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Feature article
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Area Farm Still Functions
By Jessica Fischer
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| History repeats itself at The Exchange Place. |
KINGSPORT — Take a step back in time to the mid-1800s and imagine you’re traveling the Old Stage Road to Abingdon.
You’ve been riding in a hot, dusty coach for hours, so when the driver finally pulls over at Exchange Place, you couldn’t be happier.
Visitors to the restored 19th-century farm complex shouldn’t find the tale hard to imagine since most of the buildings newcomers would have encountered in those days still stand.
The main house, spring house, school house, old store, granary and double-cribbed log barn are all original, and the cook’s cabin and blacksmith shop have been reconstructed.
Today’s travelers will also find a handful of helpful volunteers dressed in period costume and equipped with plenty of stories about what the lives of the families who lived here might have been like.
Originally part of a 3,000-acre land grant given to Edmund Pendleton in 1756, Exchange Place remained wilderness until John S. Gaines and his wife Letitia bought a small portion of it the early 1800s.
Gaines gradually increased his holdings to more than 2,000 acres, and in 1846 traded the western portion of the plantation, including the main house and its dependencies, for property in Scott County, Va.
The new owner, John M. Preston, presented it to his son, James Wilson Preston, upon his marriage to Catherine Ann Greenway.
"The family tradition is that Mr. Preston bought it because he found a Daniel Boone carving on the property," said Suzanne Burow, a historical interpreter at Exchange Place. "That was the story. Mr. Gaines advertised in the Knoxville Gazette that he had some property for sale. Well, Mrs. Gaines was flabbergasted that in two months Mr. Preston came to see about it. Communication was very speedy, you know.
"As Mr. Preston was driving over the property looking to see if he wanted to purchase it or not, he found this tree that Boone had carved. Nobody else had ever seen it; he just happened upon it. The story is that he raced back to the gathering room and signed the deed on the very table we have there. He bought the property then sent his buggy driver to go cut the tree and carried it back to Abingdon that very day. It still hangs in the Preston home in Abingdon today."
The property transfer between Gaines and Preston is one theory behind Exchange Place’s name. But it certainly isn’t the only one.
"The stagecoach came through here three times a week and by law the horses on the stagecoach had to be renewed every four hours, so this was one of the stops for the stagecoach where they would change horses," said volunteer Allen Calcote, also known as "Preacher Huggins." "There were two or three others between here and Abingdon, but this was one of them. It was called a relay station. This relay station was right close to the border between Tennessee and Virginia.
"At that time, every state had their own money system. Mr. Preston, and I guess Mr. Gaines before him, had a business going of exchanging money. For a fee, he would change your Tennessee money for Virginia money if you were traveling from here going into Virginia and vice-versa."
One of the main points volunteers try to get across to visitors — especially children — is just how challenging life on an 1850s farmstead could be.
"It’s hard to visit and understand without some interpretation like we try to give of exactly how hard life was," Burow said. "Mrs. Preston would not have had a lot of time to do anything except planning for the daily life of her family. That was her responsibility and that was a tremendous responsibility."
Another of Exchange Place’s purposes is to preserve animal breeds common in the 1850s.
The 62-acre working farm boasts milking shorthorn cattle or Durhams as they were called in those days, Dominique and white and brown Leghorn chickens, a Belgian draft horse, Tennessee walking buggy horse, pole and China pigs, and five of only 1,000 or so Tunis sheep in the country.
"We’re working with what’s called the Minor Breeds Conservancy so that they don’t become extinct," Burow said. "All of the breeds we have are considered minor breeds and are on what’s called a watch category, so they’re not rare yet, but they’re all in the watch situation that the numbers go up instead of down. So if Mr. Preston came back, he would probably see animals that would have been here when he lived here. I think that kind of adds to the place."
But even on a working farm there’s time for a little fun. On Sunday, Exchange Place will host two-and-a-half hours of old-fashioned games for the young and young at heart.
From 2 to 4:30 p.m., kids can walk on stilts, make their own rope, throw corn cob darts or try their hand at marbles.
"The kids learn a lot that day from the people who shot marbles for keeps, not just for the heck of it," Burow said. "Our best marble shooters are probably 75 years old. If they can get down there, they can sure shoot them."
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