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The Legend of Granny Dollar by Elizabeth P. Howard Published by Landmarks of DeKalb County, Inc., in 1992.
Nancy Callahan Dollar was born in Buck's Pocket on Sand Mountain, about eight miles east of a village known as Coffeetown. The exact date of her birth has never been known. Having never received any formal education, Nancy could neither read nor write and was unable to give exact dates for any of the fascinating happenings of her long and eventful life. However, her keen mind was a veritable storehouse of personal and historic memories, filled with both happiness and tragedy. And, based upon her reminiscences of various well-known events, a number of Granny Dollar admirers have estimated her birth as having been in the middle 1820s. She was the first child born to William Callahan, a huge adventurous full-blooded Cherokee, and Mary Sexton Callahan, a woman about whom little is known except that she was part Cherokee, part Creek, and half Irish, Scot, or Scot-Irish. William Callahan, a giant of a man who weighed 275 pounds and was six and one-half feet tall, was noted for his powerful physique, his terrible temper, his hunting skills, and his prolific-ness. The number of his legitimate children reached a total of twenty-six. In addition to his "Alabama" wife (Nancy's mother), he later took a second wife, a Cherokee named Casie, who was his "Carolina" wife. Such a practice of having two wives at once was sometimes sanctioned among the Cherokees during the first half of the nineteenth century. Callahan frequently hunted the mountain forests for wild game while the rest of the family tended the corn and potato fields. After one successful trip the family gathered to eat the savory venison, but Callahan appeared to be unhappy and distressed. Upon being questioned by his wife, he confessed that he had a wife and three children in South Carolina and that he feared they might be hungry. Mary immediately urged him to go after his other family, assuring him that they would all have plenty to eat. After his return from the long journey, the new wife, daughter, and two sons were welcomed by and fed well by the Alabama family. According to Nancy's recollections, there was never any dissension or jealousy in her large family. The two women labored together in raising the crops and caring for the children and shared equally the attentions of their common husband. They all ate wild turkey, deer, and fish, with such vegetables as cabbage, pumpkins, and corn-roasted with the shuck on. They also ate Johnnie cake sweetened with molasses, pumpkin pies, and hominy. All cooking was done outside under a shed in an oven formed from dirt over a wooden box, which burned away leaving a hard shell of red clay. It often held a haunch of deer and either a mess of potatoes or roasting ears. Banked and covered with live coals, the clay oven was an ideal slow cooker. The children apparently enjoyed having so many siblings. When there was work to be done, there were plenty of helpers, and the more children playing a game, the more fun they all had. Their favorite Indian activities included playing "dog and fox" and pitching quoits, which was similar to the game of horseshoes. Early in her life, however, Nancy Emmaline, as the oldest child, was given an adult's share of family responsibilities. She not only helped care for the babies, but tended her father's whiskey still by the time she was ten. With all the children born in her own family (including two sets of triplets), Nancy also acquired a knowledge of midwifery early and quite naturally, and often helped deliver babies in other families. Some of those babies were related to her. Once when she returned home after an all-night vigil with a woman in childbirth she was met by her father, who asked, "Which was it, Em, boy or girl?" "Boy," she answered. "That boy is your half-brother," he stated with pride.
