Old Stage Coach Inn and Drovers' Stand
The Allen Inn, Wolf Creek, Cocke County, Tennessee

by Iris Teta Eubank Wagner
3rd great-granddaughter of Margaret Hoss Wolf

Previously published genealogical records are uncertain as to the man's name who built the original small cabin, located, before its destruction in 1974, at Wolf Creek in Cocke County, Tennessee, where the creek flows into the French Broad River. 

Library of Congress - Matthew Rhea 1832

1832 - The Newport, Cosby Creek, Wolf Creek area in Cocke County, Tennessee
This map shows clearly the Big Pigeon River, and Cosby Creek's confluence.  Newport (Old town) is shown at the French Broad River. (In  early days, Fine's Ferry took passengers across the river at this point).  The main road in 1832 crosses Clear Creek and intersects with the road running north to Greeneville.  Hollands Ferry at the French Broad River served both the road through the French Broad River Valley and the road across the mountains into North Carolina.

My years of research into the Allen/Wolf/Hoss family lineage show my third great grandparents are, by inference, to be William Wolf and his wife, Margaret Hoss Wolf,  and that they built the small cabin in the first decade of the 19th century, after a move into the Tennessee mountains from Virginia.  The  log cabin the Wolf family built is shown in the photograph at top, taken in the late 1800's.  This small, earlier built cabin is attached to the larger structure.  This larger structure was built during the 1820's by the Reuben Allen family.  The original small cabin, together with the larger structure,  came to be known as The Allen Inn. 

Fanny Hoss Wolf was a daughter of Margaret Hoss Wolf and, by my research, her husband was William Wolf.  Fanny was  born September 5, 1811.  She was the wife of James Allen, born September 16, 1806, son of "John, the Bricklayer" Allen, known as Jack Allen of Cosby.   James and Fanny were married January 15, 1827. They lived at Cosby, Tennessee, at the Allen family home .
   .
                                                                   The Allen Family Home
This home (above) was built  by John "Jack" Allen for his family. The Allen home was located on a gentle slope above the confluence of Cosby Creek and the Pigeon River a few miles south of Newport. Allen and his brother James Allen were prominent builders of brick houses and chimneys in this east Tennessee area.

1830 U.S. Federal Census, Cocke Co,Tenn,Wilton Springs - Allen family,

 
ancestry.com

The 1830 census (above) shows young James Allen and wife Fanny Hoss Wolf ; Margaret Wolf, fifty to sixty years, with one female under ten, one female ten to fifteen ;  John "Jack" Allen, with family of seven persons.

1850 U.S. Federal Census, Cocke Cty, Tenn., Margaret Wolf, Res. 130

ancestry.com

Margaret Hoss Wolf was born 1778 in Maryland by entry on the 1850 Cocke County U. S. Federal Census (above).  Her entry is Residence 130.   William O'Dell and his family are entered as Residence 129.  William's wife is entered as Margaret, age 48, born Virginia. 

By records of the O'Dell family, William O'Dell married Margaret Wolf, born 1802.   By the proximity of their residences shown on this 1850 census, the wife of William O'Dell (Res. 129) is Margaret, born 1802, and daughter of Margaret Wolf (Res. 130)  born 1778 in Maryland.  Margaret, born 1802, is inferred to be Fanny Hoss Wolf's older sister. 

According to Cocke County author, Ruth Webb O'Dell,  in her book, Over the Misty Blue Hills,  Fanny Hoss Wolf was living at the cabin at Wolf Creek when twenty-one-year-old James Allen came to call, so to speak. 

James Allen was the son of John, the Bricklayer, Allen.   John and his brother James Allen were well known and established in the area as  builders of fine chimneys and brick houses.   In the photo (above, top) are two massive chimneys at either end of the long structure.  It is likely John, with his son James Allen, built these chimneys, which would have taken weeks, and given James ample chance to court and woo Fanny Wolf.

The Reubin Allen family establish their inn at Wolf Creek in the 1820's.
In the photo (above, top) the long structure to the right of the smaller cabin was built in the 1820's.  Together with the smaller cabin, the place was known as the Allen Inn and Drovers' Stand during the 19th century into the first half of the 20th century.

