Raby, Donald

              DONALD RABY



HISTORY OF RABY FAMILY IN NEW HOPE


Well, my ancestors settled in New Hope area on Chestnut Ridge in 1888, and Samuel A. Raby and his wife Elizabeth with children and five Raby children and then there were three other children from a previous marriage. Elizabeth was a widow of a confederate veteran who died in a federal prison. He had been a confederate conscript, and they lived in Campbell Station in Knox County previous to that. In 1888 the family moved to the New Hope community inside of the New Hope Church just a few hundred yards across the valley. But Elizabeth died in 1989, and then Samuel had the five children to take care of. He remarried, and they resettled in that community for those years. That’s my great, great grandfather. My great grandfather was Samuel M. Raby who married Bertha Walters and she was from Union Valley which is an extension of Bear Creek valley. They had come from Virginia, the Walters family. So I have those three ancestors that are buried in the New Hop Cemetery. And then the son of Samuel M. Raby was Fredrick Samuel Raby, and that was my grandfather, and he was born there in the New Hope area in 1894 in what was known as Scarboro community. They moved from the first fifteen acres. They owed their own Chestnut Ridge down into the community of Scarboro near were the school is at the intersection of Scarboro Rd and Bethel Valley Rd, and there was a small community there with two or three stores and a school and churches in that area. 
Fredrick came to Knoxville in 1917 to work for Myers and Whaley as a machinist in the mining equipment business, mining machinery. Then he was drafted in the World War I, 1918 and was not in good health, but after six months they discharged him, and then in 1918 my father was born, and then four years later Fredrick, my grandfather, died and left my grandmother with two young children, a four year old, my father, and then a young brother that was two months old in August of 1922. And so that is the strong connection that I have to the Scarboro community. When my father and his mother and brother came to live in Scarboro with Granny Raby who was the widow of the original Samuel A. Raby that had moved here, and she needed someone to care for her in her later years. And that form of social security back in those day we didn’t have—the government didn’t take care of people like they do today in the families, extended families did. And so my grandmother and my father and his brother lived in the Scarboro community for three or four years until 1926 when Granny died. 
Then they moved back to Knoxville where her family was, and so there was a brief interval there where my father lived in Scarboro, and also they spoke of Robertsville and Scarboro together. And so they also had, my grandfather had two brothers, Vergil Raby and Frank Raby, and then he had a sister Volina Raby and she married Bob James. Frank and Vergil were farmers and raised corn and different crops that they raise there, and they also worked the timber. And my father would talk about his memories of those years that he lived in Scarboro. He went to school three grades in Scarboro School, and as I grew up we’d here these stories about Scarboro. He really didn’t like Scarboro a whole lot because he’d been in Knoxville near his other cousins and then all of the sudden he’s moved out into the rural area and there’s not as much going on as there had been in the city, but he did have memories of it. And some of those memories involved the river, and he spoke of the river as they did in the early days. They called it the Bent, and they went down there to fish and they also collected mussels down there looking for the prize Tennessee pearls, and so there were activities that there were to do that he had memory of, and then he rode the log wagons when they’d take logs to the mill over in the Edgemoor Claxton area, and he talked about those memories, and then he had memories of going to school. 
And that’s where my knowledge and interest became brought to this area was when I found a picture that my grandmother had of a class, a school class in front of the Scarboro school and my father was in that picture. She had an X marked on it to identify him as in that picture. It just became an interest to me about who those people where in that picture and what happened to that community and so forth, and then of course I knew about Oak Ridge. All my life I lived in Fountain City, but I had no real knowledge of the history of the area, and I didn’t realize how strong a connection there was in my family through that community of New Hope and Scarboro. And so I began to investigate and study about the family history and about the history of the area, and I met a cousin who was related through the Walters family. She invited me over to here house, and she invited Louise Reed Freels to come. Louise Freels Reed is her name, and she had this same picture of the school children, and they had identified them, and they talked about all the memories, and it stirred the interest in me to learn more about the community. And then there was—the study led to finding photographs that the army had taken. Louise had a copy of a picture with a number on it, and I asked her where she got it, and she says, “Well, my mother got it from somebody in Oak Ridge.” Well, Oak Ridge to me was sort of off limits. All of my life I had a neighbor that worked at Y-12, and he and his son and I were playmates. Well, as young children do they talk about where does you father work? What does he do? And the only thing we could get an answer from him was, “Well, I work at Oak Ridge, and there’s no more questions. We can’t give any more discussions about what goes on there.” So we had the idea that it was sort of an off limits place, and so we treated it that way in our minds as a top secret operations. During the ‘50s and 60s it was still at that time, and of course there’s still restrictions now.


