Monday, August 17, 2009
Around Town / Phillips Where's Elizabeth Durard's Statue?
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 9:22 PM
I'm afraid Timothy Demonbreun's sole cool accomplishment is convincing historians that "Demonbreun" is an anglicized rendering of Jacques-Timothée Boucher, Sieur de Montbrun and not, as is obvious to everyone, French for "Semi-literate Devil Bear."
I mean, please. If your last name was "Brown Hill," aren't you changing it to "Semi-literate Devil Bear" as soon as you can? So, I'm not blaming him. Shoot, it'd be awesome if we all changed our last names to "Semi-literate Devil Bear" as an homage to him.
So, yeah, I guess for that, the man might deserve a road or a statue or a statue and a road.
But the true awesomeness belongs to the other person in that cave on the Cumberland, his Nashville wife, Elizabeth Bennett (later Durard). This woman was a complete hoot! She gave birth in a cave, was brought up on charges of having an illegitimate child, ran a tavern/possible
And, to top it off, though no one knows for sure where Demonbreun ended up, you can go visit Elizabeth any time you want.
Surely she's as deserving of a statue as her roust-about lover, right?
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Didn't Demonbreun have another family, in Illinois? And is Elizabeth buried in the City Cemetery?
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Tim did indeed have another family in Illinois. His Illinois wife was his official and white wife.
Elizabeth Bennett and he were never married (she married Durand apparently while she was still carrying on with Demonbreun, but if we can take evidence from their real estate dealings, it seemed that they had an amicable arrangement and there's evidence that Demonbreun's Illinois children knew and were helpful to his Tennessee children in some legal matters so it seems to have been a somewhat happy mess) and Bennett was not white.
She was out of North Carolina (which usually would suggest that she was Cherokee) and sources say she was Creek.
She's not buried in the City Cemetery. She's buried in a family cemetery on the land where she used to have a farm, out Ashland City Highway, just off Ross Hollow Road, which is just off Little Marrowbone Road.
I have to be a total nerd for a second to say how cool it was to see Demonbreuns in the Barnes Cemetery off Old Hickory Boulevard (down in Bells Bend), and then go north into the next hollow and see Demonbreuns in the cemeteries along Bull Run Road, and then come north into the next hollow and find Elizabeth surrounded by generations of Demonbreuns.
I felt like I was meeting a legend.
There's a marker for Timothy Demonbreun next to her, but there's a lot of contention about whether he's in that cemetery. He was probably buried in the city cemetery. The rumor is that she had him dug up and moved out there.
But other folks say that the Demonbreun family just had that marker put up there because they wanted some place to be able to go and pay their respects (and there is no grave marker for him in the city cemetery).
This is a very interesting story. Can you point to some of your sources where one can read more about her?
I'm just teasing. I didn't find very many secondary sources on Elizabeth Durard and nothing lengthy. You would probably have just as much luck as I did on Google. But I have a great friend who's a colonial historian who helped me interpret what I could find and passed along the stuff from primary sources she could find.
Thanks, I really enjoyed reading about Demonbreun's second wife and look forward to you October article on "fake nashville ghost stories"-----Lord knows, there are many of them. Just be careful. In doing historical research, it's all to easy to perpetuate someone else's errors and internet surfing can make one forget that there are also books to read and experts to call. (I apologize if that sounds condescending; it isn't meant to be.) This afternoon, I read some of your earlier blogs on local history and your exchanges with readers. You obviously love the topic (as do I), and you obviously are new to it ( as is your friend Bridgett). For your Halloween story, you might want to run the draft by an experienced local historian. Jim Hoobler at the State Museum would be a good choice.
Well, Henry, they will be untrue, hence the importance of the word "fake," so I'm trying not to get bogged down in fact.
But, in the future, I will remember that I must check in with someone who has a penis as well as checking in with someone who has extensively researched Demonbreun and his family/families before posting and also provide citations. Would you prefer MLA style or Chicago?
Or, how about, if you think I'm wrong about something, you just come out and say what it is and we can hash it out.
Henry, I'm glad that my amateur's enthusiasm for US history remains undimmed by twenty years of collegiate teaching, a PhD in the field directed by a former president of the AHA and (the guy who literally wrote the book on the trans-Appalachian frontier), publications, manuscript prizes, pretty much the whole imperial borderlands to US early republic frontier shooting match...
