All the ghost stories at Hendersonville’s Rock Castle are secondhand. The 210-year-old stone mansion—-the former home of one of Tennessee’s founding fathers, Daniel Smith—is both breathtakingly beautiful and frigidly lifeless, inviting oral tales about a wisp of a shadow here or a creaking sound there. Nobody has ever told me—the caretaker who lives next to Rock Castle—that they personally have seen or heard spooks. That leaves me doubting that the place is haunted, and that’s surprising.
I am expecting the ghost of James Sanders—once a very wealthy plantation owner whose second wife is buried here—to show up at any time, hovering across the glassy waters of Drakes Creek or floating down the slope from the family cemetery. He certainly has justification to come haunting. The man, gone 165 years now, has been disrupted in death.
Once peacefully buried at his nearby home, Sanders was later disturbed and brought here to Rock Castle to be buried with his wife. But all we know for sure is that his headstone made the trip—and even that didn’t make it inside the cemetery. It’s leaning against a tree in my front yard and has been for at least 25 years. Where his body is, no one knows.
Now, in an attempt to correct the shameful wrongs of the past, Sanders, or at least what is left of him, may be disturbed once again. A descendent says he plans to find a way to get the sizable headstone into the Rock Castle cemetery. And this latest interruption has me wondering if Sanders will retaliate the only way a dead man can.
Adding to his insult in death, James Sanders was perennially second-best during his 72 mortal years. He was financially successful, but in social stature he had the misfortune of being overshadowed by two of his neighbors, Daniel Smith and Andrew Jackson.
Smith, 16 years older than Sanders, was a militia major during the Revolutionary War, and extended the mapped border between North Carolina and Virginia, now the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. The two were friends while living near Abingdon, Va., before Smith moved his family to the banks of Drakes Creek. Smith gained notoriety as President George Washington’s secretary and acting governor of the territory south of the Ohio River. He was the creator of the first legitimate map of Tennessee, founder of the University of Tennessee, two-time U.S. senator, the namesake of Smith County, and the chairman of the committee that wrote Tennessee’s Constitution. As the creator of the first state map and as chairman of that committee, Smith is credited with naming our state.
By contrast, Sanders’ most public role was as an elected member of North Carolina’s House of Commons. While serving his term in 1787, the 23-year-old Sanders heard a new U.S. constitution was being drafted, but he missed out on the ratification process two years later. By the time the U.S. Constitution was finished in Philadelphia, Sanders’ term was over and Smith had replaced him. Instead of Sanders, Smith voted on the nation’s new Constitution as a member of North Carolina’s House of Commons.
Smith died in 1818, and by then, the 54-year-old Sanders had built a stunning plantation and a remarkable empire. However, another neighbor, 51-year-old Andrew Jackson, overshadowed those accomplishments.
Jackson, a has-been politician by 1810, had belittled the British at New Orleans in the War of 1812 before returning to his home across the river from Sanders to clear a path to the White House. Meanwhile, Sanders was ferrying people and goods over the lapping waters of the Cumberland River. As Jackson’s abilities took him far from Nashville, Sanders was helping people get to and from Nashville. He and eight others sought approval from the Tennessee General Assembly to build a toll road from Nashville to Gallatin and then on to the Kentucky border. Already controlling part of the water route to Nashville, Sanders was diversifying his interests by getting involved in an improved land route. Unfortunately for him, difficulty raising capital kept Gallatin Road from being completed until after Sanders died.
Sanders’ ferry, farming, and business endeavors did not match Jackson’s achievements, although they made him a rich man for “several decades,” says Tim Takacs, author of The City by the Lake.
When he died in 1836, Sanders’ holdings included thousands of acres in six Tennessee counties. The land was valued conservatively at $65,000. He also owned more than 2,000 head of cattle, $86,000 worth of slaves, and a mansion large enough for 13 people. Adjusted for inflation, the value of the land and slaves alone would be $2.4 million today. It took a full 25 years to settle the estate as children, grandchildren, and other relatives bickered over the fortune.
