Noah Ogle, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee
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Noah Ogle, 80 years old when recorded in 1939, was living in Emerts Cove in Sevier County, Tennessee. He had some grade school education and worked as a farmer.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
[O = Noah Ogle; I = Interviewer Joseph Hall]
O: Are these all ready now? my name is Noah Ogle, I was borned in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, I was borned near Gatlinburg, I can remember as far back as eighteen hundred and sixty-five, I can remember of seeing the s-, the soldiers at the close of the Civil War, they were just three houses in uh, in Gatlinburg at that time, one of those houses was occupied by Caleb Ogle, the second one was occupied by Levi Ogle, the third one was occupied by Isaac Ogle, they’re all dead now, some of their folks are in that community yet, Gatlinburg though has been a, a, a v- very progressive place, especially for the last uh, well I’d say for the last thirty years, they elected a man over there as the justice of peace about thirty-five years ago, and he seemed to be a very int-, intelligent man, his name was I. L. Maples, he went to work and he had a good road b- built in there about the first thing he ever done, that opened up the place, people begin to, people begin to visit the place then, and you, uh Gatlinburg has been very progressive ever since that time, they’s uh I im-, I imagine something near two thousand in-, inhabitants there now, and they go-, they, they have one of the, one of the finest schools there that I know of in East Tennessee anywhere, when I was a schoolboy over there s- sixty-five or s- seventy years ago, our school buildings there was a log cabin, our desks that we sat on was a h-, was a s- split log with four pegs in it, that was th- the desks that we u- used, and uh w-, we uh we had about three months schooling during the year, now then they have ten months of school there every year during, as the year comes, and Gatlinburg is a v- very progressive place, now the uh, I, I don’t know how, I couldn’t say how far back it was, but something near two hundred years ago, they were five Ogle b- brothers that uh e- emigrated there from, from South Carolina, and four of them stopped there, Isaac Ogle stopped there at Gatlinburg, Tom Ogle stopped at Gatlinburg, and Dewey Ogle stopped at Gatlinburg, and Harkless Ogle stopped there, four of the Ogle b- brothers stopped there and they raised considerable families, and that was about the same time that they emigrated here from S-, from S- South Carolina, they was a lot of Ogles emigrated to the state of Illinois, and they’ve increased until they was uh they uh, uh have what they call Ogle, Ogle County up there now in the state of Illinois, I met some of them not, but not very many, I met some of those Ogles from Illinois some three or four years ago, they are English people, they first or- ner- na- or- originated from, from England, and they're a dark complected s- s- set of folks, and they have high cheek bones like the Cherokee, my family of Ogles th- though uh have gotten mixed up with the Irish, there’s where we get our red complection, and now we’ll go back to Gatlinburg, I, I’m a, I’m going back there today to, to, to visit, and I hardly ever meet anybody that I know, there’s a, th- they’s one man living there y- y- yet though that was a man grown when I was a, just a little boy, he uh, he told me the other day that he was ninety-four years old, and he’d uh, he a, he a gets about ab- about as w- w- w- well as a, as a b-, as a boy sixteen years old, now then my home is in Emerts Cove, Emerts Cove lies east of G-, of G- G- Gatlinburg, s- east of, of Gatlinburg, s- something like t- ten miles, Emerts Cove, when I first knew Emerts Cove it was in the, it was sixty-five years ago, eighteen and seventy-five, eighteen seventy-four, there were just uh six or eight families then in Emerts Cove, there was Squire Emert, the Shults family, and uh some of the Parton families, but they’re all gone from here now, and uh up uh in the Greenbrier Cove l- lies just uh so- s- south of Emerts Cove, that’s a wonderful place, some of the finest forest timber there that I ever had l- lived to look at in all my life, and it’s a great place to fish and to hunt for game of all sorts, it’s a great place to rest and to camp, and uh I don’t know of a- a- any place anywhere that I’d rather spend a few nights out in the woods than I would up in Greenbrier, but a man’s under restrictions up there now that the great national park’s bought that country out, and when a man goes there he doesn’t have the privileges that he oncet had or uh when uh when I was a boy, now there isn’t uh, there i- isn’t a- anyone stays in Greenbrier Cove now except a few r- rangers and a few fire guards, there isn’t any citizens that lives there at all now, now that’s about all of it, Greenbrier was first settled something like two hundred years ago, about the time Gatlinburg was settled and about the time Emerts Cove was settled, but here uh some six or eight years ago the great national park begin to buy out the land there and uh the people are all gone and the country is being grown up again, it’s a-going to soon be just a natural forest like it w- once was before there was uh ever any i- i- improvement made there at all, that’s about all I know about the Greenbrier.
I: ... like to tell us a little about Sevierville and Newport away back?
O: Sevierville is the county seat of Sevier County, and uh Sevierville, Sevierville hasn’t progressed very fast, not like I have saw some other towns in East Tennessee, hit’s not been very l- l- lucky to get railroads there as, as early as some others counties has, it hasn’t been as l- lucky to get v- very much manufacturing there, and so there isn’t very many payrolls there, there’s but very li- uh li- little th- there, there to induce people to uh undertake to try to live in, in Sevierville, Newport though is one of the most liveliest towns that I kn- kn- know of, in eighteen hundred and seventy-two I visited Newport, there were two stores there, a corn mill and an old-fashioned jump-up-and-down sash saw that sawed lumber, that was in eighteen hundred and seventy-two, and their inhabitants there now is uh, oh hit’s uh something near five thousand, they have a large tannery there.