Dan Clevenger, as were most (if not all) Clevengers in Cocke County, was a descendant of Thomas and Sitchie Clevenger, the first Clevengers to settle in Cocke County in the mid-1790s. Dan's parents were Isaac Clevenger and Lucinda Bryant.
Dan's middle name was Clyde. (He had an uncle with the same middle name, Lorenzo Clyde Clevenger.)
Isaac's father, Dan's grandfather, was Alexander Clevenger Jr., a veteran of the Civil War. Unlike many cousins and neighbors who were Confederate soldiers, Alex and his brother Isaac served in the Union Army. Alex and Isaac were great-grandsons of Thomas and Sitichie. (Alex and Isaac's Union grave markers still stand side by side in an abandoned woodland cemetery about a mile from where Dan is buried.)
When Dan was born, Isaac and Lucinda lived along Pigeon River opposite the Edwina Community. They raised their family in the Lower English Creek Community, where Lucinda's father owned a farm.
When Dan and Essie Kyker married, they started their family on Jones Hill in Newport where Essie's father, Will Kyker, owned a row of rental houses. By the time their first daughter, Mary, was school age, the family was living and working on the Tommy Lillard farm on Bogard Road in the upper English Creek Community. At the time of Mary's marriage, the Clevengers lived in another tenant farmhouse in the vicinity of present-day Mountain Ridge Road (off Hannon Cemetery Road) in the Lower English Creek Community. In the early 1940s, they lived in the "Grandpa Kyker" farm house, which was on present-day Armory Road near the intersection of Lower English Creek Road. From there, they moved to Edwina Road near the A.C. Lawrence Leather Company.
Dan lost an eye from an on-the-job accident in the leather tannery while employed there. He was fitted with an artificial (glass) eye that he wore for the rest of his life. (The tannery was located on land once owned by Thomas Clevenger and his sons around 1800, or in close proximity.)
In the early 1940s, Dan and Essie moved to the Lonsdale Community in West Knoxville. Dan commuted to nearby Oak Ridge, working on construction for the secretive Manhattan Project, where he and other workers had no idea the atomic bomb had been developed. His son Ernest was employed there and lived in Oak Ridge.
In the mid-1940s, Dan and Essie and their unmarried children--Ina, Stanley, Georgie, "Ross"--moved back to Cocke County, in the Edwina Community on the edge of the Edwina School playground, where Dan worked on the James Wood farm.
Around 1950 they purchased a small farm in the Roe Junction Community in Hamblen County. Dan worked at a wood products plant in Morristown until he was Social Security-eligible. In semiretirement, he worked part-time as a custodian at Morristown-Hamblen County West High School. Around 1970 Dan and Essie sold their Roe Junction home and purchased their retirement home on Buffalo Trail near Cherokee Lake in the northern section of Hamblen County. After living there for about a decade, declining health with Parkinson's disease set in for Essie.
They sold that home and moved into a mobile home near their daughter, Ina Ball, in Whitesburg. They eventually moved with their mobile home to Mary, their daughter, and husband James Bryant's farm in Cocke County. They spent the last several months of their lives in nursing homes, first together in Jefferson City, then Dan in Newport and Essie in Dandridge, where he was on the waiting list when he died 15 months before she did.
Dan had 3 sisters and a brother: Lennie (Mrs. Howard McMahan of Texas), Delia (Mrs. Dallas Shults), Lillie (Mrs. Frank Allen) and Alexander.
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Dan Clevenger, my maternal grandfather, was deeply religious, a God-loving man. He studied his Bible every morning and evening. He was a proud member of the Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church, a vestige of the first organized church in Cocke County with the same name. It was a church with roots in Virginia that attracted the first Clevengers to the Newport area in the 1790s. But the church had undergone a century of doctrinal stress before my grandfather was born.
