Why Lone Mountain was once called Cortland
The Shannon family operated a general store and the community's post office here
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Tracing the beginnings of Cortland, Tenn.
Today, most folks know the area near the head of Brimstone, where Mill Creek empties into the main stream that flows through this fertile valley and lends its namesake to the community surrounding it, as “Lone Mountain.” That is the name of the church that sits on the knoll overlooking the valley pasturelands, and the name of the cemetery adjacent to the church. Lone Mountain itself is the solo knoll (elevation 1,493 ft.) just northwest of the church and cemetery.
But for several decades, this area was known as Cortland. Like many other Scott County communities, it took its name from the post office that served it.
It isn’t clear how the post office got its name, but it opened in December 1892 and remained open until December 1936, making it one of Scott County’s longest-lasting “backwoods” post offices before it finally consolidated with the postal operations at nearby Robbins.
For a period of time, Brimstone actually had two post offices. There was another post office just down the valley where Huntsville Branch empties into Brimstone Creek, called Hughett. It was named for Jasper Hughett, who served as the first postmaster there, and was in operation from January 1887 until September 1935. When Hughett closed, its operations moved to Cortland.
Interestingly, the name “Hughett” can still be found on maps of the Brimstone area, but Cortland cannot, even though Cortland outlasted Hughett. But if you were to go back to about 1920 and travel up Brimstone Creek, you’d progress through the individually-named communities in this order: Mt. Pleasant, Hughett, Slick Rock, Cortland.
The first postmaster at Cortland when it opened in 1887 was Eldridge Shannon. The Shannon family was well-known in the Lone Mountain area at the time. In fact, the old school that served the area was called Shannon. It was one of four schools located up and down Brimstone Creek. The others were Gilbert (between Lone Mountain and Slick Rock), Slick Rock, and Pemberton (at Mt. Pleasant). There was also the Griffith School, which was across the mountain, closer to Indian Fork Creek.
Born May 1835, Eldridge Shannon was the son of James Shannon and Mary Hamby. The Shannon family migrated from Pennsylvania to the present-day Oak Ridge area with Eldridge’s great-grandfather, William Shannon. From there, Eldridge’s grandfather, Andrew Shannon, moved to present-day Morgan County. He arrived about 1815 and was one of that county’s earliest settlers. The Hamby family, meanwhile, settled on the Emory River outside present-day Wartburg.
James and Mary had a large family. When the 1850 census was taken, they had nine children living at home, including 15-year-old Eldridge, the third-oldest of the group.
Eldridge Shannon married Eliza Rich (1839-1925), the daughter of William Rich and Lucinda Lively, and they had 10 children: Orlena, Minerva, William, James, Mary, Julia, Parthena, Nancy, John, and Ernestine. (Eldridge had a brother, John, who married Eliza’s sister, Clarissa.)
The Shannon heritage is rich in northern Morgan County, and remains so today (one of James and Mary’s descendants, Keith Shannon, is a former high school football coach at both Scott High School and Sunbright High School). At some point, though, Eldridge and Eliza moved their family across the mountain and settled on Brimstone Creek near Lone Mountain, in Scott County. The move didn’t happen right away, though. In 1870, Eldridge and Eliza were still living in Morgan County with their five children that were born at the time: 8-year-old Orlena, 6-year-old Minerva, 5-year-old William, 2-year-old James, and baby Mary.
El and Lizey, as they were commonly known, moved their family to Brimstone Creek between 1870 and 1880.
It was on Dec. 6, 1892 that Shannon was appointed postmaster at Cortland, Tenn., and the new post office was born.
In those days, post offices were more than a place to send letters. They were lifelines that connected isolated communities to the rest of the world. They were tiny operations, usually located inside a general store, a blacksmith shop, a mill, or even a private home. In addition to farming, El Shannon was a merchant who had a small store at Lone Mountain, which is probably why he was the community’s postmaster.
The post office in those days was nothing like the post offices of today. The entire operation might consist of a single room or a corner of a room, with wooden pigeonhole mail slots, a counter with a ledger and ink pen, and perhaps a scale for weighing letters and parcels if it were particularly high tech. The postmaster was not a full-time job; they were paid a few dollars a year and ran the post office alongside their main business.
Those were the days before rural free delivery. The mail would be carried by train to the nearest rail town — Robbins, in this case — and from there would be hauled to the post offices by horseback riders. Bad weather could delay the mail by days or even weeks. Once it arrived at the post office, residents would travel to get the mail in person. The postmaster was responsible for sorting the mail, handing it out across the counter, and keeping detailed handwritten records. He (or she) often knew each resident personally.
These rural post offices, like the ones at Hughett and Cortland, were often the first official recognition of a settlement, and sometimes the last trace of it after the community disappeared. They help tell the story of rural communities, like Scott County.
In time, more Shannons came to Brimstone Creek. Joe (or J.P.) Shannon and his wife, Elizabeth Clowers, moved their large family to Brimstone in the early 1900s. Joe was El’s nephew, the son of El’s brother Andrew. Joe’s brother, Jim, also moved to Lone Mountain.
By 1910, El and Lizey lived with their youngest daughter, Ernestine, and a 10-year-old granddaughter, Bertie. El, by then in his mid 70s, still owned his dry goods store there, and Ernestine worked alongside him in the store. (She later married Fred Webb and moved to Oneida.)
El died in 1917. Lizey moved in with her daughter Julia and her husband, John Henderson Webb, and their children, who still lived at Lone Mountain. She died in 1925.
By the 1930s, post offices were consolidating across Scott County. The post office down the creek at Huntsville Branch had closed in September 1935. And just about 14 months later, in December 1936, the Cortland post office at Lone Mountain closed, leaving Robbins as the nearest post office.
The last postmaster at Cortland was Cassie Griffith (1895-1978), appointed on July 12, 1936. She was born Cassie Hamby, the daughter of James Hamby and Sylvania Griffith. Cassie married Earl Griffith (1892-1946), the son of Andrew Griffith and Martha Massengale and a descendant of Joseph Griffith, the Revolutionary War veteran who was the first settler of Brimstone Creek. Cassie had a sister, Carrie, who married Earl’s brother, Mitchell.
Like the rest of the Hambys, Cassie was originally from the Emory River area of Morgan County. She and Earl lived in Morgan County for several years after their marriage, but moved to Lone Mountain in the 1930s and remained there the remainder of their lives.
Today, Eldridge Shannon and his wife, and Cassie Griffith and her husband, are all buried at Lone Mountain Cemetery, just a stone’s throw from what was once the community’s post office. And the name, Cortland, has faded into the dustbin of Scott County’s history.
Much like the Cortland name, the Shannon name has largely faded from the Lone Mountain area. If not for the family’s partition at Lone Mountain Cemetery, enclosed by wrought iron fence, there would be little record of the once-thriving family that lived here and operated the community’s general store. Most of El and Lizey’s children moved off Brimstone after reaching adulthood, including Ernestine once she married. Julia was the last one that remained, and she and her husband moved to Oneida a few years after her mother’s death. As for El’s nephews who made the move to Brimstone a little later, they moved away in the late 1920s and 1930s, returning to northern Morgan County and the Campground area of southern Scott County, where the Shannon name would remain prominent throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
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◼️ Tuesday: Echoes in Time (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
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