Not knowing the circumstances of Reubin Allen's family when they  came to live at Wolf Creek in the early 1820's, I would think they saw an economic opportunity in establishing a tavern and inn along the drovers' road that was being cleared and made ready for drover and stage coach traffic through the French Broad River Valley. The road would connect to the Buncombe Turnpike, already under construction through the valley north of Asheville.  The turnpike would open up profitable markets south of Asheville and into South Carolina for drover traffic.   The Allens likely bought the place at Wolf Creek from Margaret Wolf.  The  county courthouse fire in Newport in late 19th century destroyed records that would have told us.

There is no known specific document that reveals the name of Margaret's husband.  However, we can infer from her name and the names of her children, and their associated families, and to the proximity of residence, that his name was William Wolf.  We don't know for sure what happened to him.  However, on the 1820 Buncombe County, North Carolina census, there is entered a man named William Wolf, born between 1775-1794, a young female 16-26, and 3 young children under 10 years of age.

George Washington "Wash" Allen operated the Drovers' Stand and Stage Coach Inn at Wolf Creek

With the completion of the Buncombe Turnpike, the drover traffic increased year by year.  George Washington "Wash" Allen, son of Reubin and Mary, managed the inn with his mother following the death of Reubin, who died in 1825.   

From his visit to the Allen Inn in the late 1800's, travel author Clifton Johnson wrote of the old days at the inn in his book Highways & Byways : In those old days the thoroughfare . . . was enlivened with constant traffic, and the dwellers along the way could rarely look out on it and not see some passing team or horseback rider. 

1860 U.S.Federal Census, Cocke Co,Tennessee, Mary Allen household

ancestry.com    Mary Allen was 73, son G. W. Allen 45; daughter Emma Allen 30, Green Allen 61.

The Allen Inn was an inviting overnight stay for weary travelers at the end of the day.  The Allen family provided comfortable rooms  at the inn and good corral and feeding for the drovers' stock.  Among  archived papers of grandmother Fanny Swagerty Eubank, I found a list of  stands (left) that were located along the old drovers' road from Wolf  Creek  "Wash" Allen Inn to John Collett's in Anderson, South Carolina.  My grandmother and Charlie B. Mims of Newport were correspondents, and he provided my grandmother with this list of stands and inns.  Charlie's brother, William O. Mims, was the Swagerty family attorney during much of the 19th century; he was also the husband of Cora Massey
Mims, Cocke County and Newport historian, whose articles were published in the Newport Plain Talk in the 1940's. 

After decades of growing prosperity from the 1820's into the later years of the 19th and through the mid-20th century, the Allen Inn evolved into a beautiful and classic mountain inn (below) - a peaceful place to which artists, writers, and tourists came to stay for a few days, a week, or live for a summer.  In the late 19th century there were fewer stock drives - stock was now being shipped by rail car.

Fanny Swagerty Eubank archive

                 The Allen Inn at Wolf Creek in the 20th Century

Betty Walker, article from The Newport Plain Talk, October, 2003

When the Civil War began in 1861, railroad construction through the valley to North Carolina halted at Wolf Creek.   When construction was resumed after the war, it took another few years for the rails to reach the Buncombe Turnpike, running from Asheville.   The railroad was completed to North Carolina about 1883. Stage coach travel was eventually discontinued.

The photo (above) was published with an article written by Betty Walker, widow of Ward Walker, great-great grandson of Reubin Allen and wife Mary Jones.  The article by Mrs. Walker was  published in October, 2003, in The Newport Plain Talk, the county newspaper.  In the same issue, Mrs. Walker wrote a quite thorough history of the railroad coming through  Newport and Wolf Creek.

The Passenger Train Stopped at Wolf Creek Station

Back when the passenger train stopped at Wolf Creek Station, just a few hundred feet from the French Broad River, travelers stepping from the train followed a short path to the waiting hospitality at the inn.  My mother remembered a visit to the inn in the summer of 1927.  She held memories of a beautiful, historic place shaded by tall evergreen spruce and hemlock, and the soft rushing of Wolf Creek - she was lulled to sleep, she said, in the feather bed in her front room above the creek.

