Aunt Polly Williams-Cumberland Plateau History

Cumberland Plateau History--Aunt Polly Williams

  I have really been blessed lately to have learned the benefit of the various historical 

societies throughout the Cumberland Plateau.  I've run across several online resources that are marvelous.  One is the Denny-Loftis Genealogy .  The apparent author and compiler of the information is one Audrey June Denny-Lambert.     One of the fascinating tales I found there is of Aunt Polly Williams.  I am going to link to the page and excerpt a brief passage or two from it.    The stories she has included were authored by Mark Dudney from Cumberland Tales.

I would love to obtain a copy of that book!   

       Aunt Polly Williams -First Lady of the Cumberland River 

(Click the link above for the whole story)

AUNT POLLY WILLIAMS THE FIRST LADY OF THE CUMBERLAND RIVER (Cumberland Tales by Mark Dudney) Special to the Herald-Citizen, Cookeville, TN Sunday, 12 October 2008, pg. C-9 

    Aunt Polly Williams of Gainesboro became a legend in her own time during the Upper Cumberland’s post-bellum period. A hotel operator reminiscent of the “Granny Hawkins” character in “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” she wore men’s clothes and a man’s hat and smoked a long-stemmed corncob pipe. Tough, profane and irrepressible, she adopted a completely egalitarian approach to life and people. Widely known for both her eccentricity and her charity toward others, Polly made certain that the poor and the hungry, the sick and the hurt were never turned away from her dinner table or her lodging. She treated everyone like a paying customer. The young girl destined to become Aunt Polly experienced a brief childhood. Born Mary Ann Christian Lock on May 5 1839, Polly was raised on the river. Jim Lock, her father, owned a farm and operated a ferry just opposite where the Roaring River drains into the Cumberland. Polly learned to swim and operate the ferry and, by the age of 10, she could pull the ferryboat across both rivers as quickly as any grown man. At 13 she married her first husband, James Eaton, and gave birth to a child the next year. Polly continued to help her father with the ferry for three years, then moved with her family to Gainesboro. She born Eaton nine children, several of whom did not survive infancy. Easton was the love of Polly’s life, and she candidly told her later husbands that she could never love them the way she had loved Eaton. Eaton served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War. During his absence, some Union men appeared at Polly’s door. She had some whiskey stored, which she was using to treat a sick and teething daughter. When they started for it, Polly grabbed her gun. “The first one to touch that whiskey is my man,” she warned. “Why, we could shoot you,” one of the men replied. “You’d better be damned quick about it,” she snapped back. The Union soldiers then left Polly and her whiskey alone. 

Some years after the war ended James(Eaton was fording the Caney Fork River and drowned. His body couldn't be found for days, and Polly was sent for to join the search. She threw his shirt into the river and told the searchers he'd be found where the shirt hung, and so he was. 
Tho' marrying twice more, she told her new husbands she could never love any man as much as James Eaton but she could love well enough to make a life together. Married for a short time to Norman Frost, a man of dubious reputation, who was shot and killed in Gainesboro. She married on 3-30-1881 her last husband, Thomas Jefferson Williams, a Confederate pensioner, who ran the barber shop beside her hotel. Thus changing her name to Polly Williams, the name she is best known by. Teased by her son-in-law that if she couldn't talk she'd die, and that's just how it was. Suffering a stroke that paralyzed her throat, she died 3 weeks later. She is buried in the family cemetery not far from the river where she ran the ferry as a youngster.
There are many well known anecdotes from her colorful life, repeated over and again in the Upper Cumberland area. Her picture hangs in the Jackson Co., TN courthouse. 

Link to Aunt Polly's Final Resting Place Information 

**I have decided that since I enjoy history and some of the folks who read Cumberland Gal are enjoying the historic tales included I will continue to put up various bits of area history when I am able.  It is turning out to be  quite an educational experience for me as well as fun."