Nancy remembered years later that her father had been off fighting in the "Florida War" at the time her mother had given birth to triplets. Nancy, of course, had had a large share of the babies' care. As the first Seminole War was fought between 1816-1818, he must have fought against them in the Second Seminole War, which began in 1835. Though the Seminoles suffered heavy losses, some of them retreated into the Everglades and continued to resist for seven more years. Ironically, at the time that Callahan was fighting for the United States government, his own Cherokee Nation was facing immediate extinction. Settlers had been encroaching upon Indian territory more and more after about 1830, and many whites were agitating for the government to buy large areas of the nation. In 1835 a small minority agreed to sell their Cherokee lands and the Treaty of Echota was signed. Although Chief John Ross, spokesman for the Cherokee Nation, proved that a majority of his people opposed the treaty, which had not been signed by a single major chief, it was approved and enforced by President Andrew Jackson. The Indians were ordered to leave voluntarily for the Oklahoma reservations, with threats being made of forced marches for stragglers. Two years later Gen. Winfield Scott ordered Capt. John Payne to build a log fort and stockade in northeast Alabama to hold all the Indians still in the area after they had been rounded up by the soldiers. Indians were tracked down on the mountains and throughout the valleys of this section of the former Cherokee Nation. Whether or not Nancy Callahan personally witnessed any of the forced march to the fort or on the beginning of the Trail of Tears is not clear. But one way or another, she learned about some of the hardships of the Indians, especially those about to give birth. She later related tales (confirmed by other accounts) of Indian women marching when one had to stop by the roadside to deliver. She would then be surrounded by a circle of Indian squaws, while a midwife entered the circle to provide aid. After the baby arrived, it was wrapped in a blanket and strapped to the mother's back so she could fall in line and continue the march. For a time the Indians rounded up in this area were herded into the local stockade, and some (perhaps the most defiant males) were placed in a dark round hole which had been dug beneath the one-room log fort and were fed through a hatch. William Callahan was determined that he and his little tribe would never submit to such humiliation. Her later-life memories placed Nancy's age at this time at about thirteen or fourteen. (If she were thirteen in 1837, she would have been 107 years old at her death in 1931.) A "keen" runner, Nancy said she fled through the woods to escape the soldiers. The Callahans trekked through mountain wilderness to the west side of Sand Mountain to an area near the Tennessee River in what is now Jackson County. There they hid in the black recesses of Saltpeter Cave, one of many such caves in the rugged terrain of this region. The brawny Cherokee hunter did not dare venture out on any attempts to bag game and the family was miles away from their productive corn and vegetable patches. To keep the frightened fugitives from starving, Nancy crept out of the lonely but protective dark cave to search by moonlight for something to eat. Through her stealth and cunning, the resolute young Indian maiden managed to capture, discover, or "borrow" enough food to keep her family alive. Other families hiding in the sandstone caves fared less well. Many of their babies slowly starved and their scattered skulls throughout the caves bore evidence over a century later of this pathetic result of a particularly sad chapter of history. After 1838 the government discontinued its search for the few remaining Cherokees who still evaded capture. The Callahans were free to leave their sandstone prison and to return, with much happiness and thankfulness, to their beloved Buck's Pocket home. William Callahan's pride, stubbornness, and courage had helped his family avoid the forced march to a far-away territory. But his violent temper and natural combativeness were to yet cause them to flee the home of their most tranquil and happy days.
With an Indian's alertness and awareness of strange sounds, William Callahan quieted his family one night and listened intently to distant screams piercing the darkness. Fearing the possibility of an approaching cougar, he called the dogs in and waited anxiously. Suddenly a distraught white woman carrying a baby ran up breathlessly. A "foot-peddler" had come to their home and a terrible fight had ensued, during which she had fled for safety with her child. At daybreak Callahan sought out several white neighbors and set out to investigate. Jukes, the woman's husband, was not at home; nor was there any sign of the peddler there. But soon someone discovered a trail of blood which led the searchers to a body in a bramble thicket. It was the bloody corpse of the peddler. The men then tracked Jukes' horse to a nearby store. A quite agitated Callahan proceeded to accuse Jukes, in front of witnesses, of having committed murder. Both men's tempers flared and one of the most ferocious fights of the era erupted. A combination fist fight and wrestling match between the fierce Cherokee Goliath and the tough and burly mountaineer proved to be a fairly even match. Jukes' anger at what he perceived to be an insult by an Indian blocked out any possible fear and he actually pinned his giant adversary and gained momentary advantage at two different times. Callahan then relied upon the only recourse open to him; he lunged like a bulldog, bit Jukes viciously and firmly on his nose and then on his ear, removing part of each in his savage fight for life. Jukes was in pain, but alive, when Callahan hurriedly left the scene. But the Cherokee fighter's greatest fear was that his victim--and perhaps other offended white men--might seek terrible vengeance against his family. He instructed them to rush in preparing to move their meager belongings. From Buck's Pocket the Callahan clan made their slow trek to north Georgia and settled in a location about thirty miles from a village called Marthasville, soon to be renamed Atlanta.