For all his accomplishments in life, the paltry recognition Sanders gets today is distorted. A part of what used to be his plantation is a park named in his honor. The road leading to that park also bears his name. Both contain an error. The spelling is wrong on both signs and maps, which add the letter U. It is not Sanders Ferry Park but Saunders Ferry Park. And the road is Saunders Ferry Road. The erroneous names have become so accepted in Hendersonville that people using the correct pronunciation draw curious glares.
His headstone praises him as “a good husband, a kind parent, an honest man.” It continues, “There was none more ready to do a good act or condemn a mean one. Peace be to his ashes.” In spite of the sentiment, peace is the one thing that continues to elude Sanders’ remains, and that is his second wife’s fault.
Polly was the daughter of Sanders’ friend Daniel Smith. After being widowed by her first husband at the tender age of 21, she returned to live with her parents in Rock Castle. Two years later, she married Sanders, also a widower. With James, Polly bore nine children (possibly more), and they made a life together for 26 years, until his death. Since then, Sanders has received some of the attention in death that escaped him in life.
When Sanders died in 1836, he was buried on his own property. Specifically, he was laid to rest near his first wife, Hannah, and his infant son, James. When his second wife passed away 21 years later, she too was buried near Sanders. Their graves were dug on the shores of the Cumberland River, near the opening to Old Hickory Lake. The graves are in the park that has since been named for him.
At the time of Polly’s death, her parents and brother were buried in the Rock Castle family cemetery. Sensibly, Polly, who continued to live in the Sanders Mansion, was buried near that home and with her late husband in 1857. That changed sometime during this century, possibly in the 1930s, and perhaps as recently as the late 1950s.
When meddling descendants became annoyed that the Smith family’s bones were one set shy from being together in death, they removed Polly from James Sanders’ side and buried her with her parents and brother in the Rock Castle cemetery.
Compounding the harassment to James Sanders, his remains were also exhumed. His headstone made the trip to the Smith family estate, but Sanders’ remains were never recorded again. He may be buried with his second wife; he may be buried with his first wife and children. Nobody knows. Equally disturbing is that his headstone, if it was ever placed in the cemetery, is not there today. How and why it came to be leaned against a tree in my front yard is a mystery, but it has been there for at least 25 years and possibly as many as 70.
With such dishonor bestowed on the death of Sanders, one of his descendants who lives in Gallatin, John Garrott, would like to see the headstone appropriately placed. The problem, of course, is that nobody knows where that is. Garrott and every other descendant of both families seem to agree that Sanders is not buried near the tree where the headstone rests. Garrott says he probably will move the headstone into the cemetery to be among the markers of his wife Polly and his friend Daniel Smith.
Garrott knows that the Smith cemetery at Rock Castle is not where Sanders wanted to be buried. But he remembers his mother telling him that Sanders’ remains—ashes and buttons—were exhumed. He says he doesn’t feel right about digging around for those remains—wherever they may be—to bury them back on Sanders’ property. Garrott just wants to place the headstone in one of the two places where Sanders’ remains are thought to be.
With so much turmoil in death, I wonder when Sanders’ spirit will retaliate for the unkind treatment of the past and decide to traipse back to the sunny side of terra firma. Certainly, he would be justified. The man who was insufficiently acknowledged due to the extraordinary accomplishments of his neighbors, the man whose children and grandchildren fought over his fortune for 25 years, the man whose epitaph reads “Peace be to his ashes” has not been afforded the peace of death.
So when people visit where I live and ask, “Have you ever seen a ghost here?” I answer, “Not yet.” Then I explain that I nevertheless expect James Sanders to visit soon.
Perhaps the only reason Sanders doesn’t haunt this area is because doing so would be another second-rate endeavor. Already, a relative of his has been said to haunt another family home and the building two miles away that was Hendersonville High School. That ghost, Col. Harry Berry, is far better known than Sanders. His name is on a plaque at Nashville’s airport, officially Berry Field. And Berry’s name is spelled correctly.