In the late 1800s, Primitive Baptist congregations in Cocke County and throughout upper East Tennessee came under the influence of "universalism," a belief in universal redemption. Universalists, who established colonies in Central Appalachia, rejected the concept of afterlife punishment for people who failed to adhere to a religious dogma. Universalists established few houses of worship in the region but widely distributed religious literature that eschewed the threat of eternal punishment. Universalism helped to divide Primitive Baptists into two camps--the "hellers" and the "no-hellers." In the mid-1920s, the area association of Primitive Baptists officially split over this issue and as a backlash to militant fundamentalism.
Many Primitive Baptists simply could not believe a hellish experience after death was physically possible, and they were skeptical of the traditional concept of Heaven. Among the "no-hellers" (a phrase they never endorsed for themselves) were several families in the English Creek Community, including Clevengers and Bryants. In the early 1930s they left the church on present-day Mountain Ranch Road and built their own "meeting house" at the northeast corner of Lower English Creek Road and present-day Armory Road (Old Cosby Road). They held on to the name "Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church," leaving two churches with the same name about a mile apart.
The new church met one weekend monthly on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. It attracted Rev. J. B. Wolfenbarger of Morristown as its pastor, who, as a circuit minister, also served other congregations in Claiborne County (Big Springs) and Carter County (Stoney Creek) in Tennessee and a third congregation in Scott County, Va. The church disbanded with the retirement of Rev. Wolfenbarger around 1960. Dan Clevenger served as church secretary during its three decades.
This was the church I attended with my parents and grandparents as a boy. This was the religion Dan Clevenger attempted to instill in his three sons and three daughters. He told them, one way or another, they would be rewarded by their good works and their bad behavior would would lead to guilt and suffering. He rejected the concept of eternal reward and punishment beyond the temporal world. He maintained his belief in a benevolent God, not an angry, revengeful God. He never considered himself "God-fearing," and he didn't like to see people, especially young children, scared into religion.
Granddad viewed the Bible as a moral guide for instilling and nurturing a deep-seated intrinsic value system, one in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. He stressed the importance of striving for a Christian life over merely professing a Christian belief. Explaining that the Bible contains metaphors, poetry and various figures of speech, he advised me that a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible could be dangerous. --Gene Bryant
__________________________________
Dan's middle name was Clyde. (He had an uncle with the same middle name, Lorenzo Clyde Clevenger.)
Isaac's father, Dan's grandfather, was Alexander Clevenger Jr., a veteran of the Civil War. Unlike many cousins and neighbors who were Confederate soldiers, Alex and his brother Isaac served in the Union Army. Alex and Isaac were great-grandsons of Thomas and Sitichie. (Alex and Isaac's Union grave markers still stand side by side in an abandoned woodland cemetery about a mile from where Dan is buried.)
When Dan was born, Isaac and Lucinda lived along Pigeon River opposite the Edwina Community. They raised their family in the Lower English Creek Community, where Lucinda's father owned a farm.
When Dan and Essie Kyker married, they started their family on Jones Hill in Newport where Essie's father, Will Kyker, owned a row of rental houses. By the time their first daughter, Mary, was school age, the family was living and working on the Tommy Lillard farm on Bogard Road in the upper English Creek Community. At the time of Mary's marriage, the Clevengers lived in another tenant farmhouse in the vicinity of present-day Mountain Ridge Road (off Hannon Cemetery Road) in the Lower English Creek Community. In the early 1940s, they lived in the "Grandpa Kyker" farm house, which was on present-day Armory Road near the intersection of Lower English Creek Road. From there, they moved to Edwina Road near the A.C. Lawrence Leather Company.
Dan lost an eye from an on-the-job accident in the leather tannery while employed there. He was fitted with an artificial (glass) eye that he wore for the rest of his life. (The tannery was located on land once owned by Thomas Clevenger and his sons around 1800, or in close proximity.)
In the early 1940s, Dan and Essie moved to the Lonsdale Community in West Knoxville. Dan commuted to nearby Oak Ridge, working on construction for the secretive Manhattan Project, where he and other workers had no idea the atomic bomb had been developed. His son Ernest was employed there and lived in Oak Ridge.
