BIOGRAPHY: Fall
Creek flows into Mayo River, Southwest of Ridgeway, Virginia. Sherrod &
Elizabeth lived there until after Sherod's father Henry died and Sherrod and
his brother Henry Jr. sold their farms in Henry Co., Virginia to John Smith and
moved with their families to Hawkins Co., North Carolina, settling in East
Tennessee near Rutledge. "On the 5th of Jan 1795, John Tye Jr. was killed
& John Tye Sr., John Burlison, Sherrard Mays, and Thomas Mays were wounded
by Indians on the frontier of Hawkins Co., Tennessee, about 50 miles above
Knoxville, on the waters of the Clinch." (In a chapter on Indian conflicts
on the Clinch River, Cumberland Mtns, Powell's Valley area, etc. From 'The
Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee, by Judge John Haywood,
published 1823, reprint 1915).
Grainger Co.,
Tennessee was created in 1797 and we find Sherrod, Henry, Abraham, Liggin &
Goodin located there. Liggin came to Tennessee to live in 1804 and located near
his brothers. Senator Robert La Follette of Minnesota is a direct descendent of
Liggen. Sherrod belonged to the Methodist Church. The first Methodist Church in
the County was probably organized at "Read's Meeting House" near
Phelps Read's according to county history. bout 1815 a camp ground called
Sulpher Springs was established four miles south of Morristown. Among the
original campers were Soloman Wyatt. Francis Daniel, Sherrod Mayes, Benjamin
McCarty & Joseph Daniel, with other families. There is still a road called
Kidwell Ridge Road that runs along Youngs Creek and near Holston River.(Mayes
Historical Sketch by Benjamin Peden Mayes. The History of Vernon Co., Missouri,
1880).
When the Holston
River was damned and Cherokee Lake was created in 1941, the home site and the
family Cemetery in which the body of Sherrod rested were both covered by water.
Before the lake was created, as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority project,
T.V.A. moved the bodies identified by markers from all the known Cemeteries in
the area to be covered by the lake. A list of the bodies exhumed was made by
the TVA and recorded in certain Genealogical libraries in TN, but since
Sherrod's name was not found, it is assumed that his body rests unmarked, in
the little home site cemetery at the bottom of Cherokee Lake. (From the book
"The Ancestors and Descendants of James Dickerson Mayes by Thomas Clure
Mayes-deceased)