Saltpetre Mining Evidence at Nance Ferry Cave, Tennessee

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SALTPETRE MINING EVIDENCE AT
NANCE FERRY CAVE, TENNESSEE

by Marion O. Smith

Nance Ferry Cave, located in a Jefferson County bluff overlooking the

Holston River, is about twenty-five miles northeast of Knoxville. One evening”

ee wee Sens cham dics de
Seer oprsee Fis2 5] 1962} Merilyn Osterlund and I, upon hearing the cave had

been mined for saltpetre, decided to take a look at it.

The shelter-like entrance, although some forty feet wide by fifteen feet
high, is not obvious, except from the river during the winter. After some
fifty féee the passage narrows and becomes a crawl for a few feet. A small
stand-up area is followed by a stoop passage which again becomes a crawl before
opening into a stoop to standing height room. At this room the passage curves
sharply to the right and parallels the entrance passage to a second room, some
ten plus feet in height, where several hundred bats discourage lengthy visits.
The total length of the cave is only about 300 feet.

Along the stoop passage we found man-piled rocks, smudge marks, and signs
of cigeiae” Underneath modern grafitti Merilyn noticed "C Nance Novem 1848"
and "1828 Nelson Ore,''.plus several other illegible names associated with 1828.

In the two rooms at the rear we saw at least two piles of dirt representing
former leaching vats, scraps of wood, including planks and an eight foot grooved
log, piled rocks, and mattock marks. On the ceiling we found the scratched names
Jefferson and William Nance, and William Riggins, all associated with 1831 dates,
while on the wall we found a very old looking "Matthew Smith," but without an
associated date.

A post trip search of the Gotika Progress Administration (WPA) records of
Jefferson and Grainger counties and the 1860 census revealed the following tidbits

about the people whose names we had seen in the cave:

A. Nelson Ore was dead by 1907.

CIA

William Riggins had been appointed by the county court in 1826 to be

a laborer on a road in the vicinity of Lost Creek [a few miles from
the cave].

Jefferson Nance, born in Tennessee about 1810, was a Grainger County
farmer who in 1860 claimed $2,500 real and $2,945 personal property.
On February 29, 1832, he married Jane Churchman.