The Secret of the Grove

“Do you like trees?” a new resident to Brandermill Woods recently asked me. She was referring to a book she was currently enjoying.

Her odd question caused me to think of the importance trees have always played in my life. Tree climbing was an almost daily ritual in my early childhood. From my teen years I remember hayrides through Cedar Forest and the wonderful aroma of those cedar trees. But my favorite tree memory is a family story my Mother told me.

A pioneer ancestor, Duncan Neel, came from Virginia in 1811 to settle on Duck River in Tennessee. The federal government had 5 years earlier bought the land from the Cherokee Indians living there. Duncan Neel was intrigued with a grove of 6 oak trees about 5 feet tall growing in pairs and about the same distance apart. These six trees had strange markings on them. Duncan Neel chose a home site near this grove of oak trees. He found evidence that the Indians had tended the trees and made a clearing around them.

My Mother’s story began years later when Duncan Neel’s youngest son, James Neel, (my Mother’s grandfather) was in his 80th year. One day the family was startled to discover at their front door a tall, stately Indian. He had traveled from the Southwest to Tullahoma by train and the last ten miles on foot to find this particular grove of trees. He said he knew the secret these trees held. He was invited in and for a week he stayed with the family studying the markings on the trees. Mother, a young child at the time, found this visitor fascinating. She remembers he taught her some words in the Cherokee language and cooked hominy for the family.

It seems the grove held the secret to where there was a cache of buried gold. On the seventh day, sighting from one of the oaks, the Indian pointed to a tree deep in the woods and said he would lead them there. When they arrived at the designated tree it had a mark like the marks on the oaks. No one had ever noticed it before. Hired men from the farm began digging deeper and deeper.

No gold was ever found. However the hunters agreed that there was evidence that the earth had been opened at that place before.

Soon afterwards the Indian departed for the West leaving his regrets and many still unanswered questions about the mysterious grove of trees.