The Old Home Place

This is a picture of my mother's old home place in Glenmary, Tennessee. It doesn't look like much, does it? I'm told it was made from old chestnut logs cut from ancient trees that grew right there in Scott County.

Of course, Scott County was at one point Morgan County, and Morgan was once Roane. The map just kept changing around the old Webb farm, but the old Webb farm never moved. Webb ancestors raised sheep and chickens. They planted the gardens that sustained their families through the changing seasons. They forged shelter in the caves during the civil war. God surely blessed my ancestors with the old home place.

I never got to visit the old home place. Most of the family had moved north during the depression. At one point the farm had to be sold to pay the taxes, but family bought it back. For more than a 100 years, the old home place kept faith with the Webb family. Finally, they sold the old house, and it was dismantled as the old chestnut logs were carried away one by one down the mountain, probably to be used in a new log home to sustain a new family. I like to believe that anyway.

The Webb and Carpenter Cemeteries are providing temporary residences to all my great grandparents (going back through four generations) and aunts and uncles, cousins I only meet through census reports and paper trails. Someday though, I will meet them all on the streets of Glory. In that day, when we all see the Lord... when we're all on our knees thanking Jesus for our salvation... In that day, I will also be able to thank all my ancestors for the home place deep inside my heart.