It was an arduous journey from Cades Cove through all the mountains in eastern Tennessee and the Cumberland Mountains in southern Kentucky.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Some years back I was looking at the old vellum deeds of our cottage with Jo Thorne; we noticed that Abraham Phillips, the first recorded owner, had been killed in a local coal pit explosion. We do not know how many were in the party moving with them, but a comparison of surnames from Cades Cove to the Clay County records shows many duplications.

It had been very cold for several days, and when cold air goes down into a mine it absorbs more moisture. Abraham Phillips has come down in history as a controversial figure after facing an impossible situation at the Lan. My book, The House of Abraham Phillips, records a story of these people who lived in our cottage, this village, and who faced the ultimate loss in a pit disaster in 1875.

for a short period of time, for Benjamin Madison fell in love, and did not move on with the rest of the family. A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce. Clara says I am wrong, but my memory was that Abraham's wife died either on the first trip they made, or else it was on this second trip. Decades later, I still look out at the Taff Gorge, ancient beech forests clinging to the hill opposite us and the Garth mountain rising up behind us. In addition, some articles contain terms or views that were acceptable within mainstream Australian culture in the period in which they were written, but may no longer be considered appropriate.The lenient verdict reflected the power of the mine owners – some of the jurors were Booker employees and they feared for their jobs.

Their eldest son Evan (1848-72) died aged 24, their youngest Elizabeth aged 23, and a daughter Deborah (1857) at just five months, her name passed on to the next daughter. It is a story of a stoical people facing hard work and poverty against the backdrop of the beautiful Garth Mountain as they live with the hell of Victorian industry ravaging their valley. The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. The House of Abraham Phillips is a fictitious interpretation of the effect the Lan disaster had on one family’s history.Imagine what it would be like to pile all your belongings into a wooden wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen. Even though Dallas county had been settled in the 1840s, the area where Abraham brought his family was quite desolate. I can still hear them tell about how dissatisfied and unhappy he was after that and that he always talked of going back to Tennessee but he died in a few years.