The descendants of Reubin and Mary Jones Allen developed this place through the 19th and into the 20th century. They designed and developed and cared for the ornamental gardens - and boxwoods and rose bushes, flowers and herbs.  English ivy covered the grounds.

David Allen, first cousin, three times removed
During the late 19th and into the early 20th century, David and Maggie Gentry Allen were proprietors of the inn.  David Allen's mother, Rebecca Clark, was a sister to Nancy Clark, wife of James Swagerty, Jr., grandparents of my grandmother, Fanny Swagerty Eubank.  Rebecca Clark was married to Reubin and Mary's eldest son, James Reagan Allen.    From her visit to the Allen Inn in 1927, my mother remembered the kindness of "Aunt Maggie" Allen.  Maggie's daughter Nell was Ward's mother, Nell Allen Walker.

Our visit with Ward Walker in 1992
My mother and I visited with Ward Walker in 1992.  The inn itself had been destroyed by fire on May 25,1975.   Only the brick chimneys were left standing.  I stood near one of the massive chimneys and looked over  across Wolf Creek to a long and open pasture and to the French Broad River. 

I crossed the wide pasture to the Allen Cemetery and toward the railroad tracks. The few cattle briefly raised their heads, then continued grazing with disinterest, as I cautiously made my way to the cemetery.  Echoes of the voices of farm hands, loading hay on their trucks, filled this ancient mountain place with the air of an old world countryside and the smell of freshly-cut hay.   

Wagner photo  - the pasture at Wolf Creek - railroad bridge crossing Wolf Creek is at right in the photo.

The H H Bear Trap                                        
With my sister Betty Jean, I had previously met Betty and Ward Walker in 1987, at the library in Greenville, Tennessee, where we were researching our ancestral families of the area.  So mine and my mother's visit in 1992 was my second meeting with Ward.  He  showed us around the place.  I talked with him about my ancestral Hoss and Wolf family connection to Wolf Creek.  He then brought out a large, vicious looking piece of cast iron, explaining that it was an old bear trap.  He showed us the initials H H, deeply etched  into the cast iron.  The trap had always been there on the place Ward told me.  He didn't know more about it.   I see it possibly as a  bear trap owned by Henry Hoss, whose daughter Margaret Hoss married William Wolf in Washington County, Tennessee, and the young family traveled by raft or boat down the Nolichuckey River to the mouth of the French Broad River, and turned left in the direction of the mountains.   As the current of the French Broad flowed away from the mountains, the young family would have crossed the river to the southside of the river at Rankin, where Thomas Clark's family lived, then taken pack-horse along an old Indian path close to the south side of the river.  At a time following the Revolutionary War and the turn of the 19th century, the young family may have been in the same immigrating party with the Clarks. (one of Thomas Clark's daughters, who was Rebecca Clark, married Reubin Allen's eldest son James Reagan Allen.) Finding their way along the river path, the young couple would have eventually come to Wolf Creek, as it came to be known.  They would have immediately seen that the mountains rise steeply from the creek.  They would not have wished to challenge the mountain.  They would have brought with them numerous items essential to living in the wilderness.  The bear trap might have been one of those essentials, as it still lay at the place, two centuries later, of no use any longer, and its origin unknown. 

A 20th Century Rivinac/Eubank connection to the inn  

 
Wagner photo -- the Norfolk-Southern engine roaring past Wolf Creek at the base of the mountain.

Searching for Richard Rivinac's grave marker at the Allen Cemetery
The train still rolls through Wolf Creek  . . . .  a thunderous roar of the engine blasts against the mountainside, and  sends an echo across the pasture, and like time itself, passes on by.   As I was carefully stepping through the ivy around the Allen Cemetery, looking for the grave markers of Richard F. Rivinac and his wife Fanny Ault Rivinac - records  of the cemetery tell me they are buried here -   I became aware of a low rumble of an engine down the tracks approaching.  I turned toward the rumble and barely had time to snap this photo (above). A thunderous Norfolk-Southern engine roared past, pulling train cars that clicked and clacked down the track for a minute or so.  The line of train cars moved on.   The air was once more quiet, with only the sound of song birds in the trees.   I resumed my search.  I didn't find the grave markers. 

