moved from North Carolina. John and Selah met them there and lived a number of years. The Meltons, on the other hand, the family that had been traveling with them, kept on to Kentucky, and the 1850 census shows them living as farmers in Henderson County.


The 1860 census shows John, Celia, and the Wilson family in Ozark, Missouri. But then, other records show that they moved to Central Kentucky in the mid-1860s. The beginning and end of the civil war might have had something to do with these movements. Obviously, the Wilsons and Meltons met up again because James and Elizabeth were married on January 1, 1867, in Henderson County, Kentucky. They ended up having eight children together, six of whom survived childbirth. The Birthing Tree brought them pretty good luck after all.


Years later, after Hobart Massey met Vessie Gibson in Madisonville, he invited her back to McMinnville to see The Birthing Tree. Before she arrived, he painted a picture of it in oil and presented it to her underneath the spreading, marvelous oak tree her grandmother was born under.


[music]


Doug Still: [43:37] 
What makes The Birthing Tree so special, and why is it important to you?


Jimmy Haley: [43:42] 
I think part of the reason it's so special is because it survived. It survived the urbanization and development all around there. There's hospitals, there's hotels, there's clinics all around that area. The State Area Technology School is there. Motlow campus is there. There's several factories in and around. So, within just a quarter mile, there's a lot of development and there's a lot of asphalt, and there's a lot of pavement, and a four-lane highway running within just a few feet of the tree. So, just that it survived when the all the other trees around it have gone, to me, makes it a little special. It does.


Doug Still: [44:27] 
And six generations of your family have stood underneath that tree?


Jimmy Haley: [44:32] 
Yes.


Doug Still: [44:33] 
Most likely.


Jimmy Haley: [44:34] 
Most likely.


Tom Simpson: [44:36] 
Well, it's just the history of these trees is just fascinating to me, I guess.


Doug Still: [44:41] 
Yeah.


Tom Simpson: [44:42] 
Yeah, I love trees because I went to college and learned about forestry, and I've spent my life in forestry, but my second love was history. And to combine those two--


Doug Still: [44:55] 
Yeah, that's exactly why I do this.


Tom Simpson: [44:58] 
Yeah. [laughs]


Doug Still: [45:00] 
Just the combination - it's a living link to the past…


Tom Simpson: [45:04] 
It is indeed. Yes, sir.


Doug Still: [45:05] and historical events. I think that has a lot of inspiration for people.


Jimmy Haley: [45:11] 
The majesty of the tree and how it just hugs the ground, and you can walk in and amongst those gnarled limbs that are curled down toward the ground, you just feel almost encapsulated. It's almost like a cocoon, and you're just wrapped in a part of history, and it makes a very special feeling inside of you. And other people feel it too. When we did our Bicentennial for the county in 2007, The Birthing Tree was our symbol. We have a monument on Court Square that embellishes the story of really The Birthing Tree. Our phrase was, "Our roots run deep." So, not only do the roots of that oak tree run deep, but the roots of Warren County run similarly, in many cases, side by side through the generations.


Doug Still: [46:05] 
Well, I want to thank you for talking with me today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for sharing all of that history.


Jimmy Haley: [46:12] 
Thank you for wanting to share our history. We're very proud of it. Like I said our roots do run deep, and The Birthing tree is symbolic.


Doug Still: [46:22] 
And that's what The Birthing Tree is all about. I want to thank Jimmy Haley, the historian of Warren County, and Tom Simpson, the retired urban forester of Eastern Tennessee, for spending time with me to tell its story and for all of the contributions they made behind the scenes. What fantastic guests.


In preparing this episode, it was not lost on me that there is some tension in telling this story that explores and celebrates the act of giving birth to wanted children under this tree in Tennessee. At the same time, a debate is going on in that state as well as nationally, about women's rights to manage their own pregnancies. I support these rights. I think it only right to acknowledge this tension and allow you, the listener, to wrestle with it as you see fit.


And I have some other news. I've had the pleasure to connect with Elizabeth Wilson Melton's great, great, granddaughter, Elizabeth Benton, who was named after her. She's a hoot and a super nice person. She provided some of the top-notch genealogy I found that helped explain some of the family ties and stories. She also has photos of Elizabeth and James, which I have permission to share on Facebook and Instagram. And remember that oil painting that Hobart Massey gave to Vessie under The Birthing Tree? She tracked it down with some phone calls. Her cousin, Dana, had it. They sent a picture of that too. Thank you very much, Elizabeth and Dana.


[music]


Doug Still: [48:09] And thank you, tree lovers, for joining me again today. Please share the show far and wide and check out the revamped website at thisoldtree.show. All the episodes are there with show notes and transcripts. There's a way to donate through Patreon, and you can even buy a T-shirt. I'm Doug Still, and I'll see you next time with This Old Tree.




