| Sources |
- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 285.
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 12 Jul 2005.
"Park descendants" travel great distances to Cosby reunion
„E2005 NPT PHOTO by GARY BUTLER Don Williamson, of Rooster Town Road, Cosby, and his niece Ramona Griffin, of Elma, N.Y., are all smiles in this photo, but Griffin said she was not smiling when she spent $2,000 on maintenance and repairs to her motor home en route to a gathering at Williamson's home on Saturday. Griffin said, however, that, unexpected expenses aside, she and her family enjoyed the reunion of descendants of families who once resided inside the boundary of what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
By: Gary Butler
Source: The Newport Plain Talk
07-12-2005
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COSBYˇXMore than 100 people traveled from cities as distant as Buffalo, N.Y. and Panama City, Fla. For a reunion on Saturday of surviving residents and descendants of local residents who were displaced by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1930s.
Event organizer Don Williamson, of 134 Rooster Town Road, made his 40-acres in upper Cosby available for families, who traveled from many different states to camp, reminisce, and discuss family history.
Williamson said several of the visitors joined him in touring sites of homes, cemeteries, churches, and schools in the area of upper Cosby that once was the home of many families, including the Balls, Baxters, Campbells, Carvers, Caughrons, Costners, Giles, Gillilands, Gunters, Harrisons, Jenkins, Johnsons, Lindseys, Maddrons, McGahas, McMahans, Millers, Phillips, Ramseys, Suttons, Tritts, Valentines, and Webbs.
Williamson and his two surviving brothers, Dee R. Williamson, 80, and Edgar Williamson, 82, were born in a house near Hen Wallow Falls, not too far from where Don Williamson and his family now live.
"All the people [surviving residents] who came back here this weekend were born within five miles of here," said Williamson.
Williamson said that, back in the 1930s, "the state bought all this land, then turned it over to the federal government.
"The government gave us $9 an acre back then for the 40 acres we had," said Williamson.
Williamson and his brothers said one of their greatest concerns these days is the fact that, "There are more than 50 miles of trails they [Park Service] won't clear.
"And what's worse, they won't let us clear it either," he said. "They say they want it to be a wilderness area, but a lot of folks around here would like to walk those trails."
Williamson said he does not believe that clearing a few trails, or allowing private citizens to clear them, would be too great a price for having uprooted his family and the families of many other "park" people more than 70 years ago.
Williamson pointed out that his family and the others had little choice back then, when thousands of acres of land in Tennessee and North Carolina were set aside for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
He said many of the families had been living on land granted to their ancestors more than a century earlier, and that some of the tracts were given to Revolutionary War soldiers as payment for their service to the Continental Army.
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1938 - (85 years)