The Mountain Folk of Rugby, Tennessee: An Archaeological and Historical Study of the Massengale Home Site (40MO146)

The town of Rugby, Tennessee was established in 1880 as an utopian colony for the middle and upper class "second-sons" of England. However, the English colonists were not the first to settle in this remote area. Settlement began in the 1820s with the earliest settlers being farmers who lived off the land producing virtually everything they needed to survive. One of these early families were the Massengales, who first owned land in the future Rugby area in the mid-1820s.

In an attempt to learn about the Massengale family, archaeological testing was conducted at their home site, located a short walk through the woods from Rugby. The only remaining evidence of their former log cabin is a stone chimney fall located in a small clearing and an 1887 watercolor painting of the cabin. Goals of this research was to better understand the lifeways of the Massengale family, and other mountain families, in addition to getting a better idea of the size and description of the Massengale cabin. In order to meet these goals, a combination of archaeological investigations and interpretations and historical documentation research was conducted, with the results being presented in this thesis.