[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]
The Birthing Tree
Season 1, Episode 11 (Feb 27, 2023)
Transcript

Doug Still: [00:01] 
The Birthing Tree. A huge, gorgeous 350-year-old plus white oak in McMinnville, Tennessee. It's not only a city landmark, it's the pride of all of Tennessee and plays a part in the state's early Pioneer history. It's more than just a big tree. So, how did it get its name and what's its story? In this episode, we visit with Warren County historian, Jimmy Haley, as well as Tom Simpson, who gave its official state historic designation when he was a regional urban forester. We’ll also follow Celia Wilson and her family on the Settler's Trail. Who? You'll find out. Join me to discover The Birthing Tree. I'm Doug Still, and this is This Old Tree.

[This Old Tree theme]

Doug Still: [01:04] 
I'd like to start with two important acknowledgments. The first is that the original inhabitants and stewards of the land where we now find McMinnville, Tennessee, were clans of the Greater Cherokee Nation. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the mass migration of Cherokee to the west, to territory that the government had designated. Although there were many routes, collectively, this was the tragic Trail of Tears, which comes up during today's episode.

The second acknowledgment is that we cannot separate our story from the terrible history of slavery which impacted contemporary events, the Civil War, and a legacy of inequality. I thank my guests for their forthright discussion. And now to our show.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson Story): [02:03] 
Celia Wilson, or Selah as most people called her, was unsure that leaving Rutherfordton, North Carolina, to head west was a good idea. It was summer, it was hot, and she was pregnant with her first child. She'd just married her husband, John Wilson, last year in September of 1844. Her whole family, the Norvells, would remain in Rutherfordton, at least for now, and she'd be leaving them behind. She was just 21 and had never seen the world outside of Rutherford County. But John insisted because they were starting a family. He was 28, but they didn't have land of their own. They needed that if they were going to be farmers and support themselves. She agreed. It seemed the best choice under the circumstances. Besides, lots of people were heading west. The trail had been blazed, so to speak.

They heard there was open land with good soil to be had. They packed up their possessions, and her family helped stock the wagon that John had, and he had horses too. There was nothing but a canvas cover to keep out the rain. At least there were other young families going too, they wouldn't be going it alone. On an agreed-upon day, they left, most likely passed Asheville and then a gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Selah was sad, nervous, and excited all at the same time.

We'll come back to Celia and the Wilsons wagon train in a bit. But jumping into the present, I'd like to introduce Jimmy Haley. He was a teacher of economics and government at Warren County High School in Tennessee, the former mayor of McMinnville, and the official Warren County historian. Jimmy is the right person to talk to about The Birthing Tree and the history of McMinnville.

[music]

Well, Jimmy, welcome to the show.

Jimmy Haley: [03:59] 
Thank you for having me.

Doug Still: [04:00] 
We're here today to talk about The Birthing Tree, which is an icon in McMinnville, Tennessee. And I've seen pictures of it. It's just fantastic. But I have a few questions for you. Are you a native Tennessean?

Jimmy Haley: [04:13] 
I'm a native Tennessean, and I'm a native of Warren County. I was born and raised here, and so I've been here my whole life.

Doug Still: [04:20] 
Native to McMinnville or nearby McMinnville?

Jimmy Haley: [04:22] 
McMinnville. Yes.

Doug Still: [04:24] 
When you were growing up, when did you first become aware of The Birthing Tree and its significance?

Jimmy Haley: [04:30] 
It's on a major highway running through the county, and so anyone and everyone that travels that Highway 70 goes by that tree. So, even as a small child, I understood the significance of the tree because it was so large, and they redirected the highway when they were building it just to avoid cutting the tree because it was already kind of an iconic representation of who we are as Warren County people.

Doug Still: [04:58] 
And when did that happen?

Jimmy Haley: [05:01] 
It was like in the 1950s.

Doug Still: [05:03] 
1950s, it was such an important tree, and they just rerouted the highway around it.

Jimmy Haley: [05:09] 
They moved it, the highway over just to avoid coming any closer to the tree than they had to.

Doug Still: [05:15] 
I was wondering if you could describe The Birthing Tree for our listeners. Where is it situated and what does it look like and what does it feel like to stand underneath it?

Jimmy Haley: [05:26] 
Well, it's not very far from downtown. It's actually across from the birthing unit from our local hospital. Like I said, it's on the Sparta Highway, the Old Kentucky Road, Broadway of America, Highway 70s. It goes by a variety of names, but it's been a major thoroughfare since the early settlers' days. So, it's a majestic tree. It's a white oak. It's almost 90ft tall. The branches are sprawling, and they hover toward the ground. And so, it's kind of gnarled looking. It's so majestic in the width and the girth of the base of the tree that it's almost impossible not to recognize the importance of it.

As a small child, I would ask my father to stop, and I would get out and go under and stand under the tree because you have a special feeling when you're under the tree. It's hard to describe but anybody that's ever been there, you can feel it. It's just an awesome, overwhelming feeling of history and the powers of Mother Nature to create a tree that's that tall and that wide and those sprawling branches that hover toward the ground.

Doug Still: [06:45] 
Everyone in McMinnville knows this tremendous tree, and as I said before, it's caught the attention of tree lovers and experts across the state. Here is how Tom Simpson describes it, the former East Tennessee Regional Urban Forester within the Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry.

