User:Savoy100/Long Meadow (Surgoinsville, Tennessee)

Records of land transactions are not always available from the earliest years of settlement history. While the Young family may have come into Carter’s Valley (Hawkins County) as early as the 1760s, documents to prove the exact date are unavailable. William Young and his wife Carolyn Walker, who died in 1793 and 1790 respectively, are known to have been in the area for some years prior to their deaths. The earliest legal document associated with Long Meadow Farm, however, is a deed registered in 1791 showing the acquisition of 350 acres by John Young for fifty shillings in what was then Sullivan County, North Carolina. John and his wife Margaret Galbraith raised twelve children. Their son, John Young II, became the next generation to own the land. John II and his son Wylie fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side.

The next owner of the property was Wylie Miller Young. Along with his wife, Ida Whitlock, they managed the farm and raised four children. Eventually, the farm was passed onto the three remaining children, Henry, Frances and Robert. Under the siblings ownership, the farm produced tobacco, wheat, cattle and sheep. Henry never married; however his sister Frances married Charles Edward Schumacker. Robert wed Naomi White Fulkerson and they resided in Knoxville where Robert practiced medicine. Their three children, Georgiana Young Pearson, Frances Young Torbett, and Robert Miller Young, Jr. are the current owners of the farm. Robert Miller Young Jr. manages Long Meadow Farm which is located just north of Surgoinsville. The farm mainly produces beef cattle.

The farm is a lesson in Tennessee history. A slave burying ground is on the farm and remaining nineteenth century buildings include a log corn crib, a stable, a log kitchen, a log spring house, a log smoke house, widows house, two barns, a hay barn and the main house. This house, which has evolved over the years with the family, has a log part that likely dates to at least the late eighteenth century. In the 1973 nomination which placed the house on the National Register of Historic Places, it was described as “one of the oldest structures remaining in the state.”