RABY CONNECTION TO NEW HOPE


I found the records of the New Hope church in one of my interviews with people in discussions of the former residence of the area. I found the book the ledger of the New Hope church, and in that record it shows where my ancestors did belong to the New Hope church, and that’s why they were buried there in that cemetery. And it gives their date of Baptism for Samuel A. Raby and Samuel M. Raby and Bertha Walters Raby, which was my great grandmother, and they are both buried in the New Hope cemetery as well as Granny Raby who was the second wife of Samuel A. Raby. They lived there in the New Hope community. And then my father who was Earl F. Raby lived in Scarboro, and I don’t know if they attended the church at New Hope or not. I don’t have any record of that, but they did live in Scarboro, and I know my grandmother was very, very faithful in church attendance, and I’d say there were involved in the community churches there. I don’t know if it was New Hope or one of the other churches in the Scarboro community, but they did live, they did know people there I’m sure because of their friendships and neighbors were a small community, and they worked together when they had needs and so forth. The property in 1878 where the cemetery is Rosanna French  Johnson wife of Elijah Johnson was buried there when she died in April 25th 1878, and then three years later Elijah died, and he joined here in that location. They’re buried in the New Hope Cemetery. Their property was later owned by Riley Goldstone when he dedicated that cemetery and donated the cemetery and the property to the New Hope Baptist church, and that’s how the New Hope Church got started was Riley Goldstone donated the property for the church building and for the cemetery, and there are approximately 222 graves in the cemetery. That’s marked graves, and there’s probably some that are unmarked, and it’s a large cemetery there at the New Hope church. And so it served a wide community that went all the way from Robertsville to Scarboro and as far down as Edgemoor.


HISTORY OF THE NEW HOPE CHURCH


Well, the New Hope Church, the history that I have of it goes back to 1912, but it was earlier than that that Riley Goldstone dedicated the land to the church, and I’m sure there was—I don’t know exactly when they built the building, but we’ve researched that and were looking for that information about the first building. Apparently there was a church fire that destroyed the first building, and one of the members, Daisy Manning, Daisy Holloway Manning had talked to her family about the church being burned, and then it was rebuilt sometime probably in the ‘30s. And the church that was there in 1942 when the government took the property was the one we have a photograph of now, and it’s in the Bear Creek Valley photographs that belong to George Anderson. The pictures that we have were taken by his sister Ola Anderson who was a school teacher in Anderson Country at Claxton School, and she took the pictures in 1942 for the purpose of presenting the pictures to the court in an appeal for the property claim. She’s got several good pictures of New Hope Church from the different angles of it. They lived across the Valley at the base of Chestnut Ridge. The Anderson family. Oliver Anderson and his wife was, I forgot her name, but she was a Keith, and the Keiths lived in that same community there in the property around New Hope Church.


ANDERSON PHOTOS


Well, in the process of my research of the New Hope, Scarboro area I met George Anderson, and I spoke with him about the history, and I visited with him and he shared his memories and stories, and he also shared a series of photographs which we have here in the New Hope center, and the history of those photographs were that his sister, Ola Anderson, took them in 1942 and presented them to the court as an appeal for more value for there property. When the government came and took the properties they gave short notice and short time to move the people and they made an offer on the appraisal of the property, and the people that were able could appeal to that through the court system and perhaps receive more value. And so Ola took a series of photographs of their property and presented them to court, and they’re documented on the back about when they were taken in 1942, and so that’s the source of these pictures that shows the Bear Creek Valley before Y-12 was built, and that’s an important document because it’s all different now, and it’s good that we take time and remember these things. 