Tom Simpson: [07:04] Well, it is an extremely impressive tree. It is a huge white oak tree that's on the entrance to McMinnville from the state right away, the town of McMinnville. You can see this tree from a great distance away as you drive down the highway. I can't even fathom what it looked like when they were doing it on wagons and horseback, but this gigantic tree has a crown spread of 130ft.

Doug Still: [07:31] 
Wow.

Tom Simpson: [07:33] 
Its height is not so impressive. It was only 81ft when we entered it in 2000, it's probably not that much higher now, but the diameter of the tree was in the neighborhood of 7ft. So, it was a very large circumference area tree with a huge canopy that broadened out and covered a large area of surface. So, when you walked under it, you felt like you were in a forest by itself. There was one limb that came off of it that's still there that grew out and angled down toward the ground and then grew back up. Yeah. Just kind of convoluted out. And that one limb is larger than a lot of trees.

Doug Still: [08:16] 
And that limb is still there, or it fell?

Tom Simpson: [08:18] 
That limb is still there to my knowledge, yes.

Doug Still: [08:22] 
Oh, great. Kids play on that and climb on it.

Tom Simpson: [08:25] Sure. [they laugh]

Doug Still: [08:29] Is there a fence around it?

Tom Simpson: [08:31] 
No. Not to my knowledge and I haven't seen it in a couple of years. What happened is that the tree was so significant to the community, a developer was going to develop some property nearby and the city became concerned that we might lose the tree just from the standpoint of encroachment of construction. So, they wrangled a deal to purchase the footprint of the tree. So, the tree became actual property of the city of McMinnville, and they erected a plaque.

Doug Still: [09:07] 
And so, it's surrounded by private property?

Tom Simpson: [09:10] 
Yes, it is.

Jimmy Haley: [09:12] 
I used to climb on it. They don't recommend anybody climbing on it now because the branches are somewhat fragile, and they've been cabled up. Dr. Neil Schultz, a local retired orthodontist, fell in love with that tree as a young man himself, growing up here in McMinnville, and coveted the protection of that tree to the point where when a developer bought the property and was going to build a clinic there, we all rallied behind not cutting the tree, which we were afraid was going to happen, just to protect it. Dr. Schultz then spent his own money to help stabilize the tree and cable it and get some professional arborists in to make sure that we were doing everything we could to increase the longevity of the tree since it's 300 years old perhaps, or even older.

Doug Still: [10:03] 
The land underneath the drip line of the tree is now city property and protected. Is that correct?

Jimmy Haley: [10:10] 
It is. It's like a pocket park for the city of McMinnville. We have a sign there saying such and asking people not to climb on the tree and not to do anything destructive. People drive far and wide. I see people there all the time. If I'm able, I will stop and talk a little bit about the tree and find out where they're from. But people from all over the country come on some of their little side trips, they want to come see the tree.

Doug Still: [10:39] 
It's nice to be welcomed by the mayor underneath The Birthing Tree.

Jimmy Haley: [10:42] 
Well, I don't always announce myself as the mayor, so I just kind of go incognito on that one.

Doug Still: [10:48] 
Right.

Jimmy Haley: [10:49] 
I've loved the tree my whole life, and it's just a special place. It was a special place for the early settlers. It was on the old Kentucky Road and so anyone traveling into Warren County passed through a grove of very large oak trees at that time.

Doug Still: [11:07] 
I see. So, there was a grove, there wasn't just the one?

Jimmy Haley: [11:10] 
No, there was a grove of oak trees there. That Old Kentucky Road came right down through the middle of them. It was a natural place, according to legend, for settlers to water their horses or oxen and to gather there under the trees to rest before they came into town. Hence the story and the legend of children being born under the tree for refuge in those wagon trains before they came into town. Hence The Birthing Tree.

Doug Still: [11:41] 
What's the basic story behind The Birthing Tree?

Tom Simpson: [11:44] 
Well, the one story is that many of the old settlement trails in Tennessee, one of them was called the Kentucky Trail, the other one was called the Old Walton Trail, which was in Middle Tennessee. This tree stands in Middle Tennessee. But the confluence of several of those trails came right up under The Birthing Tree. So, as settlers would move down the trail going toward Alabama or coming back from Alabama, going toward Kentucky or Virginia, they knew about this place. They had it as a meeting place for many, many years. Parties would wait for other parties to hook up with them on the trail. As they were waiting, some of the women would deliver babies underneath the trees. Hence the name, Birthing Tree. There are many stories in Middle Tennessee of families, their grandparents, parents who still know are all born under the tree itself.

Doug Still: [12:47] 
So, these were wagon trains, just like in the old movies?

Tom Simpson: [12:50] 
Yes. Of course, horseback and foot traffic as well. One of the other stories was this tree was near the Trail of Tears originally, the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears as they went out to Oklahoma. We've not been able to confirm that exactly, but we know it's in the vicinity of the old Trail of Tears in Middle Tennessee.

