Drinnons of Mulberry Gap: A Century of Family History

By Kenneth C. Drinnon

Drinnons of Mulberry Gap author, Kenneth C. Drinnon, decided a few years ago to begin writing a permanent record of the results of his several years collecting and compiling information on his Drinnon ancestors, which he traced back nine generations to Walter Drinnon/Drinnen who came from County Antrim, Ireland. He also compiled a family tree on Family Tree Maker and uploaded to FTMs composite tree several years ago.
Drinnons of Mulberry Gap was originally self-published in 2001 on a subscription basis in both hard and soft back covers at the urging of a few family members. This new publication seeks to satisfy the desires of others who have requested copies.
Although his family name is spelled D-r-i-n-n-o-n, his research, which goes back to the early 1700s, finds that D-r-i-n-n-e-n was the most prominent spelling in records of early ancestors. These early records used other spellings, namely: D-r-e-n-i-n-g, D-r-e-n-n-i-n-g, and D-r-e-n-n-o-n. But the D-r-i-n-n-o-n spelling was the most prominent of the 1800s Hawkins/Hancock County, Tennessee census records. It appears that early ancestors changed the spelling upon migrating to Hawkins County around the turn of the eighteenth century, on land that eventually became Hancock County.
Thomas J. Drinnon Sr. was the founder of the original Drinnon family to settle at Mulberry Gap, Hancock County, Tennessee. And the book is primarily about him and his wife, Rutha Johns, and their descendants who lived there for a century. However, it is appropriate and beneficial for the reader to have the included information on Thomass ancestors, beginning with Walter Drinnon who settled in the Colonies sometime in the 1730s and continuing down through the ensuing generations.
Kenneth Cleveland Drinnon, a native of Mulberry Gap, Hancock County, Tennessee, was born in Lee County, Virginia, on November 30, 1924, to Glenn B. and Willie Mae Overton Drinnon.
He attended Mulberry Gap Elementary School and graduated at age seventeen from Hancock County High School at Sneedville, Tennessee, in 1942. Following his United States Army Air Force service, he attended Lincoln Memorial University for two years and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1950 with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering. He was employed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the design of electric powergenerating plants for thirty-two years and became a licensed engineer in Tennessee.
In November 2011, Drinnon self-published his USAAF memoir, Wings of Tru Love via Xlibris.
He married Janis Bolton while attending Lincoln Memorial University and had one daughter, Dena Daryl Drinnon, who married David E. Foulk and had three children, Bethany, Jonathan, and Julia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483680859

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Kenneth C. Drinnon. 133536-DRIN

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4836-8083-5

Hardcover 978-1-4836-8084-2

EBook 978-1-4836-8085-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/23/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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www.Xlibris.com

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Drinnons of Mulberry Gap

Hancock County, Tennessee

Copyright  Kenneth C. Drinnon, 2001

Library of Congress Control Number: 2001093715

First printed in both hardback and soft cover by Tennessee Valley Publishing

and distributed in 2001 to about forty family members.

7342 Hodges Ferry Road

Knoxville, TN 37920-9732

Phone [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

Note: Since our original Drinnon ancestor in America came from Ireland, we can claim to be of Irish descent. Knowing this, it seemed appropriate to use Microsoft’s Emerald Isle type font for the book title and for chapter headings.

Drinnons

of

Mulberry Gap

Hancock County, Tennessee

plant%20for%20interior.tif

A brief account of our Drinnon family

in America from the 1730s to 2000

with emphasis on those living at Mulberry Gap

in Hancock County, Tennessee

from about 1887 to 1987

Kenneth Cleveland Drinnon

Mulberry Valley

24151.png

Western area of Hancock County, Tennessee showing Mulberry Valley

Mulberry Valley is a watershed drained by Mulberry Creek, which runs approximately twenty miles, roughly, from the Lee County Virginia line, mostly in a southwesterly direction to where it empties into the Powell River. Generally, its northern edge is the crest of Wallen Ridge while its southern edge is the crest of Powell Mountain. Mulberry Creek is fed by numerous freshwater springs, flowing from limestone openings in Powell Mountain and from sandstone openings in the numerous hollows and rolling hills that make up the foothills of Wallen Ridge.

Near the juncture of the Mulberry Road and the road to Sneedville and beyond to the southern part of the county is a severe depression or notch in Powell Mountain that is known by residents as the gap of the mountain. The road to Sneedville passes through this gap, i.e., Mulberry Gap. Mulberry Gap Baptist Church and Mulberry Gap Elementary School, which have long been the centers of community activity, are located near the juncture of the two roads.

Some of us who trace our roots back to the Mulberry Valley in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s still think of it as a beautiful place. We unhesitatingly refer to it as the beautiful Mulberry Valley. When Carson Brewer, a Knoxville newspaper writer with roots in the southern part of Hancock County, asked me in 2000 why I called it the beautiful Mulberry Valley and what was beautiful about it, I gave him my heartfelt answer.

