Swagerty Log House

Swaggerty Log House

1958

Cocke County, Tennessee

In 1783 at the time the Swagerty family settled at Clear Creek, the area was a part of Greene County, North Carolina.   Clear Creek settlement area was partitioned from Greene County in 1797  and now is in  Cocke County, Tennessee.

“Toward the end of the Revolutionary War the North Carolina legislature made the French Broad River the Cherokee tribal border, south of which no white families could legally settle.  The new federal government in Washington City recognized this border.   Frederick Swagerty brought his family in 1783 from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to settle six miles north of the Cherokee border, and just a mile or so north of Parrottsville, the third oldest town in Tennessee, after Jonesborough and Rogersville,

The old house is a symbol of endurance.  All people who came to the frontier wilderness to live and prosper needed this kind of endurance in human terms.  They had to come with the skills for everyday life, and with the spirit and will to endure . . . as in their skillful construction of this log house.   Not occupied as a residence for a decade or so before its demise, the structure naturally deteriorated.  After Frederick’s son James Swagerty, Sr. sold the house and part of the home tract in the 1850’s, in its regular occupation as a residence the house remained well cared for by  several families until it was torn down in the 1960’s.” 

http://swagerty-ancestraljourneys.com/index.htm/swagerty_log_house_clearcreek2_1783.htm

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