Doug Still: [13:20] 
I found a relevant map on the National Park Service website. One spur of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee came directly through McMinnville. 

The trail, the Old Kentucky Trail?

Tom Simpson: [13:33] 
Mm-hmm. Right.

Doug Still: [13:34] 
You said then comes down to Alabama, and then it sort of swings west, of people heading west.

Tom Simpson: [13:41] 
Yes. One of the trails peeled off and went westward. The Old Walton Trail was a connection between East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee that went up through Cookville and areas up into Kentucky. So, like I said, there was a confluence of trails going east and west and north and south and they all met somewhere right at The Birthing Tree.

Doug Still: [14:02] 
So, not all of the Pioneers that might have stayed under the tree were heading west. They might have just been heading south.

Tom Simpson: [14:08] 
Correct.

Doug Still: [14:09] 
And vice versa.

Tom Simpson: [14:10] 
Yes. Vice versa.

Doug Still: [14:12] 
It was sort of like a rest stop.

[laughter]

Tom Simpson: [14:16] 
Well, yeah, one of our modern-day interstate rest stops. But the tree was so large even then in the late 1700s, that the canopy just covered an enormous area, and settlers could rest under there for days. In fact, we've heard stories of a week or so where people would stand under the tree to be shaded from the sun in the summer and perhaps some of the storms that came through there.

Doug Still: [14:43] 
And it just gathered this lore. Right?

Tom Simpson: [14:47] [laughs] Yes.

Doug Still: [14:49] 
After a quick break, we'll hear more from our guests, Tom Simpson and Jimmy Haley, about The Birthing Tree and its part in Tennessee history. You're listening to This Old Tree.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [15:12] 
The wagon train eased out of the Smoky Mountains, moving slowly down the bumpy path into the Cumberland Valley of Eastern Tennessee. It had been over a month and Selah's feet hurt. There may have been wagons, but nobody rode in them unless they wanted to jar their spine and develop a headache. Pregnant or not, she walked most of the way like everyone else. But as the summer was ending, the baby was getting bigger. Another family in the wagon train were the Meltons, and John and Selah got to know Spencer and his wife, Rosanna, very well. They were also from Rutherford County, and they had a son with them, 13-year-old James Melton. I imagine that to him, every day was exciting, running off ahead or exploring the woods nearby with other kids. Perhaps, he helped his father hunt.

The trail in the Flat Valley was a relief after the difficult mountain terrain, and there were towns and settlements along the way to get supplies. When they got near Chattanooga after a few weeks, they were told they needed to head west and climb again and find a past called Hills Trace that led to the Cumberland Plateau of Central Tennessee. There, they would connect with the Kentucky Road, which traversed somewhat in a north-south direction. Many settlers entered Central Tennessee from the north along this well-used road, but the Wilsons approached it from the southern end of the plateau. The Meltons and the Wilsons were heading to Kentucky, where there was good land being offered to settlers, cheap. Selah wondered where she would be when her baby was born.

Who were the Pioneers that were traveling on this road in the wagon trains? We're talking about 1780s, 1790s, and the first few decades of the 1800s. Is that correct? Or was it a longer period of time when the wagon trains came through?

Jimmy Haley: [17:06] 
Well, the earliest settlers were coming through here in the 1780s and 90s. There were very few people living here at that particular time. Many of them were going down on to Nashville and Fort Nashborough. Here in McMinnville, most of the settlers were coming through after 1800. Many of them were headed further west or further south. The territory was wide open for settlement, and so Warren County quickly grew. A lot of people who came through here decided it was a great place to live. They loved the terrain. It was rich soil. We have four rivers that converge here and surrounded by mountains, and the soil was rich enough to support crops and cattle, and pastureland. So, a lot of people decided to stay.

McMinnville was founded in 1810, and so it grew quite rapidly as the county seat. With the courthouse and court proceedings and just the logistics of business, everyone from the county came into town and of course, anybody that lived in the northern part of the county would travel the Kentucky Road into McMinnville on the Sparta Road into downtown.

Doug Still: [18:19] 
You said four rivers converge there?

Jimmy Haley: [18:21] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [18:22] 
But it also seems like there's the Old Kentucky Road but there are many offshoots and directions people were coming and going. Some are going west, some are going south.

Jimmy Haley: [18:32] 
Yes. People traveling from Kentucky down into Tennessee or from Virginia and particularly into Tennessee. Most of the settlers here, a lot of people came from North Carolina and came across the mountains that way. Many of them came from Chattanooga and came across the mountains that way. So, they didn't travel the Old Kentucky Road. They traveled some other roads, Hills Trace, and others.

Tom Simpson: [18:56] 
Yeah, there were trails over what we now term as Rockwood Mountain. There were trails that went through some gaps through there that went over into Middle Tennessee. I don't even know the name of those gaps anymore, but they knew. There was one trail that came through Rockwood in East Tennessee that had a toll road set up by the Cherokees, and you would pay a toll to go westward from there. That trail took you back up over to the plateau, the Cumberland Plateau, and then on beyond into wherever you wanted to go from that point.