I mentioned the patchwork of bluegrass slopes mothered by limestone nutrients on the north side of Powell Mountain with cattle and sheep grazing all the way to the top. Also, the memory of my brothers and me climbing to the mountaintop several times each year where we could see for miles, looking north across Wallen Ridge clear into Virginia. There were all sorts of plants, trees, and wildlife to get acquainted with and learn to identify. Mulberry Creek was always there to wade our hot, dirty bare feet in and grabble for hornyheads. There were clumps of various hardwood trees and stately pines that shelter gray and fox squirrels and weed fields that sheltered bobwhite quails and cottontail rabbits. And I told him about the numerous hollows with their many cool water springs, collecting into brooks that emptied into Mulberry Creek and rippled their way to Powell River. Finally, I said it doesn’t look the same now, but the valley is still beautiful to many of us.

Mr. Brewer opined that he would come see it for himself someday.

It would be easy to allow the memory of all the hard work and physical labor that families had to endure just to make a living in rural Hancock County, one of the poorest in the entire United States, detract their memories of the natural beauty. If this ever happened, it would be a shame. Especially for those of us that call Mulberry Valley home.

One cousin, who grew up in more affluent sections of the United States, asked during a visit in 2000, How did people make a living in the Mulberry Valley? My answer, thinking back to my growing-up years in the 1930s and ’40s until I was a young adult, was very simple. Families worked together and worked hard to clear and till the land with hand tools and real, live horsepower. In most families, each member had an important role and job that was his/her assigned responsibility. Accepting this responsibility made each member feel that he/she was an important part of a larger body. It is my opinion that these responsibilities and hard work were important side benefits of growing up in the beautiful Mulberry Valley.

Credits

The following people outside my brothers and sisters and their families have contributed information to this history—some by oral and written information about their families, some by pictures, some by ancestry information, and all by encouragement.

It’s a pleasure to list their names and thank them here even though I have given them due credit throughout the text where their contributions of valuable information were used.

Louise Drinnon Brewer

June Blanton

Grace Overton Buis

Virginia Drinnon Clabough

Earl Cole

Opal Drinnon Dole

James W. Drinnon

James E. Drinnon

Paul W. and Mabel Drinnon

Mattie Ruth Drinnon

Dolores Ramsey Ham

Linda McCurry LaPierre

Martha Drinnon Licata

Katherine Drinnon Loutsis

Brenda McCurry

Michele Drinnon Tarricone

Byrder Vandeventer

A separate note of thanks is extended to my brothers and sisters and their families for providing me names, dates, and other vital statistics so that the statistical portion of this history for our father’s descendants is nearly 100 percent complete as of January 1, 2000.

Introduction

After spending several years collecting and compiling information on my Drinnon ancestors, which I traced back nine generations to Walter Drinnon/Drinnen, who came from County Antrim, Ireland, I decided a few years ago to get a word processor and begin writing up what I had collected. It seemed appropriate to have a permanent record of all this information for Dena and her children, Bethany, Jonathan, and Julia Foulk, and anyone else who might be interested.

Although our family name is spelled D-r-i-n-n-o-n, my research, which goes back to the early 1700s, finds that D-r-i-n-n-e-n was the most prominent spelling in records of our early ancestors. These early records used D-r-e-n-i-n-g, D-r-e-n-n-i-n-g, and D-r-e-n-n-o-n as other spellings. The D-r-i-n-n-o-n spelling was the most prominent in the 1800s Hawkins/Hancock County census records. Did our early ancestors change the spelling upon their arrival in Hawkins County around the turn of the eighteenth century? Why?

If my father knew very much detail about his Drinnon ancestors, who lived away from Mulberry Gap, he didn’t talk about them to us children very often. However, when I think back, I realize that he had a very good knowledge of who was akin to him although they lived in other parts of the county and were very seldom seen by us. Consequently, I grew up not knowing very much about our ancestral relatives.

Since I was only three years old when my grandmother Drinnon died and my grandfather left Tennessee for Colorado, I never had an opportunity to personally know anything about them. Although my father and mother had told me considerably about them as I was growing up, I didn’t have enough interest at that time to write down or otherwise record what they told me. When I finally did become interested, my father had passed on, and I discovered that I had forgotten or hadn’t been told the details that I wanted.

I finally turned to my father’s brothers and sisters for information, which they seemed to enjoy providing. I appreciate and thank Uncle Jim, Aunt Opal, Uncle Paul and Aunt Mabel, and Aunt Martha for their interest and considerable valuable information. Also, I would like to thank Linda McCurry LaPierre for pictures and information about Aunt Willa Mae, and Katherine Drinnon Loutsis for information on Uncle Maurice. However, there is still some information on descendants that is missing, and I sincerely hope that each family will continue to provide me updated information.

Once the bug hit me to try and find out something about them, I have found it to be a never-ending project. But over fifteen years of research have been very enlightening. My reward is having a family tree that I have researched and