John Hamilton
Chasteen Denton
JOHN
HAMILTON CHASTEEN DENTON Taken about 1900, the picture above shows part of the family of John Hamilton Chasteen Denton, born 1840 died 1913, and wife Albertine at their home high above the present Turnaround in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest on Little Santeetlah Creek, North Carolina, the only white family ever to live in this forest. Seated are John Denton, wife Albertine, Lizzie (Melissa) Denton, Grover Denton. Standing are Arthur Denton, Clara Maybelle (Mable) Denton Rice, Mollie (Mary L.) Denton, and Baxter Cook, of Polk County, Tennessee, visiting his Uncle John Denton at the time the picture was taken. Not in the picture were Charlie Denton (surveyor who married Viena Harwood and lived on Slaybacon Branch), Cub (John L.) Denton who married Nancy Holder and lived on Little Snowbird Creek, Chalmers Forrest Denton, and Maggie (Margaret) Denton Brown who married early and moved to the Indian Territory and later lived in California. Sometime after 1890, John Denton (six feet five and one-half inches, a rough and tumble fighter, a Confederate soldier who had survived the first Battle of Bull Run and the Siege Of Vicksburg) whipped some 20 men in front of the old Court house at Robbinsville, NC with scale weights, stovewood, and rocks. The fight started in the George Walker General Store, where John Denton had been leaning up against the store counter as he and other men talked. Bob McElroy, Sheriff or Clerk of the Court, approached and demanded that John Denton pay his Poll Tax, a $2.00 tax to be paid by each adult male citizen. John Denton replied that it had already been paid, and he had the receipt at home. McElroy called Denton a liar. Whereupon, Denton knocked McElroy to the floor with his fist, McElroy jumped up, and with one swoop of his Bowie knife, slashed off John Denton's long beard, just below his chin. Denton fumbled behind him for something with which to hit McElroy, got hold of a heavy cast iron scale weight, the center of which was filled with lead, and hit McElroy in the chest, knocking him cold. Others in the store took up the fight, and it spilled out onto the porch, at one end of which was a neat stack of oak stovewood. John Denton grabbed stick after stick, busting heads like a madman. Others came running from the Court House, either to join in the fray or watch as John Denton fought two, three, or four men at one time. The Court House Square was not paved, and there was a plentiful supply of rocks weighing three or four pounds each. Now out of stovewood, off the porch and down on the ground, John Denton, who never used a rifle to kill a turkey or pheasant, made use of his favorite ammunition, rocks. Denton threw a rock at John G. (Pird) Tatham, missing his head by a hair. The rock hit the front of the store with such force it busted the weather boarding and bounced back, hitting Justice of the Peace Nathan Green Phillips, an old Confederate Army Captain, just where his suspenders, or gallowses, crossed. Phillips had been shouting, "Peace, men, peace, men." and waving his arms in an effort to stop the fighting. Capt. Phillips, now injured, fell to the ground and, unable to rise, had to crawl home on his hands and knees. Many times afterward, John Denton expressed regret that his friend Capt. Phillips had been injured. Rona Tatham said she saw Uncle Pird Tatham heading for the house, obviously to get his pistol which was hanging on the back porch, and knowing what would happen, she got there first and hid the pistol in the wood pile. The fighting subsided and the crowd melted away, but for years afterwards, the citizens of Robbinsville and vicinity had a healthy respect for John Denton, and no Graham County official was ever again known to try to collect Poll Tax twice from John Denton! John Denton got his first hog, a sow about to whelp a litter of pigs, for $3.00, the sum he was paid to split 1,000 chestnut fence rails for one of the Stewarts on lower Big Santeetlah. He completed the job in two days. Denton used a pair of bulls (not steers) to log and farm his new ground on Santeetlah. Arthur and Forrest Denton said their father always had to "lead" the bulls into the logs, while he drove the jay grab, because once hitched to a log, the bulls were off and there was no stopping them until they reached the icy landing. About 1907, while he and son Grover were cutting timber on West Buffalo, John Denton had an accident which left him a cripple for the rest of his life. Part of a tree fell on him, and his left leg was broken. Dr. Robert J. Orr set the leg and applied splints of stout hickory held in place by strips torn from bed sheets, but after the morphine wore off, John Denton complained that the pain was unbearable, and taking his pocket knife, he cut the bandages holding the splints. The leg healed crooked, leaving him a cripple. Afterwards, Denton, tall, gaunt, with his pigtails and hair flowing, using two walking sticks, visited old friends in Robbinsville, Andrews, and Murphy, walking through the woods from Santeetlah, and after his wife died, from Snowbird, where Cub, Forrest, and Charlie built him a one-room cabin in the upper end of Cub's fields. About 1912, John Denton was granted a Confederate pension by the State of North Carolina for service during the Civil War as a private in Company D, 3rd Tennessee Infantry, raised at Benton, Polk County, TN in 1861. He had his check sent to Andrews, the nearest bank, and with the $200.00 in back pay, he bought a service for eight of 1847 Rogers Sterling from Bruce Fisher, who had it on display in his store in Andrews. With the silver in its velvet-lined cherry wood box in a sack tied to his shoulder, Denton headed for his one-room cabin on Little Snowbird. Mrs. Cub Denton and daughter Alma said when they had large numbers of guests for dinner, they would borrow the Sterling, always returning it to John Denton in the cherry box. He buried it someplace before he died, but it was never found. John Denton's bear trap was found by an employee of the Forest Service. Vie Denton has his grandfather's hunting axe, a small but stout one blade chopping axe, carried in a leather sling and case. Somebody removed Denton's muzzle loader rifle from his cabin in his absence, and it was never found. After the Dentons left their home, others began to use the house, and fearful of forest fires, the U.S. Forest Service decided in the 1940's to tear down the old log house, thinking it would take only a few hours. Actually it took four days. John Denton had not only notched and fitted the logs to make a snug, warm house for his family but had bored holes with a large screw auger and then driven in locust pins to tie the logs together with a vise-like grip. John Denton, wife Albertine, son Cub who died in 1911 from a ruptured appendix, and several other members of the Denton family are buried in the Denton Cemetery on Little Snowbird at the Forrest Denton place. (from The Andrews Journal, Wednesday, July 5, 1972)
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