In the mid-1940s, Dan and Essie and their unmarried children--Ina, Stanley, Georgie, "Ross"--moved back to Cocke County, in the Edwina Community on the edge of the Edwina School playground, where Dan worked on the James Wood farm.
Around 1950 they purchased a small farm in the Roe Junction Community in Hamblen County. Dan worked at a wood products plant in Morristown until he was Social Security-eligible. In semiretirement, he worked part-time as a custodian at Morristown-Hamblen County West High School. Around 1970 Dan and Essie sold their Roe Junction home and purchased their retirement home on Buffalo Trail near Cherokee Lake in the northern section of Hamblen County. After living there for about a decade, declining health with Parkinson's disease set in for Essie.
They sold that home and moved into a mobile home near their daughter, Ina Ball, in Whitesburg. They eventually moved with their mobile home to Mary, their daughter, and husband James Bryant's farm in Cocke County. They spent the last several months of their lives in nursing homes, first together in Jefferson City, then Dan in Newport and Essie in Dandridge, where he was on the waiting list when he died 15 months before she did.
Dan had 3 sisters and a brother: Lennie (Mrs. Howard McMahan of Texas), Delia (Mrs. Dallas Shults), Lillie (Mrs. Frank Allen) and Alexander.
___________________________________
Dan Clevenger, my maternal grandfather, was deeply religious, a God-loving man. He studied his Bible every morning and evening. He was a proud member of the Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church, a vestige of the first organized church in Cocke County with the same name. It was a church with roots in Virginia that attracted the first Clevengers to the Newport area in the 1790s. But the church had undergone a century of doctrinal stress before my grandfather was born.
In the late 1800s, Primitive Baptist congregations in Cocke County and throughout upper East Tennessee came under the influence of "universalism," a belief in universal redemption. Universalists, who established colonies in Central Appalachia, rejected the concept of afterlife punishment for people who failed to adhere to a religious dogma. Universalists established few houses of worship in the region but widely distributed religious literature that eschewed the threat of eternal punishment. Universalism helped to divide Primitive Baptists into two camps--the "hellers" and the "no-hellers." In the mid-1920s, the area association of Primitive Baptists officially split over this issue and as a backlash to militant fundamentalism.
Many Primitive Baptists simply could not believe a hellish experience after death was physically possible, and they were skeptical of the traditional concept of Heaven. Among the "no-hellers" (a phrase they never endorsed for themselves) were several families in the English Creek Community, including Clevengers and Bryants. In the early 1930s they left the church on present-day Mountain Ranch Road and built their own "meeting house" at the northeast corner of Lower English Creek Road and present-day Armory Road (Old Cosby Road). They held on to the name "Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church," leaving two churches with the same name about a mile apart.
The new church met one weekend monthly on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. It attracted Rev. J. B. Wolfenbarger of Morristown as its pastor, who, as a circuit minister, also served other congregations in Claiborne County (Big Springs) and Carter County (Stoney Creek) in Tennessee and a third congregation in Scott County, Va. The church disbanded with the retirement of Rev. Wolfenbarger around 1960. Dan Clevenger served as church secretary during its three decades.
This was the church I attended with my parents and grandparents as a boy. This was the religion Dan Clevenger attempted to instill in his three sons and three daughters. He told them, one way or another, they would be rewarded by their good works and their bad behavior would would lead to guilt and suffering. He rejected the concept of eternal reward and punishment beyond the temporal world. He maintained his belief in a benevolent God, not an angry, revengeful God. He never considered himself "God-fearing," and he didn't like to see people, especially young children, scared into religion.
Granddad viewed the Bible as a moral guide for instilling and nurturing a deep-seated intrinsic value system, one in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. He stressed the importance of striving for a Christian life over merely professing a Christian belief. Explaining that the Bible contains metaphors, poetry and various figures of speech, he advised me that a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible could be dangerous. --Gene Bryant
__________________________________
Dan Clevenger, as were most (if not all) Clevengers in Cocke County, was a descendant of Thomas and Sitchie Clevenger, the first Clevengers to settle in Cocke County in the mid-1790s. Dan's parents were Isaac Clevenger and Lucinda Bryant.
