DeMoss and the First Belle Vue

DeMoss and the First Belle Vue. . Skeletal remains found in the river below in the early 1800s show that mastodons and other Ice Age mammals once lived here. They also suggest that native people lived here at least 10,000 years ago until about 550 years ago. Members of the Cherokee, Shawnee and Chickasaw nations and many others hunted here. , One of the first European occupants of this area was Lewis DeMoss, In 1800, he bought 245 acres here and built a log house for his family on a nearby knoll, with beautiful views of the river valley and surrounding hills. He called his new home Belle Vue. , He soon built a saw and gristmill with a milldam on the river. These mills and his blacksmith shop were the center of a thriving rural community that appeared as DeMoss on maps until after the Civil War. , Lewis DeMoss's grandson, Skelton DeMoss, inherited the property in 1849. Skelton built a fine new home, Riverside, about 200 yards from Belle Vue. He was killed there near the end of the Civil War, allegedly by a Union soldier. Skelton's sister Nannie and her husband Dr. William Carter and their descendants lived in the home for decades until a fire destroyed it in the 1990's. , During the 1870's Norman M. Merton bought several tracts of land from the DeMoss and Greer families including the old DeMoss mill site. Soon the road was called Morton Mill Road., In 1931 his wife, Virginia Brown Morton, willed the site which she described as situated at Bellevue Bathing Beach to a grandson, Thomas M. Morton.