There was also an area where the Clinch and Powell rivers meet which is now a game management area where my moms family lived. When the lake was built most persons in that area were bought out because it was such a remote area. But I can remember persons still living in that area in the late 1960's. When my grandmother was alive we'd drive through the area and she could literally tell us who lived where. This was in an area called White Creek and Lost Creek on the Clinch River side. My mom was born in the town of Loyston shown in the pictures which was flooded for Norris Lake. I like doing genealogy look ups on my mom and dads family when I get a chance. With that you learn a lot of history.
Looking at the picture captioned "Mule-powered plowing on the Melton farm, Anderson County, TN. National Archives." If I'm looking at where I think I am a Walmart and interstate would be in the background. That area is also called Bethel. I suspect this because my uncle was related to the Melton family and he was raised in that neighborhood. The Faust family mentioned is most likely "Foust" and is a mis-print. I say this because Foust is a very common name in this area and there are no Faust listed in the local phone book. It's like looking up the name Vandergriff/Vandagriff/Vandargriff it's all the same family. I know of a cemetery where a lot of that family is buried some of which are kin and about six spelling variants of the same family name.
My wife's family is from the other side of the valley in the Sevier County area in the Smoky Mountain foothills. She is decended from the Thomas/McCown families who first settled and at one point owned a good chunk of land in what is now Sevierville and Pigeon Forge.
I thought you might like the article. I don’t know if any of my ancestors on one side spent much time in East TN. One ancestor named Armstrong came from NC rather early (c1800) and came to middle TN, only a county or so east of Nashville. He was a farmer, but I think he was frustrated by the terrible soil. You can’t dig a few inches without hitting hunks of broken limestone, and we have gargantuan rocks unearthed in the yard. I can’t imagine having to actively till the soil and remove all those rocks, what a nightmare !
He had a nice out, though, he signed up with Gen. Andrew Jackson and went on the Creek Campaign and ended up at the Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812). Apparently married a woman of French ancestry down there who herself was a widow of a riverboat captain (who died in one of the yellow fever outbreaks). They appeared to eschew staying in the brand new state of Louisiana or returning to Middle Tennessee and went up the Mississippi to the Illinois Territory with the better soil to farm. Not until my parents came to Middle TN in the ‘70s would our family return to this state.
The Faust name in the picture is spelled right. I saw an obit in my local paper the other day likely from this same family. But there is also Foust and likely the same family also. All it took was for someone to mis a letter in a name or make an a look like an O and family names were changed forever.