At their new Georgia home, Nancy Callahan assumed even more of the responsibility for providing food and other necessities for her brothers and sisters. By now one of the mothers had died, but Nancy had long been a mother-figure to her young siblings anyway. Fearless and resourceful, the six-foot Indian had inherited her father's stature, his rugged facial features, his deep voice, and his courage. These traits helped her devise a method of making a good living--and enabled her to master well an occupation no other female of that era would have dared to contemplate. Beginning at around the age of twenty-one, Nancy Callahan, working alone, delivered wholesale goods to rural retail merchants over a large area of north Georgia with a radius of some thirty miles. She delivered somewhat valuable cargo in a covered, or tar-pole freight wagon, pulled by two mules, over rough, rutted, narrow, sometimes flooded and always lonely roads. In Atlanta, slaves at Kyle Brothers Wholesalers helped her load her wagon with cases of lead, gun powder, shoes, dishes, wagon tires, molasses, meat, salt, and other staples. She cared for her mules, greased the wooden wagon axles with tar--and never asked for a man's help, though some storekeepers insisted on helping her unload the heavy crates. Amazingly, she was never at any time robbed or harmed--or even threatened. She was, in fact, treated rather well by both customers and strangers. During this time serious romance entered her life for the first time. She and Thomas Porter, the son of one of the merchants who traded with her, fell in love and planned to be married. When he was drafted into the Confederate army, the wedding was postponed. Her father, like a number of other Cherokee Indians, also joined the Confederate forces.
During the prolonged siege of Atlanta, in the summer of 1864, Callahan sent his daughter word not to go in for more goods, but to look after the family instead. Knowing that her loved ones were in the battle, Nancy cringed at the roar of a cannon, which could be heard even thirty miles away. In a 1928 interview, she declared that she would never forget the sound of that battle, even if she should live another hundred years. She would never forget her tragic personal loss, either. Both her fiancé and her father were killed during the Battle of Atlanta. Nor was that the end of her misfortune. Leaving Atlanta in flames, Sherman then began his cruel and destructive march to the sea. His route went directly through the Callahan corn fields, which, she later lamented, were "in roasting ear" when they were totally destroyed. The crop was lost just as Nancy had to assume full responsibility for feeding the fatherless Callahan clan. She did care for her brothers and sisters, and she outlived them all. We have no record of how she survived the long years of desolation and need during the Reconstruction era. We do know that she was, above all else, a survivor. And years later, at about the age of seventy-nine, at the turn of a new century, she met and married Nelson Dollar. It was after this that the unusual Indian woman, who had mothered many, but who never had children of her own, came to be known as Granny Dollar.
We know very little of Granny's husband to whom she was married some twenty years. They lived (and probably farmed) on Lookout Mountain, barely managing to eke out a living. It is not likely that they ever owned a home and may possibly have lived mainly on some sort of pension received by Nelson Dollar. When her husband died in 1923, Granny sold her last cow to buy a tombstone for his grave. Then, at approximately one hundred years of age, the homeless Indian who had lived through so much American history, simply walked down a mountain road to look for a place to live. Her worst fear was not of poverty or hunger--but the greatest humiliation possible--having to go to the county poorhouse. Perhaps she had heard of Col. Milford Howard and believed him to be a kind man. It was to the new Master School that she went to seek help. But the Colonel was in California attempting to raise funds for his financially-plagued school. She soon captivated a group of young boys, however. Certainly they had never seen anything like this tall old Indian woman in the blue Mother-Hubbard dress, her straight white hair combed back on her erect head, her corncob pipe held firmly between her snaggled teeth. She regaled them with Cherokee Indian tales and quickly accepted their offer of an empty cabin on school property. She also accepted their help in obtaining firewood and water. Granny was well settled into her new home by the time its owner, Col. Howard, returned. When informed of the exciting new arrival, the Colonel, still deeply troubled over his monetary difficulties, simply shrugged. What difference would one more person make when he was so worried about his ability to feed forty or fifty youngsters? However, Granny insisted upon a personal interview with the busy Colonel and presented herself early one morning at his cabin across from Alpine Lodge. That day one DeKalb County legend met another. Fortunately for later generations, the Colonel would write often about Granny Dollar in his Vagabond articles. The following excerpt from one of his stories details some of their first conversation: "I am an Injun," she said, "and we Injuns don't want to fool nobody so I thought I would come and ax you some questions afore I decide to live with you all the rest of my life." I told her to go ahead and ask me any question she wanted to. "You all don't eat meat at school," she said, "but I got to have a little 'fat' to put in my biscuits an' fat meat to bile with my cabbage and turnip greens." I assured her we would make this exception in her favor, and she fairly beamed on me. "You all don't let the boys 'chaw' and smoke, but I just got to have my 'baccy,' Chile. Kin I have it?" Again I assured her she could, and she called me Pa." "Pa, you is shore a good man, an' I want to call you 'Pa' because my pa is dead." I did not much relish being "Pa" to a centenarian but I grinned and pretended to be pleased. "Now, Pa, I want to ax you to let me keep Buster. He is my dog an' I jest can't live without Buster. It won't take much to feed him." Of course I capitulated, for, having yielded in the beginning, I was lost. "An' Pa, I got some chickens I want to bring. Kin I have my chickens?" I began to demur about the chickens, telling her I was going to plant vegetables around the house and the chickens would destroy them. She countered with, "Pa, them chickens of mine is Injun chickens. They don't eat vegetables. They wouldn't tech cabbage or lettuce or any sort of vegetables if they was starvin'." She had me going now, so nothing mattered. I said, "Yes, keep your chickens. Is there anything else you want this morning?" "I was about to forgit to tell you, Pa, I got six little roosters jest beginnin' to crow. Kin I keep all of them, Pa? I love to wake up in the morin' before day and hear 'em all crowin' an' answerin' one another. It's jest like music. Kin I keep all of 'em?" I assured her I would be delighted, my only regret being that she did not have sixty in place of six. "Pa, there was one more thing I want to ax you. Don't let Mother Harper ax me to pray when I come to the school. You know I 'conjures,' and folks what conjures don't pray. Course you is part Injun an' understands that Injun conjurers is like white folks prayin', but Mother Harper don't know this. "[Editor's note: Granny insisted that most people she liked were part Indian.]
