Key Town Beginnings
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A few years ago I trekked into the forest with my Daddy and a couple of cousins to see the homeplace of my Great-great-great Grandfather, Stephen Key. He was the founder of the now-abandoned Key Town. Now, I don’t think he had any idea of starting a “town” – likely he had little thought of what the place would look like a century and a half later.
I shared my thoughts on that trip here and wondered at the time why he would’ve ever settled in such a remote place. I still don’t have the answer. But his oldest son William would have been around 10 years old when he came to Fentress County and William stayed the rest of his life. I don’t know just where William’s home place was, but I know where two of his five children raised their families right there in Key Town.
John Mitchell Key was a slight man, as many of the Keys have always been. He wore overalls all the time and walked fast – I’ve heard it explained that they walk like there’s fire on their heels.
He married Lottie Young about 1898 and built a two room home in Key Town. It had a bedroom on one end and a second room on the opposite end that served as living room and probably kitchen. A kitchen was added along the back of the house at some future time, the addition revealed by the step-down required to enter that part of the house. Lottie loved flowers and surrounded her home with Holly Hocks, Dahlias and roses. There was only a small patch of grass and everything else was covered in flowers.
Her family remembers she wasn’t much of a cook but kept her family nourished and worked hard drying apples and making jelly from their peels. She and John Mitchell raised sorghum cane and made molasses which were stored in gallon jugs along the wall of the kitchen floor. Lottie was never idle, piecing quilts as she rocked in the home’s only rocking chair. John Mitchell sat nearby in a homemade straight chair which he propped back on two legs against the wall.
John Mitchell kept bees in gums along the edge of his yard and would rob them of their honey each fall. He was a deacon at the Campground Church where he would walk with his family each week along the road that ran directly from Key Town to the church. It was only ever a wagon road without pavement or gravels. This road was independent of today’s Martha Washington Road.
John Mitchell and Lottie faced many of the same struggles their neighbors did. They buried 3 of their children two sons who died in their very early 20’s and left behind young children of their own. Their youngest son was the only one to settle really close to them and he partly raised his family right next door to them. After Maynard’s children were in school, they moved away from Keytown to allow better access to the school bus. Still, they were scarcely half a mile from his homeplace.
After all of her children moved out of Key Town, Lottie was no longer very satisfied and urged John Mitchell to move out. As was the custom of the day, as age caught up with the couple and their health declined, they stayed with first one child and then another until finally The Good Lord called them home in 1957 and 1958.
Their nearest neighbor for many years had been Jack and Armintie Atkinson – Mintie was John Mitchell’s baby sister. Next week I think we’ll visit them.