Dan's middle name was Clyde. (He had an uncle with the same middle name, Lorenzo Clyde Clevenger.)
Isaac's father, Dan's grandfather, was Alexander Clevenger Jr., a veteran of the Civil War. Unlike many cousins and neighbors who were Confederate soldiers, Alex and his brother Isaac served in the Union Army. Alex and Isaac were great-grandsons of Thomas and Sitichie. (Alex and Isaac's Union grave markers still stand side by side in an abandoned woodland cemetery about a mile from where Dan is buried.)
When Dan was born, Isaac and Lucinda lived along Pigeon River opposite the Edwina Community. They raised their family in the Lower English Creek Community, where Lucinda's father owned a farm.
When Dan and Essie Kyker married, they started their family on Jones Hill in Newport where Essie's father, Will Kyker, owned a row of rental houses. By the time their first daughter, Mary, was school age, the family was living and working on the Tommy Lillard farm on Bogard Road in the upper English Creek Community. At the time of Mary's marriage, the Clevengers lived in another tenant farmhouse in the vicinity of present-day Mountain Ridge Road (off Hannon Cemetery Road) in the Lower English Creek Community. In the early 1940s, they lived in the "Grandpa Kyker" farm house, which was on present-day Armory Road near the intersection of Lower English Creek Road. From there, they moved to Edwina Road near the A.C. Lawrence Leather Company.
Dan lost an eye from an on-the-job accident in the leather tannery while employed there. He was fitted with an artificial (glass) eye that he wore for the rest of his life. (The tannery was located on land once owned by Thomas Clevenger and his sons around 1800, or in close proximity.)
In the early 1940s, Dan and Essie moved to the Lonsdale Community in West Knoxville. Dan commuted to nearby Oak Ridge, working on construction for the secretive Manhattan Project, where he and other workers had no idea the atomic bomb had been developed. His son Ernest was employed there and lived in Oak Ridge.
In the mid-1940s, Dan and Essie and their unmarried children--Ina, Stanley, Georgie, "Ross"--moved back to Cocke County, in the Edwina Community on the edge of the Edwina School playground, where Dan worked on the James Wood farm.
Around 1950 they purchased a small farm in the Roe Junction Community in Hamblen County. Dan worked at a wood products plant in Morristown until he was Social Security-eligible. In semiretirement, he worked part-time as a custodian at Morristown-Hamblen County West High School. Around 1970 Dan and Essie sold their Roe Junction home and purchased their retirement home on Buffalo Trail near Cherokee Lake in the northern section of Hamblen County. After living there for about a decade, declining health with Parkinson's disease set in for Essie.
They sold that home and moved into a mobile home near their daughter, Ina Ball, in Whitesburg. They eventually moved with their mobile home to Mary, their daughter, and husband James Bryant's farm in Cocke County. They spent the last several months of their lives in nursing homes, first together in Jefferson City, then Dan in Newport and Essie in Dandridge, where he was on the waiting list when he died 15 months before she did.
Dan had 3 sisters and a brother: Lennie (Mrs. Howard McMahan of Texas), Delia (Mrs. Dallas Shults), Lillie (Mrs. Frank Allen) and Alexander.
___________________________________
Dan Clevenger, my maternal grandfather, was deeply religious, a God-loving man. He studied his Bible every morning and evening. He was a proud member of the Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church, a vestige of the first organized church in Cocke County with the same name. It was a church with roots in Virginia that attracted the first Clevengers to the Newport area in the 1790s. But the church had undergone a century of doctrinal stress before my grandfather was born.