Granny Dollar lived for six or seven years, the rest of her life, in the Colonel's little log cabin near what would later become DeSoto State Park. She outlasted the Master School, which became the victim of hard times and poor planning. With the produce of her small garden, and through the generosity of the good-hearted, hardworking Lookout Mountain neighbors, she not only avoided the poorhouse, but became somewhat of a local celebrity--and a popular tourist attraction.
Always near Granny was her faithful companion, her black mongrel dog, Buster. No one ever bothered either of them, though several mischievous boys learned a bitter lesson once by attempting to frighten them. Walking along the road which went by Granny's cabin at dusk one evening, the lads suddenly thought of what grand fun it would be to yell, slap their legs, and make all the noise they could to disturb the hated Buster, and maybe rile Granny just a little. As soon as they began their little prank, with the innocent enthusiasm of children with little to do, they themselves received a real shock. With her tremendous lung power still intact, the century old Indian bellowed a blood-curdling war whoop which could be heard for a mile or more. This was followed by a deep-throated command of "Sic 'em, Buster!" Just then a growling black streak flashed from the cabin to the road. The frightened boys left in a cloud of dust, panting and running faster than they had ever run before, until they reached the safety of their homes. Frequent visits from mountain neighbors helped keep Granny Dollar from getting too lonely. A guest was always invited to sit in the one chair, while she insisted on sitting on the battered keg. Then she entertained them with various tales, some with graphic details of the more cruel customs of Indians in regard to their captives. Or she might relate some of the hardships of her difficult life, including her three poisonous snakebites, twice by copperheads and once by a rattlesnake. Her remedy for snakebites, she confided, was to chew cotton leaves, swallow the juice, and make a poultice for the bite from the chewed leaves. Granny's hospitality included telling her guests' fortunes. Tracing the lines of a palm with the rusty blade of her pocket knife, she explained the meaning of each. Confiding in her friend Clodie Hall, she revealed the approximate location of a "goat skin of silver" which had supposedly been hidden in a cave by Indians before the removal of the Cherokees. Granny Dollar was very fond of Hall, partly because of his Indian heritage through a grandmother, "Lily-in-the-Puddle." Granny naturally showed more and more effects of age in the years after she passed the century mark. Her white hair became more unruly, her teeth more snaggled, her chin dotted with little dark whiskers. She became less able to produce enough food and had occasional periods of illness. A passerby might hear a plea from the cabin, "Chile, fetch me in something to eat!" Or, lacking sufficient food, she might totter about the community with a flour-sack bag, into which liberal contributions of grocery items were dropped at most stops. But Granny's deep, masculine voice remained firm and strong. And always, she stood straight and erect. As Hall once observed, the expression "straight as an Indian" might have been coined from someone's having observed her dignified carriage. Her greatest sadness seemed to be caused by the realization of the drastic changes which had taken place since her childhood. She missed the casually-paced Indian way. She wistfully remembered the happy times when her father's "hut" had been enjoyed by so many children. One of her best memories was of the time when they were all surrounded by Indian land. "Another race has taken our fields, our forests, and our game," she lamented. "Their children now play where we once were so happy." Granny's observation of the white man's ways had led her to believe that they "lay up so much for old age" that they quit working at too early an age. She felt certain that white people lost touch with nature. It was sad, she thought, that they wore shoes, even in the summer, and didn't feel "God's good earth." It was for these reasons, she concluded, that whites grew feeble at an early age.