Doug Still: [19:34] 
Who were the settlers?

Jimmy Haley: [19:36] 
A lot of them were what we call Scotch Irish. Like I said, a lot of them came from Virginia and North Carolina. Of course, many of them had emigrated from other colonies into those states early on. But the majority of our stock is Virginia and North Carolina settlers. Many of them were second and third, maybe fourth-generation settlers. The land was starting to play out. They were looking for new fortunes. They were looking for new opportunities in the west. Tennessee was western land at that particular time and didn't cross over the Mississippi quite yet. So, a lot of people sought their fortunes here.

Doug Still: [20:20] 
So, they were not fresh off the boat. They were colonists who had been living elsewhere and were moving west. Some of the men were in the Revolutionary War, I believe?

Jimmy Haley: [20:32] 
Yes, they were. Many of them had land grants to settle here. That brought many of them here to this area, either from serving a lot in the Virginia militia or in the North Carolina army as well.

Doug Still: [20:44] 
What was it that they wanted? What were they dreaming about?

Jimmy Haley: [20:48] 
If it was like my family, they were just looking for a better life, a new opportunity, a new start. The frontier offers a lot to new settlers and so you can start a business, you can start a farm, or you can do both, which is what a lot of settlers did. They would oftentimes have businesses in town and then also have farm operations alongside of that. It was never really a log city. It was a very formally laid out town with brick sidewalks and brick buildings and some very sophisticated people, lawyers and doctors settled here early on and a lot of businessmen profited. With the coming of the railroad in the 1850s, it even made it more opportunity for people to come here.

Doug Still: [21:35] 
To the best of your ability, what do you think life was like on one of those wagon trains? What do you think their biggest hardship was?

Jimmy Haley: [21:45] 
Probably food and water. In the early days, most of the Native American challenges, by the early 1800s were over. In the 1780s and 1790s, that was not the case. Native Americans were still fighting for control and possession of this territory and the land. So, there were several little skirmishes in and around McMinnville and of course in Middle Tennessee, in and around Nashville as well during that period. My grandmother came here a little bit later than that. They moved from Alabama actually to Warren County. They came by wagon and oxen and mules and came across through Chattanooga and had to cross on a ferry boat on the Tennessee River. Just like in the western stories, they make a big circle and a big bonfire in the middle. Children would oftentimes change places on the seats of other people's wagons. They sang songs. Most of the time they took enough provisions to feed them. Fresh water was a little bit of an obstacle and of course, catching diseases and getting ill with dysentery. Those are things that were oftentimes crucial. And of course, if a woman was pregnant or you had small children, it was a bumpy ride.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [23:25] 
The Wilsons' wagon train made their way up over Hills Trace and they saw the plateau. They followed a trail down off the path that loosely saddled the Collins River and went by the location of present-day Irving College. Approaching McMinnville from the south, they crossed Barren Fork, a tributary of the Collins. It is not clear if there was a bridge at that time or they had to ford the stream. Most likely it was October or even early November when they entered McMinnville. Selah was getting closer to giving birth, and she knew they needed to stop. Walking was becoming very difficult and so was riding in the wagon or by horse. She began to receive advice from people they met along the trail that McMinnville might be a good place to stop because it was a growing town with storefronts and a doctor.

The forest all around had been cleared by then but there were several big oak trees they could camp under. One of them had a growing legend. If your baby is born beneath it, that was good luck. They found the big tree. You couldn't miss it from a mile away. Its branches stretched out wide and welcoming. There were other people in wagons beneath it, some community. It was as good a place as any. They set up there, and on November 12th, 1845, Selah gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Wilson.

So, McMinnville was the natural place to stop due to restock and resupply. Was there water here?

Jimmy Haley: [25:02] 
Yes, because of the water and like I said, the businesses that were here.

Doug Still: [25:07] 
So, there were businesses? Could you describe that?

Jimmy Haley: [25:10] 
Oh, there were mercantile stores, we had blacksmiths, which were crucial and stuff in early settlement with horses and mules and oxen. We had cabinet makers, we had people doing construction for homes. We had builders, and attorneys. There was very little that Warren County didn't have early on by 1840 or 1850. By the time the railroad came, we were a fairly sophisticated little town.

Doug Still: [25:39] 
What about around 1800? Was there like a main street with buildings?

Jimmy Haley: [25:43] 
No. McMinnville wasn't founded till 1810 and so the county was founded in 1807. We still had quite a bit of settlers here but McMinnville had not been laid out or was not the county seat at that particular time.

Doug Still: [25:58] 
Now, you said that your ancestors were one of those Pioneers, one of the settlers?

Jimmy Haley: [26:04] 
They were. My early settlers came from Virginia, North Carolina, on both sides of my family and they were here very early. On the Martin side, they were here before 1800 settling here in White County and in Van Buren County. Those are two nearby counties.

Doug Still: [26:25] 
What were their names?

