Source: Roots of Roane County, TN, by Snyder E. Roberts, beginning page 9
The iron words at Little Emery was, if not the first, one of the first in Roane County. Further research needs to be done before its full story can be told, however, enough information is available to outline the major steps in its development.
At the January 1819 Session of the Roane County Court, JOHN FARMER, MOSES FARMER, and MICHAH SELLERS petitioned the Court to view vacant lands in the vicinity of their iron works. It appears from the petition that the Iron Works was an on-going operation in 1819, and they needed additional woodland as a source of wood to burn into charcoal. MICHAH SELLERS was a well-known Baptist preacher who founded many churches south of the Tennessee River. From the list of Captain WILSON's Company in 1826, it appears that Sellers and the Farmers had sold their Iron Works to JAMES BUCKHANNON who was paying taxes on slaves and 460 acres. Willie Blount had 1200 acres remaining nearby from his 5,000 acre tract where Col. Shelby had burned the Indian Town. Other neighbors were JAMES TEDDER, JAMES ROBINSON and WILLIAM BOWERS.
The Emery Iron Works was evidently in operation in 1824, and had a post office judging from a letter written by JAMES BUCKHANNON dated August 26, 1824 from "Emery Iron Works" to Mr. JOHN LOYD in Kingston requesting the latter to be surety for the marriage of a Mr. RALPH LAIN to MARY WILLIAMS.
Buckhannon's Iron Works was in existence in 1830 because Capt. MCELWEE tells in his account about AUSTIN L. GREENE and a companion meeting two members of the notorious JOHN A. MURRELL outlaw gang at a forks of the road near the Emery church "where one fork went to Buckhannon's Iron Works." (The two outlaws, NORTH and WALTON, were arrested for horse stealing.)
On October 28, 1836, JAMES BUCKHANNON sold his Iron Works and 375 acres to JOSEPH ROBINSON. On November 27, 1847, Deed Book K, p. 247, JOSEPH ROBINSON bound himself under a $14,000 penal bond to sell several tracts of land (with one acre excepted across Little Emery for the "meeting house") including the Emery Iron Works to FREDERICH B. GUENTHER. Guenther was made the first resident Agent for the East Tenn. Colonization Co. at Wartburg [Morgan County] on August 23, 1844. Guenther was replaced as Agent by OTTO VON KIENBUSH in 1847 until Vice President GEORGE F. GERDING came in the spring of 1849 to take personal charge at Wartburg. In the meantime, Guenther moved to his farm on Little Emery, and got into the iron manufacturing business. Book K, p. 636 dated October 19, 1849, FREDERICH B. GUENTHER sold personal items and several tracts of land including the Iron Works and a saw mill to JOHN C. GILLISPIE to cover a debt Guenther owed to WILLIAM S. MCEWEN.
In order to know the size of Kingston in 1848, why Guenther's Iron Works failed, and how Roane County almost had a "German County" of its own, it will be necessary to digress and consider some excerpts from a long scholarly report written in German by JOHANN HACKER who had made a personal study for parts of two years, and made detailed plans for establishing another German Colony in Morgan County with one town to be named "Chemnitz" at the confluence of Emory and Obed Rivers (12 miles from Kingston) and a second town named "Marienberg" 11 miles to the northwest from the first. Hacker obtained options on some of Gerding's land and from others, but his failure to recruit enough people caused him to cancel his plans in 1853. The pertinent excerpts from Hacker's report are as follows:
"Kingston is the county seat of Roane County. It was founded quite some time ago but consists of only 80 houses, some of which form a pretty street, others being widely scattered on the extensive site of the city. The number of inhabitants is probably 400 or 500, and therefore the figures given by Mr. Weigel in Leipzig should be corrected. In his newest prospectus about the colony at Wartburg, he describes Kingston as a city with 12,000 inhabitants."