In the late 1800s, Primitive Baptist congregations in Cocke County and throughout upper East Tennessee came under the influence of "universalism," a belief in universal redemption. Universalists, who established colonies in Central Appalachia, rejected the concept of afterlife punishment for people who failed to adhere to a religious dogma. Universalists established few houses of worship in the region but widely distributed religious literature that eschewed the threat of eternal punishment. Universalism helped to divide Primitive Baptists into two camps--the "hellers" and the "no-hellers." In the mid-1920s, the area association of Primitive Baptists officially split over this issue and as a backlash to militant fundamentalism.
Many Primitive Baptists simply could not believe a hellish experience after death was physically possible, and they were skeptical of the traditional concept of Heaven. Among the "no-hellers" (a phrase they never endorsed for themselves) were several families in the English Creek Community, including Clevengers and Bryants. In the early 1930s they left the church on present-day Mountain Ranch Road and built their own "meeting house" at the northeast corner of Lower English Creek Road and present-day Armory Road (Old Cosby Road). They held on to the name "Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church," leaving two churches with the same name about a mile apart.
The new church met one weekend monthly on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. It attracted Rev. J. B. Wolfenbarger of Morristown as its pastor, who, as a circuit minister, also served other congregations in Claiborne County (Big Springs) and Carter County (Stoney Creek) in Tennessee and a third congregation in Scott County, Va. The church disbanded with the retirement of Rev. Wolfenbarger around 1960. Dan Clevenger served as church secretary during its three decades.
This was the church I attended with my parents and grandparents as a boy. This was the religion Dan Clevenger attempted to instill in his three sons and three daughters. He told them, one way or another, they would be rewarded by their good works and their bad behavior would would lead to guilt and suffering. He rejected the concept of eternal reward and punishment beyond the temporal world. He maintained his belief in a benevolent God, not an angry, revengeful God. He never considered himself "God-fearing," and he didn't like to see people, especially young children, scared into religion.
Granddad viewed the Bible as a moral guide for instilling and nurturing a deep-seated intrinsic value system, one in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. He stressed the importance of striving for a Christian life over merely professing a Christian belief. Explaining that the Bible contains metaphors, poetry and various figures of speech, he advised me that a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible could be dangerous. --Gene Bryant
__________________________________
Dan's middle name was Clyde. (He had an uncle with the same middle name, Lorenzo Clyde Clevenger.)
Isaac's father, Dan's grandfather, was Alexander Clevenger Jr., a veteran of the Civil War. Unlike many cousins and neighbors who were Confederate soldiers, Alex and his brother Isaac served in the Union Army. Alex and Isaac were great-grandsons of Thomas and Sitichie. (Alex and Isaac's Union grave markers still stand side by side in an abandoned woodland cemetery about a mile from where Dan is buried.)
When Dan was born, Isaac and Lucinda lived along Pigeon River opposite the Edwina Community. They raised their family in the Lower English Creek Community, where Lucinda's father owned a farm.
When Dan and Essie Kyker married, they started their family on Jones Hill in Newport where Essie's father, Will Kyker, owned a row of rental houses. By the time their first daughter, Mary, was school age, the family was living and working on the Tommy Lillard farm on Bogard Road in the upper English Creek Community. At the time of Mary's marriage, the Clevengers lived in another tenant farmhouse in the vicinity of present-day Mountain Ridge Road (off Hannon Cemetery Road) in the Lower English Creek Community. In the early 1940s, they lived in the "Grandpa Kyker" farm house, which was on present-day Armory Road near the intersection of Lower English Creek Road. From there, they moved to Edwina Road near the A.C. Lawrence Leather Company.
Dan lost an eye from an on-the-job accident in the leather tannery while employed there. He was fitted with an artificial (glass) eye that he wore for the rest of his life. (The tannery was located on land once owned by Thomas Clevenger and his sons around 1800, or in close proximity.)
In the early 1940s, Dan and Essie moved to the Lonsdale Community in West Knoxville. Dan commuted to nearby Oak Ridge, working on construction for the secretive Manhattan Project, where he and other workers had no idea the atomic bomb had been developed. His son Ernest was employed there and lived in Oak Ridge.
