Somewhere in my big old house there are old letters that came to this area by stagecoach. This was before the founding of Bristol.
Sapling Grove, a rural Washington County, Va. post office, was set up in 1839. It was located in a small room of the Rev. James King home on what is now Solar Hill in Bristol Virginia.
Rev. King was the first postmaster. A little later, his son Cyrus King, became his assistant.
The founding of this post office caused a change in the Old Stage Road. Originally, it passed some distance to the west. To serve this new post office, the road was changed to approach the King home, along what is now King’s Alley and King Street.
In June 1853, Rev. King moved to his new home on Beaver Creek. At that time, Campbell Galliher became the second and last postmaster of Sapling Grove.
It was then that the office was moved to his home a short distance away. Sapling Grove post office was discontinued on Oct. 1, 1853.
For little over a month, there was no post office in this immediate area. During that time, mail was rerouted to Paperville and to Blountville.
On Nov. 5, 1853, the Bristol post office was established with Joseph R. Anderson as postmaster. This post office was kept in Anderson’s new home which stood on the southwest corner on what is now State and Martin Luther King Blvd.
At that time, a mail stop was established where the stage route crossed Sycamore Trail (now Sycamore Street).
This stop would now be at the intersection of Sycamore Street with King’s Alley.
Joseph Anderson had a slave named Nehemiah Strange. It became this slave’s duty to meet the stage at this stop.
One peculiarity of this slave was that he never would wear shoes. Even when snow or ice lay upon the ground, he still went barefoot. He took what outgoing mail there was in a leather saddlebag, made the exchange at the stop, then delivered the incoming mail to the new post office.
This stop served Bristol Tennessee, the old original Bristol Virginia and adjoining Goodsonville.
Usually, letters of that period were simply addressed to Bristol in either Washington County, Va. or Sullivan County, Tenn.
The first train service to Bristol began in October 1856. This eliminated the need for mainline stagecoach service. That service ended on Oct. 28, 1856.
However, until the mail volume became too great to do so, Nehemiah Strange still continued to carry the old mailbag between Anderson’s store and the depot.
After Anderson began banking service here in 1854, the bag was also used to carry excess money to a bank in Abingdon.
When the bag was completely retired, it hung for several years in Anderson’s old store building.
In 1881, Nehemiah Strange moved to near Greeneville, Tenn. At that time, Joseph Anderson gave the old mailbag to his young son. The boy used it for several years as a school supply satchel.
Soon after I started writing Bristol history, I learned of the old mailbag. Acting on clues from the Anderson family, I was finally able to locate the old home place of Nehemiah Strange in Greene County, Tenn.
Back of that old home was a fast-decaying smokehouse. In it, I found two very historic early Bristol artifacts. One was the first clock used in the town. The other was the old Bristol mail and bank bag.
The old clock is here at Pleasant Hill. The bag is now owned by Tim Buchanan, who often uses it in his own historical displays.
BUD PHILLIPS is a local historian and author. He can be reached at (276) 466-6435.
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