Jimmy Haley: [26:26] 
They were Martins, the last name was Martin. And then, the Haleys came later. They originally settled in Cannon County and then moved to Warren County in the 1820s from nearby. Cannon County at that time was part of Warren County. It didn't become Cannon County till later, so it was all Warren County, but they moved closer in.

Doug Still: [26:48] 
Do you have any items from the Martins when they were here? Like letters or anything?

Jimmy Haley: [26:53] 
I have quite a few-- a whole box of letters, and my family, they also owned, enslaved people. So, I have those papers as well that I've hung on to and plan to give to the state archives so they can be preserved as this is a part of history. I have a spinning wheel from my father's side that dates back to about 1810, 1820. It was my great, great, grandmother's that she spun on. So, I still have that.

Doug Still: [27:24] 
Any old photos that might have the tree in it?

Jimmy Haley: [27:28] 
There are very few photographs that show that tree, and I'm not really sure exactly why. We've tried to identify some, and they just don't exist. Pictures that were taken of the house don't include the tree. They show the house and the trees around the house.

Doug Still: [27:44] 
Just back to the Martins, how many generations back is that?

Jimmy Haley: [27:49] 
Uh, six, I think.

Doug Still: [27:51] 
Wow.

Tom Simpson: [27:53] 
There's local lore that we really didn't even know about. If you live in East Tennessee, you didn't know, you didn't hear about it. It's not published on TV shows or whatever.

Doug Still: [28:03] 
Now, you're in Knoxville, right?

Tom Simpson: [28:04] 
I'm in Knoxville. Right.

Doug Still: [28:05] 
So, that's over the mountains.

Tom Simpson: [28:07] 
Over the mountains, yes.

Doug Still: [28:09] 
Right. It feels very like a different place.

Tom Simpson: [28:14] 
Sure. We had not heard about The Birthing Tree until it was actually nominated. But then, once we got digging into the history behind it, you could pick out many, many, stories and many documentations on this particular tree.

Doug Still: [28:30] 
Do you have any specific stories of families that might have been camped underneath the tree or someone who was born under the tree?

Tom Simpson: [28:38] 
No, I don't particularly have those stories. We've heard of some, and there were some articles published locally in McMinnville for several years over some of those stories. I just don't have access to those right now.

Doug Still: [28:54] 
Jimmy Haley didn't actually know anyone either who claims their ancestor was born under The Birthing Tree. I spoke to several other people in McMinnville, and finding someone with a real story was proving difficult. It seemed that while this was a legend that many people knew about, it may be more legend than fact. Then, I came across an article that mentioned Hobart Massey, a former Warren County historian and a local character who passed away in 1982.

This was probably before your time, but did you have a chance to know Hobart Massey?

Jimmy Haley: [29:29] 
I did know Mr. Hobart Massey. I did quite well. He was big into agriculture extension here and helped with the fair. He was an amazing gentleman who knew history and loved to tell stories and was legendary, really.

Doug Still: [29:48] 
He was an historian?

Jimmy Haley: [29:49] 
He was the county historian, but he called himself a historian. He loved stories. He loved repeating them. He was an amazing, legendary person who loved to spin a good tale and tell a good story.

Doug Still: [30:05] 
My understanding is it might have been him that coined the term, The Birthing Tree.

Jimmy Haley: [30:09] 
That has been said before. When I was a little kid, I didn't call it The Birthing Tree. We just called it the big tree. The big oak tree.

Doug Still: [30:22] 
Right.

Jimmy Haley: [30:23] 
And so then, people started calling it The Birthing Tree for the last 50, 60 years, that's all anyone-- that's the only name that people place upon it now.

Doug Still: [30:33] 
He apparently wrote a few articles in the local paper.

Jimmy Haley: [30:37] 
He wrote several articles, and a lot of those have become-- they've repeated a lot of legends. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to separate legend and lore from fact. There's very little factual information or written information on that tree, which is amazing. So, until it was nominated as a landmark tree by a former urban forester for city member, Nick Kuhn, there was very little research that had been done on it. So, when they started digging, there were more stories and legend than there was actual factual information on it. In fact, some of those stories have been told many times now that people-- [crosstalk]

Doug Still: [31:26] 
They've become fact.

Jimmy Haley: [31:28] 
They'd become fact.

Doug Still: [31:29] 
What was the name of the paper that Hobart Massey would have written in?

Jimmy Haley: [31:33] 
The Southern Standard. Southern Standard has been around since 1870s. So, it's a landmark newspaper.

Doug Still: [31:40] 
Where would I go to find them? Historical Society?

Jimmy Haley: [31:45] 
The library. The Magness Library Downtown has the genealogy room.

Doug Still: [31:50] 
Magness Library?

Jimmy Haley: [31:51] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [31:52] 
Later, after the interview, I called the Magness Library and spoke to Cheryl Watson-Mingle, the genealogist there. She laughed when I asked her if she had information about The Birthing Tree because Jimmy had already called her about it. She was on it. She had found a typewritten transcript for an article written by Hobart Massey in the Warren County News back in 1980 called The Birthing Tree. She emailed it to me. Finally, I found what I was looking for.