"We set out (from Kingston) on foot, crossed the Clinch a mile above Kingston, and then four miles farther on, transversed the Big Emery on a ferry. On this day we got as far as DeArmond's [Gap]. The next day we arrived at Wartburg at 3:00 p.m."
"From Guenther's Iron Works to DeArmond's farm the land ascends in a rolling pattern....etc."
"A map put out by Ernest Weigel in Leipzig, through no fault of his own, is extremely erroneous, it makes it appear that the Company (Wartburg) has approximately 200,000 contiguous acres of land. This is not so."
"All of East Tennessee has been surveyed by the state government into blocks of 1000 rods length and 894 rods width, and these blocks are numbered. When this survey was made in 1836 or earlier, a number of sections had already been entered by individuals, and claim titles made out. These titles were entered in the county record books. After this had taken place, all state lands were offered for sale for the cost of surveying. They were acquired by speculators in blocks." (Some of this land was sold on New York markets resulting in much confusion over titles.)
"The first Agent of the Company that was employed to direct the settlement, Mr. GUENTHER, is the real founder of the city of Wartburg. He is generally regarded as a likeable and just man. After his removal as Agent, he went to his farm in the vicinity of Kingston, where he intends to put an abandoned iron works back into operation. The location is an unfortunate one, however, because high waters from the Little Emery wash away his installation time after time."
"Last summer, Mr. Guenther contracted with land speculators in Kingston, GILLISPIE and MCEWEN, to sell their land to German emigrants for 15 per cent commission, and he took a trip back to Germany for this purpose in the fall of 1848 at the expense of these gentlemen.
Mr. HACKER leaves the Roane County German Colony near Little Emery dangling, but evidently it was not a howling success. A number from the Wartburg Colony later settled at Kingston, and individual German families settled throughout Roane County.
Only a few motorists who zip through the Elverton Community today on highway #61 half way between Harriman and Oliver Springs would ever realize this community was once the site of a bustling iron manufacturing industry complete with iron ore pits, railroads, a coal mine, coke ovens, three camps, hotel, post office, etc. together with real live people who made their niche in local history.
In 1872, EDWARD H. POTTER, GILBERT PATTON, WALTON BLAKE, ALLSTON ALLEN, and FREDERICK WHITING bought 139 acres of land from JOSEPH ROBINSON to form the Little Emory Iron Works. By April 1873, the company had acquired 7 tracts of land, and had changed its name to Oakdale Iron Works. In May 1873, the Company's name was changed to Oakdale Mining and Manufacturing Co. In July 1879, the Company bought approximately 4000 acres from M. J. GILLISPIE. In July 1882, the Company made an agreement with Col. JOHN G. SCOTT, and changed its name to Oakdale Iron, Coal and Transportation Co. In October 1882, this Company made a lease agreement with Walden's Ridge Railroad Co.
The heirs of WILLIAM S. MCEWEN, wealthy Roane County lawyer and land owner, covenanted with HENRY E. COLTON, President of Walden's Ridge Railroad Co. to build a single-track, 5-foot gauge railroad from the Cincinnati Southern R.R. at Honeycutt (Oakdale) to the Oakdale Iron Works and on to Winter's Gap (Oliver Springs.) The railroad was to be completed before January 1, 1877, but a one-year extension in time was granted. The railroad was to serve the coal mines north of Winter's Gap in Morgan County, and thereby provide a source of coal for the Iron Works at Old Oakdale. No exact date can be established when the Old Oakdale Iron Works ceased operations, but it was probably in the early 1890's.
The ore pit was located near Little Emory. The ore was transported on a narrow-gauge railroad by dinky engines, two miles to Old Oakdale. The coal mine was located one-half mile to the north near a gap in Walden's Ridge, and the coal was hauled to the coke ovens over a narrow-gauge tram railroad. The two-story hotel stood immediately west of the present-day Elverton School building. The Post Office building was next door to the hotel. The school, church, and various dwellings were nearby.