THE ARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAPH PROJECT


I did a big project that really became a lot larger than I expected, but the process of that began with my family history research and learning about the Scarboro in the New Hope community, and I met the two former residents there. Louise Freed Reed and Lucille Hackworth, and they shared pictures with me that they had, and some of the pictures Lucille had had a number on them. And I had looked in the library and studied some research, and I found a plat map that showed all the properties, and they were designated with a number and identified the owner by name, and this map and this index led me to the question, where are the pictures? Where are these pictures? And I know how the government keeps records, and so I thought maybe they’re available, and I started searching in the archives, and I talked to people in Oak Ridge, and no one in this area knew about the pictures, but I knew there was 900 properties that had been removed, and out of those 900 there should be quite a collection of pictures, and so as I inquired through the national archives I found a collection of pictures in College Park Georgia where the Southeast Regional National Archives is located, and they have the documents for the Oak Ridge area, the historical documents that, and the development of the Manhattan Project. 
In 1942 when they moved into this area and decided to take 56,200 acres 100 square mile area for this top secret project the Army core of engineers was in charge of that, and they sent a group of people in to appraise the property, and they called the project originally the Kingston Demolition Range. So they came in here with that title and identified this as going to be a military base of some kind, but they couldn’t tell what it was about or what it was going to be, but they talked about—the Scarboro family talked about—their mother told one of the girls to take some water out to the men that were working out there and said, “Just go out there and take this water out there for them working and just listen and see what you can learn.” Of course they didn’t know anything either. No one really knew anything, and it was the kind of project that there wasn’t any knowledge, but everybody just knew they were told to do this and not ask you any questions. And so the appraisers came and made offers. They put notices on the—some people went to church and came home from church and found a notice tacked up to their front porch door post, and they said give them notice that they had to be out by December the 31st, 1942. And so the original name of the project was the Kingston Demolition Range and that’s why I choose that name for my project which involved collection of these photographs that was taken by the army core of engineers. They took a document of appraisal photograph of every improvement on the properties, and that included everything from the outhouses and the hog pen and the chicken house and the barns and all of the smoke house and the garages and all the out buildings and the main dwelling of the house, and so I wanted to see. I found out the pictures existed and I wanted to see what my grandfather’s house looked like. Well, I knew my grandfather had been born in New Hope area in Scarboro and I wanted to know more about it, and so I made arrangements to go to Atlanta and visit the College Park Archives, and during that process I saw the pictures and I made copies of them with my camera, and I’m sitting there in the archives and I’m thinking, here’s these pictures, and I found out, it wasn’t till I finished that I knew how many I had, but there was 5,600 pictures, and that was kind of an overwhelming thing, but I felt need for the fact that these pictures had not been seen by the public for 60 year, but they belonged to the public. They are pictures of our heritage and our history, and people need to have those available to them. For a year I worked on that process in my mind of how those could be made available. 


MORE ABOUT THE ARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAPH POJECT


Well, I wanted to—when I learned there were pictures that the army had taken I wanted to see a picture of my grandfather home place, and that was what my interest was and my personal family history studies, and I wanted to know more about what the family was like and where they lived and the community they lived in Scarboro New Hope area. And SO I found the pictures in Atlanta at College Park Southeastern Region of the national Archives, and I went there to visit there and copied the pictures with my, took a camera and copied them and studied over there. And I was sitting there in the archives and it became sort of a burden to me in a way or I felt need in the situation that these pictures had been locked up for 60 years and they were over here in Oak Ridge until 1987 and that’s when the records department here sent them to the national archives and they became national access at that point, but they had been stored in a classified documents building until 1987, and then they had been in the national archives in Georgia from 1987. In 2001 I went down there, and I’m sitting down there in the archives and I’m looking at these pictures just thinking if I feel this way about this way about these pictures how important they are for me to see my grandfathers home, what about these other 900 families that were removed at the same circumstances. They would like to see them too. And so I felt these documents belonged to the public, and I would like to find a way to make them available to the public again. 
And so for a year I pondered on that part and talked to different people and I decided to go to the Pellissippi Genealogy Historical Society in Clinton and talk to Mary Harris the Anderson County historian, and she’s been involved in cemetery inscription projects throughout Anderson County for years, and she’s been involved in, she’s in charge of the archives in the Anderson County records courthouse. Well, I presented my proposition to them that I would do the work if they would finance the project of my expenses, going down there and staying at the motel and so forth and all the expenses that would be involved in copying these pictures which amounted to 5,600 pictures before it was over. This is an important factor that I talked to Bob Presley at Y-12, and he had told me that BWXT and Y-12 offered grants to public community projects, and so we made an application through the genealogy society to apply for a grant, and thankfully they came through with $1,000 that helped us to finance the collection of these pictures, and Bob Copeland and I went to the archives at least four times. I believe I’ve been there about six times, but we went down there and spent two or three days collecting the pictures, scanning them with digital cameras, and digital scanners, and we made a record of them and brought them back, and I processed them into a form that the public can access. They’re on CDs now and you can purchase a CD through the historical society. And they are available at Oak Ridge at the Museum of Science and Energy. This was important to me because I felt that these pictures belonged to the people.