Granny Dollar was the subject of Col. Howard's last Vagabond article. He discussed her longevity and wrote that the centenarian had just requested some new fruit trees to set out in the spring, as her old trees had begun to fail. The secret of her longevity, he explained, was her vital interest in life and her vigorous physical activity. He predicted that when she did die it would be in the winter, when she was closed up inside because of the bad weather, and when she had little to do. The Colonel was right. In January 1931, at the age of 106 or 107, Granny lay critically ill in her small cabin, her large body swollen from the fluid of edema, or "dropsy." Her neighbors, including many young people, came to tend the sick woman both day and night. One day she asked Dee Gilliam to open one of her trunks and to take out a package wrapped in blue paper. Then she asked him to count her money which consisted of twenty-three of the large type of one-dollar bills. Weak and failing rapidly, Granny asked that this money be used to buy her a tombstone. Two earlier requests had been made. She had expressed the desire that a dance be held, according to Indian tradition after she died, a dance in her cabin in honor of her corpse. Thus it was that after her death on January 25, her bed was taken up to make room and Floyd Cordell did his best to perform an appropriate Cherokee dance. She had also told friends how she wanted her funeral conducted. Although she still believed in the Great Spirit, she insisted, she wanted to have a Christian funeral and then she was to be buried beside her husband in Little River Baptist Cemetery. An oak casket made from materials paid for by friends in the community was constructed by several local men. Col. Howard persuaded county officials to pay the $5.00 charge for the services of Emmett's hearse. January 27, 1931 was a cold and rainy day for a funeral. A crowd of from fifty to seventy-five people arrived at the small white church. The hearse became so mired in the muddy ruts of the country road that it had to be pushed up the hill to the church. The pallbearers struggled with the heavy casket, almost dropping it on the church steps. Frances Kerby sang a song and Col. Howard delivered the funeral oration. Then Granny was buried in the white sandy cemetery by the side of Nelson Dollar, who had died eight years earlier.
After Granny Dollar's funeral, the question arose as to what to do with Buster. Crazed by grief and hunger, he kept a loyal vigil over his mistress' cabin, not allowing anyone to come near. In a rage, he gnawed at the door with his old, toothless gums. The dog was despised by all the men and women and was feared by all the children, some of whom could prove his viciousness by their scars. A group of concerned neighbors met and decided that the only humane thing to do was to put Buster to sleep with chloroform. After the mongrel had been put out of his misery, he was buried at the foot of a huge boulder near Alpine Lodge. Then Col. Howard conducted services over Buster's remains. After reading "Tribute to a Dog," he talked to the mountain folk about their dreams of eternity and of a heaven where all would be harmony, joy, and beauty. "What sort of a place would heaven be," the Colonel asked, "if it were inhabited only by such folks as you and me? What would heaven be without flowers, birds, and dogs?" He closed the service with a prayer that all those assembled might be as faithful as Buster had been.
Granny Dollar's life savings, the $23.00 saved so patiently and frugally, one dollar at a time, was not spent for a tombstone. Human scavengers with no conscience had heard that money was hidden in the cabin. While others attended to the funeral, the thieves greedily ripped open the shuck mattress and tossed Granny's few personal possessions from the trunks. For forty-three years Granny Dollar lay buried in an unmarked grave, her last request denied her. But in 1973 Mrs. Annie Young started a movement to raise funds for a tombstone. Harold Dobson agreed to sell a marker at cost and to inscribe it free of charge. In December a gray granite marker, matching her husband's in size and shape, was erected. Carefully planned by Mrs. Young, it reads "Nancy Callahan 'Granny' Dollar 1826-1931." The head of an Indian woman is inscribed at the top and "Daughter of the Cherokee" on the bottom. The back is inscribed "Erected December 31, 1973." That was a cold, rainy day similar to the one on which Granny Dollar was buried.
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In
the spring or summer she might be seen with her only tool, a well-worn
hoe, working in her flowers or vegetable patch. Usually barefooted, she
generally either puffed on her pipe or held a black gum twig, chewed at
the end, in her mouth. Potatoes and onions were stored in the lean-to
shed of the cabin, where the rafters were strung with peppers and herbs.
Her bedroom held a primitive bed, one straight-backed chair with a
rawhide seat, an old nail keg, and three trunks.