It tells the story of Hobart Massey attending a three-day church meeting up in Madisonville, Kentucky, about a three-hour drive north from McMinnville. During that meeting, he met an elderly woman, Mrs. John S. Gibson, and got to know her a bit. Mrs. Gibson knew McMinnville. She said her grandmother was born under a large tree there. Hobart was already familiar with the legend, and he was off and running.

He told her all about the old white oak tree. Mrs. Gibson's maiden name was Sylvester Moseley, but she was known as Vessie to people that knew her. She was the daughter of Sylvester-- yes, she was given her father's name -  and Florence Moseley, known as “Maw Mosley.” This led to finding further information on Ancestry.com. Hey, there's nothing like doing a little research from a home computer. Now, Maw Moseley was the daughter of one James Melton, the 13-year-old boy we met earlier in our story, and you guessed it, Elizabeth Wilson.

[Music]

You're listening to This Old Tree. After another short break, we'll learn about the legacy of McMinnville, Tennessee's historic white oak, The Birthing Tree.

You ran the Heritage Tree Program, or what was the name of that program?

Tom Simpson: [33:48] 
At the time, it was called the Landmark and Historic Tree Program or Register.

Doug Still: [33:53] 
What's it called now?

Tom Simpson: [33:54] 
Well, it's called the Landmark, Historic, and Heritage Tree because in 2009, we added the category of “heritage.”

Doug Still: [34:03] 
How did the tree first come to your attention?

Tom Simpson: [34:05] 
Yeah, The Birthing Tree was nominated by Nick Kuhn, who was the city forester in McMinnville. In 2000, he nominated it to the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council's Landmark and Historic Tree Registry. We have a committee that goes through the process of vetting the nominations, and so they quickly approved that one. That was where we were first exposed to that tree, was in 2000.

Doug Still: [34:33] 
There are three different categories, right?

Tom Simpson: [34:35] 
Sure. Yeah. There was Landmark and Historic. These are living trees. Landmark trees are trees that are familiar to the community. They're commonly recognized by the community, and they're confirmed to be significant to the community's heritage. We can use that term interspersedly. And then, the historic trees are trees, they're living trees that have witnessed some historic event either regionally, statewide, nationwide, or in the community itself.

Doug Still: [35:08] 
I see. Then, you have a third category, which is “heritage trees.”

Tom Simpson: [35:12] 
Right. Well, the program started in 1998, but Gene Hyde, who was president of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council at the time, Nick Kuhn was a member of the council. So, in 2009, we had looked at nine years of the program and realized that some of the trees that we were entering into that registry had a lifespan that might not last forever. Most trees don't live forever. So, the stories and the historical significance of the trees would be lost once those trees passed away because the landmark and historic categories only have living trees.

Doug Still: [35:53] 
I see. So, heritage trees are trees of the past.

Tom Simpson: [35:56] 
Yes. We also want to be able to pick up trees that have passed away but were famous trees, except for the fact that they didn't survive up until the 1998 creation of the program.

Doug Still: [36:12] 
When a tree is recognized, what happens? Is there an award ceremony?

Tom Simpson: [36:18] 
There is an award ceremony, yeah. At the annual Tennessee Urban Forestry Council Meeting, we recognize the nominators or the owners of the trees. We have a plaque made, an inside plaque, a walnut plaque made for the one who nominated it or at least owns the tree. Then, we place the tree with its story, a picture of the tree in the story onto our website.

Doug Still: [36:46] 
That's great. So, if anyone wants to look these up, they can go to the website for the Tennessee Urban Community Forestry Council?

Tom Simpson: [36:53] 
tufc.com will take you to the website, and then it's listed under Programs then.

Doug Still: [37:02] 
Now, this all got compiled into a book, right?

Tom Simpson: [37:04] 
Yes. The book was called Trees of Tennessee. The council published this book and it's lacking of so many trees that we've put on the registry since then but it's a great coffee table hardcover book.

Doug Still: [37:21] 
It looks fantastic. I haven't held a copy of it in my hands, but it looks wonderful. Now, was The Birthing Tree one of the first trees designated in your program?

Tom Simpson: [37:32] 
It was not the first, but it was one of the first trees. It was one of the first trees. It is significant though because its size has been shown on many, many pictures that show the famous trees. It is a landmark tree in itself just from our program.

Doug Still: [37:51] 
What are a few other trees that have been recognized?

Tom Simpson: [37:55] 
Oh, my goodness. We could go on for a long time on that. To me, the “Moon Trees” are some of the most famous trees. Those are the trees as seeds that were on the Apollo 14 moon flight. Stuart Roosa, who had been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service in his past life, then he became an astronaut, and Apollo 14 was allowed-- the astronauts were allowed to take on some private individual objects. If you remember, Alan Shepard took golf clubs and had the longest golf drive on the moon.