Rest your head, sweet thing. I'm not leading our dear Miss Betsy astray. Next time we're talking local, however, you just jump on in and the rest of us will try to beat time.
Henry, you've gone a little ex-cathedra here, and you might want to reconsider.
In writing a weekly column (in 2007-08) where I brought out historical details every week that nobody had unearthed before, I have found material on Nashville history that had never been subject to scholarly scrutiny before.
I have had a few responses from folks who felt proprietary about the accepted versions of history, along with the occasional marvelous firsthand account (e.g. from the son of Harry Burn, the vote who provided "the perfect 36.") I am open to the possibility that what I have discerned from archival records is somehow wrong or distorted.
I think you'll agree that it's better to air out an argument over historical assertions in print than to engage in personal polemics -- which I think you initiated in this instance, prompting Betsy and Bridgett to reply with their own howitzers.
I don't know Bridgett, but I have too much respect for you and for Betsy to want to see like-minded people make enemies of each other. I'm prepared to host my own beer summit -- Foster's, or just shots of Early Times, on my salary -- to bring everyone together. As a bonus, if it's at my place, you can all fondle my garage-full of bound volumes of Nashville papers from the 1880s thru 1930s.
Mmm...documents! And beer! Next time I'm in town, I'm in.
The historical trough is large enough for all of us to slop together. I do a lot of research on early trans-App settlements and good local historians/competent genealogists are invaluable resources. They are passionate, careful, and creative about working with the limited primary source base. The energy that they pour into spadework is inspiring. I learn a lot from the engagement. Investigative journalists are also good because they already have the passion to dig for a story and can build a narrative.
What I try to do when I work with other researchers who maybe don't do history for a living is pass on what I know from my professional training to help them figure out ways to interpret what they are seeing or hook them up with other resources outside of their locality that suggest similar trends. I try to bring the benefits of the public university directly to the public -- your tax dollars at work.
I found it sort of funny that what I think is a strength of my teaching -- being able to explain scholarly theory in accessible language and sharing the excitement of analyzing a really good document together -- was perceived by Henry as the telltale sign of the beginner. That's a pretty sad commentary on what we expect an "expert" to sound like.
Tom, if you browse Aunt B's web site and read some of her posts on local history and her exchanges with Bridgett and other readers, I think you would see what Im talking about.
As you know, very few reporters do a good job reporting history. You and Bill Carey are exceptions to the rule because you can find your way around a library, read books that aren't on the internet, and believe in picking up the telephone before your publish.
This post on Demonbreun's second wife is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, my advice on writing future history articles seems to have struck a nerve. If a reporter isnt willing to check with local experts before submitting a story on Nashville history, then her editors should be.
Henry, Henry, Henry. It's not your advice that has struck a nerve. It's your passive aggressive way of wanting to be reassured that everyone knows how special you are that drives me crazy.
I respect you. I love your writing and I look forward to it.
But if you think your "concerned authority" tone is ever going to be met by anything other than howls of laughter from me, I'm sorry to say that's just not going to happen.
I'd like to make that clear up front, because I would love to have a beer with you and Tom, but my most obnoxious traits are magnified when I've had a few.
So the kick isn't that she failed to do independent documentary research and neglected to confer extensively with an expert in the field. Your panties are in a wad that she didn't ask you for permission before she published the fruits of her own research. Moreover, she's been accused of having fun thinking about the past and engaging in group discussions with other women (many of them -- gasp -- real live university professors) on her own private blog. I'm with Betsy -- that's just hilarious.
Henry, you sound like a dear old fussbudget. Lighten up and rejoice that a regular contributor to Pith has a passion for history. It's all good.
If only those posts and ensuing discussions about local history on Aunt B's "own private blog" had, in fact, been "private," I would have no basis to worry about the upcoming story on Nashville ghosts.
We all agree that a passion for history is a good thing;we can also agree that's it important to get it right. If you scroll up to my earlier post, I merely said that since both of you are obviously new to the history of this area, Aunt B. ought to make contact with some local experts--and there are several--in researching future articles. I've read again your high decibel responses and can't understand why any journalist (much less a university historian) would take offense at that suggestion. In fact, I suspect that you'll both think better of the idea when the time comes.