In the mid-1940s, Dan and Essie and their unmarried children--Ina, Stanley, Georgie, "Ross"--moved back to Cocke County, in the Edwina Community on the edge of the Edwina School playground, where Dan worked on the James Wood farm.
Around 1950 they purchased a small farm in the Roe Junction Community in Hamblen County. Dan worked at a wood products plant in Morristown until he was Social Security-eligible. In semiretirement, he worked part-time as a custodian at Morristown-Hamblen County West High School. Around 1970 Dan and Essie sold their Roe Junction home and purchased their retirement home on Buffalo Trail near Cherokee Lake in the northern section of Hamblen County. After living there for about a decade, declining health with Parkinson's disease set in for Essie.
They sold that home and moved into a mobile home near their daughter, Ina Ball, in Whitesburg. They eventually moved with their mobile home to Mary, their daughter, and husband James Bryant's farm in Cocke County. They spent the last several months of their lives in nursing homes, first together in Jefferson City, then Dan in Newport and Essie in Dandridge, where he was on the waiting list when he died 15 months before she did.
Dan had 3 sisters and a brother: Lennie (Mrs. Howard McMahan of Texas), Delia (Mrs. Dallas Shults), Lillie (Mrs. Frank Allen) and Alexander.
___________________________________
Dan Clevenger, my maternal grandfather, was deeply religious, a God-loving man. He studied his Bible every morning and evening. He was a proud member of the Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church, a vestige of the first organized church in Cocke County with the same name. It was a church with roots in Virginia that attracted the first Clevengers to the Newport area in the 1790s. But the church had undergone a century of doctrinal stress before my grandfather was born.
In the late 1800s, Primitive Baptist congregations in Cocke County and throughout upper East Tennessee came under the influence of "universalism," a belief in universal redemption. Universalists, who established colonies in Central Appalachia, rejected the concept of afterlife punishment for people who failed to adhere to a religious dogma. Universalists established few houses of worship in the region but widely distributed religious literature that eschewed the threat of eternal punishment. Universalism helped to divide Primitive Baptists into two camps--the "hellers" and the "no-hellers." In the mid-1920s, the area association of Primitive Baptists officially split over this issue and as a backlash to militant fundamentalism.
Many Primitive Baptists simply could not believe a hellish experience after death was physically possible, and they were skeptical of the traditional concept of Heaven. Among the "no-hellers" (a phrase they never endorsed for themselves) were several families in the English Creek Community, including Clevengers and Bryants. In the early 1930s they left the church on present-day Mountain Ranch Road and built their own "meeting house" at the northeast corner of Lower English Creek Road and present-day Armory Road (Old Cosby Road). They held on to the name "Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church," leaving two churches with the same name about a mile apart.
The new church met one weekend monthly on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. It attracted Rev. J. B. Wolfenbarger of Morristown as its pastor, who, as a circuit minister, also served other congregations in Claiborne County (Big Springs) and Carter County (Stoney Creek) in Tennessee and a third congregation in Scott County, Va. The church disbanded with the retirement of Rev. Wolfenbarger around 1960. Dan Clevenger served as church secretary during its three decades.
This was the church I attended with my parents and grandparents as a boy. This was the religion Dan Clevenger attempted to instill in his three sons and three daughters. He told them, one way or another, they would be rewarded by their good works and their bad behavior would would lead to guilt and suffering. He rejected the concept of eternal reward and punishment beyond the temporal world. He maintained his belief in a benevolent God, not an angry, revengeful God. He never considered himself "God-fearing," and he didn't like to see people, especially young children, scared into religion.
Granddad viewed the Bible as a moral guide for instilling and nurturing a deep-seated intrinsic value system, one in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. He stressed the importance of striving for a Christian life over merely professing a Christian belief. Explaining that the Bible contains metaphors, poetry and various figures of speech, he advised me that a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible could be dangerous. --Gene Bryant
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