Who was Richard F. Rivinac? Why would he be buried at Wolf Creek?
In addition to my father's Hoss and Wolf connection to Wolf Creek, there is a more recent family connection to the Allen Inn.  In 1927, along State Route 25/70, that passes through Newport and crosses the mountain to Asheville, a concrete road bridge was being constructed to cross the French Broad River at Wolf Creek, about the point on the road where Holland's Ferry had taken passengers across the river earlier in the 19th and early 20th century.

Richard Rivinac's company was one of the contractors for the bridge in 1927.  My father William A. Eubank had worked with the company since leaving his student days at Lincoln Memorial University in 1924. My grandfather Livingston Mims Eubank and Richard Rivinac had been business partners for years.  They were first cousins, born and reared in Jackson and Fannin, Mississippi.  L. Mims' mother, Jane Hunter Eubank, before her death, had business connections in Knoxville, and the cousins used her influence to help Mims and Richard get the contract for their excavation company to grade the streets of Newport. In 1889, Mims and Richard  made their way north, bringing their excavation company to grade the streets of Newport, Tennessee.   My grandfather Eubank had died in 1917.  During the time of the contract work on the bridge, Richard Rivinac and my father, William Eubank boarded at the Inn. 

An old-world European, a musician, and composer
Richard's father was Pierre (Peter) Rivinac, who was born and grew up  in Metz, France, Alsace-Lorraine.  His mother was an accomplished soprano.  His father was from the Revenach family of prominent builders of church organs in Germany. Pierre was attending the Paris Conservatory when he left France for America in 1852.  He established himself as a  Professor of Music at a girl's school in Memphis, Tennessee, until he began to publish and sell musical compositions prior to and during the Civil War.  Today, his Civil War era compositions, marches and dances, are collectible. 

I believe Richard Rivinac saw an old world charm and culture at the Allen Inn -  as his father Peter may have described to him the French countryside outside Metz, France, where his family lived. Peter grew up in a culture filled with music and art. 

Livingston Mims's Aunt Selina Eubank was Peter Rivinac's wife and Richard's mother. Richard and my father remembered with much pleasure  boarding at the Inn while the contract work was being completed.  The Inn was filled with good times, good food, and music and singing.  My father thought it was the happiest and most beautiful of places, reminding him of his early years with his own family.

Richard Rivinac, Jr. and his wife Lena spent time at the Inn after Richard Rivinac, Sr.'s death in Knoxville in 1930.  Ward told us that when Richard and Lena moved to Florida some time in the 1940's, that Lena left her trunk at the Allen Inn, and it was likely consumed during the fire that destroyed the Inn in 1975.
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Research, Original Narrative & Website © Iris Teta Eubank Wagner 2014
Sources of Proof for this Wolf Creek story . . . Complete Swagerty source list Here

Clifton Johnson, Highways & Byways, early photograph of the Allen Inn.

Fanny Swagerty Eubank archive; correspondence with Charlie B. Mims, who provided the list of inns along the drovers' road.

William A. Eubank and Bonnie Jones Eubank, conversation and site visits through the years.

Margaret Jacqueline Moore, Eubank/Hunter/Allen/King, family history, privately published,1972.

Ward Walker, author's visit to the Allen place in 1992.

Betty Walker, Ward Walker's widow, article, The Newport Plain Talk, 2003.

Ruth W. O'Dell, An Old Will and The Cosby Allen Family, reprinted from The Newport News, Newport, Cocke County, Tennessee, 1941

Ruth Webb O'Dell, Over the Misty Blue Hills: The Story of Cocke County, Tennessee, Southern Historical Press, Inc., Greenville, S.C.

Ancestry.com, U. S. Federal Censuses 1790-1940

The Allen Cemetery, Wolf Creek, records.