Isaac DeVault. 1811-1903
Isaac DeVault was born at DeVault's Ford in the original wood frame mansion that stood where the 1842 brick mansion (Val DeVault) now stands.
In 1852 he completed the big mansion that stands across Hwy 11E and just south of Rocky Mount. That mansion is now owned by Sally Massengill.
Isaac's father was Valentine DeVault, who, with his brother Frederick, ran the original DeVault's Ford plantation. Their father, Heinrich DeWald, purchased that land from John Bean with money from the sale of other land awarded Heinrich by George Washington for his service in the Revolutionary War.
Isaac would have known all the Bean brothers except William Jr, who died the year Isaac was born. He would have known David Crockett and Andrew Jackson. He certainly saw Andrew Johnson several times as Johnson prepared to cross the Watauga at the DeVault's Ford site.
His uncle Frederick would leave the river plantation to build the DeVault Tavern at Lee's Ferry, just west of Jonesborough. The Tavern opened in 1817.
Isaac lived well into what I call the "Confusion Period" of the recording of Tennessee history, roughly the years 1880 to 1930, in which all sorts of details were lost, twisted, reversed, distorted. He would have known that his son James Miller DeVault was not born in the old massengill cabin, as family history later stated, because the new mansion was opened four years before James Miller was born. He probably would have known from his father and uncle that William Bean's cabin was never where the DAR later said it was. He would have also known that what we know as Rocky Mount was not there when the DeVault's first came to Tennessee in 1797-98. Tree ring data, a mountain of it, and the old Joneborough plat records confirm this.
I had enough trouble with my maternal grandfather's view of the world, I can't imagine how rough the sailing would have been with my ancestor Isaac, who at one time owned more slaves than anyone else in Sullivan County.
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