Editor’s note: This story was written by Chattie Wade Miller and submitted for print in “Brown County Remembers,” a publication of the Brown County Historical Society.
The old road from Helmsburg to Nashville, which crosses Bean Blossom Creek south of Helmsburg and winds through the foothills, was known as Peddler’s Wagon Road.
Sometime during the late 1840s, a peddler from east of Nashville traveled this road. Bumping over the clay-topped roads of Brown County he drove a big, strong team of horses. He made the trip every two or three months, carrying non-perishable articles needed by the isolated housewife. As was the custom then, he spent the night in different homes along the route.
He stopped coming. He was missed and inquiries were made, but no one seemed to know anything about him. When his family came from his home to find him, he was traced along the road to within one mile south of what is now Helmsburg. Up one of the ravines, hardly visible from the road, stood an old cabin where a man, somewhat of a recluse and considered a hard old character, lived alone. He was suspected, but nothing could be proven, through during the inquiries it was reported he had been known to sell a nice team of horses down in Monroe County — quite a long way to trace in that day.
As a child, I went with my mother to visit a Rebecca Long who had grown up in that immediate vicinity, and I heard her tell my mother the following story.
In the old days, in the summertime, country women often carried their wash to the creek, where they would hang a kettle and a fire was built under it to heat the wash water. The creek flowed alongside the road. My sister and I did the washing in this manner. Since there was little travel, we would set the tub in the middle of the road where it was more convenient. Many a time, when we would be scrubbing away, we would hear a wagon coming, just rattling and banging over the rough road. We would hurry and move the tub, but no wagon came by.
As a girl, my mother often rode horseback over this road to visit her great-aunt, Eliza Baughman. One morning she was riding her father’s big black stallion, which would let nothing pass him. She heard a wagon coming just behind her, and she said she knew the horse heard it, too, as he perked up his ears and galloped away. When she left the Nashville road to climb Lanam Hill to her aunt’s home, she paused to look back, where she had a clear view of the road behind her, and no wagon was to be seen.
My father, Douglas Wade, was night watchman at a factory in Helmsburg for awhile. He said any number of nights he would hear a wagon coming and would walk to the front of the building, but could see nothing on the road.
My own experience with this peddler’s wagon occurred when we were practicing our senior play for graduation from Helmsburg High in 1915.
One evening after practice, a few of us walked to the old iron bridge over Bean Blossom Creek and stood there, laughing and talking. I was spending the night with my girlfriend, Ina Conard, whose home was on top of the hill just beyond the bridge. It was a beautiful, moonlight night. While standing there we heard horses’ hooves, squeaking harness, and wagon wheels in the gravel coming up the ramp to the bridge. We all stood back as close to the bridge railing as we could to give it ample room to pass, and waited — but no wagon came. We had all heard it so distinctly that the boys walked down the ramp to the creek on both sides of the bridge to see if a wagon had pulled in down to the bank of the creek.
There was no wagon. What all of us heard that evening remains a mystery.
— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
