Charley's Camp in the Horseshoe

Charley's Camp in the Horseshoe. From the Heritage Center. Perhaps the earliest recorded transaction in the vicinity of Beersheba is an entry of 150 acres for William Dugan in 1826 "in the Horseshoe known as Charley's Camp" said to be on the south side of Little Laurel Creek of the Collins River.¹ According to local tradition, William Dugan and his wife, with babe in arms, rode horseback from North Carolina to take up this land.² The name of the place seems to point to even earlier times when Charley had a camp there. But where was the Horseshoe and who was Charley?, We get a better clue of the location when, on January 10, 1838, William B. Smartt acquired from John Dugan, son of William, apparently the same 150 acres "about two and a half miles southwest of Beersheba," The Horseshoe is thought to be a peculiar shaping of the ridges of the mountain simulating the appearance of a horseshoe. If we take Beersheba to mean the spring in front of the hotel, 2.5 straight line miles southwest brings us out in the Shady Valley Nursery property near the border with the state natural area, with nothing resembling a horseshoe either on the topographic map or to be seen by walking around the area. There are some U-shaped contour lines, but no striking topographical feature. If, however, we start walking from the observatory up Dalhgren Avenue to TN-56, along it to Hunter's Mill Road, then down it past the ballpark and off to the southwest along the old road to the main road of the nursery, then south along this road to the lake created by damming (Little) Laurel Creek, and then imagine walking down the slope to the creek and up a short distance into one of the (now flooded) coves on the south side, we would have come 2.5 miles with a net direction of south southwest. The sides of the cove could have suggested a horseshoe. This location would also explain the particular relevance of "the south side of Little Laurel Creek.", Who was Charley? About 1.5 miles north of Main Street in McMinnville, there runs a stream called Charles Creek on modern topographic maps but Charles's Creek in older sources. Pleasant Henderson lived on its banks between 1806 and 1811. She recalled that when the first white settlers came to the area, they found a group of friendly Creeks camped near the confluence of this stream with the Collins. Their chief was Chuwallee, and the white man gave his name to the creek., It became corrupted to Chalee, then to Charley,⁴ and now finally to Charles." These Creeks continued to hunt in the area for a number of years without objection from the white man. Chuwallee River is also a well-documented alternative name of Elk River. They may well be the Creeks who hunted on the mountain top and, to maximize game production, maintained it as a grassland by periodic burning. If so, our Charley could well be Chuwallee.,

(1) Plat Book No. 2, Registrar's Office, Warren County, page 60. , (2) Margaret Coppinger, in The Pathfinder, vol. 1 No. 2, 1956. , (3) Warren County Registrar's Office, Book K, page 379. , (4) John R. Swanton, Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors, Bureau of American Ethnology, No. 73, 1922, page 245.,

The author of this article is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Maryland. His mother's family has owned Nanhaven since 1887, one of the cottages built by John Armfield in Beersheba Springs before the Civil War. While the cottage was struck by lightning recently and burned to the ground, it is being rebuilt. It has served as the summer base of the author for most of his life.