But Stuart Roosa was a command module pilot and circled the moon while they were down on playing on the surface. After they returned, he let the US Forest Service take those into two laboratories and raise them into seedlings. In 1972, in our Bicentennial for our state, the US Forest Service donated four of those trees to our state that had been around the moon, and we planted those four trees, and it was a treasure hunt to find all four of those trees. But we did find all four of them, two sycamores and two loblolly pines.

There are other trees that are fascinating. There's a tree very close to The Birthing Tree in West Tennessee that is the Cherokee Oak. It was named because a woman that was on the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee lady, as the wagon broke down, she escaped and hid out in a cave near the tree. Later on, she married a white man in Middle Tennessee and formed many of the-- the union formed many of the citizens of Middle Tennessee from that family. That tree was also famous because the Cherokee Oak was the scene of a resting place for one of the last US Postal horseback riders who had a 26-mile route, and he would stop and rest his horse under that tree for many, many years until he retired.

Doug Still: [40:14] 
What's the Daniel Boone Tree? 

Tom Simpson: [40:16] 
The Daniel Boone Tree. Originally, 'D. Boon killed a bar', that's the famous one that in history books have. That was at Jonesboro, and it was on a beech tree that he carved, and it has since fell back in the storms.

Doug Still: [40:32] 
I'm sorry. He carved into the bark of a beech tree, what did he carve?

Tom Simpson: [40:38] 
'D. Boon killed a bar.'

Doug Still: [40:40] 
[chuckles] I see. You must have a picture of that.

Tom Simpson: [40:44] 
Well, we do.

Doug Still: [40:45] 
It's remarkable to me that those carvings would last that long.

Tom Simpson: [40:51] 
Well, sure.

Doug Still: [40:52] 
The bark didn't grow over them.

Tom Simpson: [40:55] 
No, the bark won't. It sometimes will be hard to read, but the bark won't cover all the way over the carvings themselves.

Doug Still: [41:02] 
More about that program. Why do you think that program is so important?

Tom Simpson: [41:06] 
Well, it shows a connection of what trees do for mankind and the connection that we have to trees. Those trees that live long enough and are significant enough to stand there, are living stories by themselves of the history of mankind around it, but not only the trees, but then they'll discover the history behind the trees.

[music]

Doug Still (Wilson story): [41:39] 
Back to the story of the Wilsons. We don't know how long they stayed in McMinnville after the birth of Elizabeth under the tree, but it may actually have been for a few years. Many people did settle in the McMinnville area. It was a promising place to be. However, the family shows up in the 1850 census, John, Celia, Elizabeth, and a new brother John had moved to East Tennessee, to McMinn County, not to be confused with McMinnville in Central Tennessee. Selah's extended family, most of the Norvell clan are shown to be living in McMinn County as well. So, they had moved from North Carolina. John and Selah met them there and lived a number of years. The Meltons, on the other hand, the family that had been traveling with them, kept on to Kentucky, and the 1850 census shows them living as farmers in Henderson County.

The 1860 census shows John, Celia, and the Wilson family in Ozark, Missouri. But then, other records show that they moved to Central Kentucky in the mid-1860s. The beginning and end of the civil war might have had something to do with these movements. Obviously, the Wilsons and Meltons met up again because James and Elizabeth were married on January 1, 1867, in Henderson County, Kentucky. They ended up having eight children together, six of whom survived childbirth. The Birthing Tree brought them pretty good luck after all.

Years later, after Hobart Massey met Vessie Gibson in Madisonville, he invited her back to McMinnville to see The Birthing Tree. Before she arrived, he painted a picture of it in oil and presented it to her underneath the spreading, marvelous oak tree her grandmother was born under.

[music]

Doug Still: [43:37] 
What makes The Birthing Tree so special, and why is it important to you?

Jimmy Haley: [43:42] 
I think part of the reason it's so special is because it survived. It survived the urbanization and development all around there. There's hospitals, there's hotels, there's clinics all around that area. The State Area Technology School is there. Motlow campus is there. There's several factories in and around. So, within just a quarter mile, there's a lot of development and there's a lot of asphalt, and there's a lot of pavement, and a four-lane highway running within just a few feet of the tree. So, just that it survived when the all the other trees around it have gone, to me, makes it a little special. It does.

Doug Still: [44:27] 
And six generations of your family have stood underneath that tree?

Jimmy Haley: [44:32] 
Yes.

Doug Still: [44:33] 
Most likely.

Jimmy Haley: [44:34] 
Most likely.

Tom Simpson: [44:36] 
Well, it's just the history of these trees is just fascinating to me, I guess.

Doug Still: [44:41] 
Yeah.

Tom Simpson: [44:42] 
Yeah, I love trees because I went to college and learned about forestry, and I've spent my life in forestry, but my second love was history. And to combine those two--

Doug Still: [44:55] 
Yeah, that's exactly why I do this.

Tom Simpson: [44:58] 
Yeah. [laughs]

Doug Still: [45:00] 
Just the combination - it's a living link to the past…

Tom Simpson: [45:04] 
It is indeed. Yes, sir.

Doug Still: [45:05] and historical events. I think that has a lot of inspiration for people.