Reassessing a Local Villain Elisha Cheek, Alexander Wilson, and the Murder at Cheek’s Stand By Joseph C. Douglas, Ph.D.
“He robbed the rich, he killed the poor. And he’s gone to hell forevermore.”[1] According to one twentieth century account, Elisha Cheek of Robertson County, Tennessee was so hated that his neighbors mocked him at his funeral by passing around a written note with that bit of doggerel. So who was Cheek and why, supposedly, was he so despised? To start, Elisha Cheek was the proprietor of a public house or inn called Cheek’s Stand, located in Robertson County, Tennessee, halfway along the road from Nashville to Bowling Green, Kentucky. He was also a prominent landowner, miller, and distiller. Local histories state that Cheek was suspected of having murdered a traveler who had stopped at his Stand and depositing the victim’s body in a nearby cave.Although never charged with the crime, Cheek’s reputation suffered enormously during his lifetime because of this popular belief. After his death in the summer of 1818, he became even more notorious as the folklore concerning him was embellished with additional victims, and now also their restless ghosts. By the late 1800s the legend of Elisha Cheek was firmly established; indeed it ranked just behind the legend of the Bell Witch hauntings in county lore. Additional embellishments were added in the twentieth century and the complex nature of the actual man was lost. By the mid-twentieth century Elisha Cheek was no more than a cartoonish local villain, beloved by writers of local color and Sunday magazine features.[2] The goal of this paper is to reassess Elisha Cheek by looking closely at the stories attached to him, and to analyze how they comport with the extant documentary and physical evidence. I employ the techniques of micro-history to help round out a character flattened by legend. [3] When examined closely, the sources reveal a complicated and prosperous man, quite different from the long-established legend. In reality, Elisha Cheek was not a one dimensional figure shunned by all around him; rather he was embedded in neighborhood and wider county networks, which were bolstered by kinship ties as well as business connections. An examination of the physical evidence casts serious doubt on the allegations of his criminal activity, while explanations of his supposed murderous actions were increasing racialized over time
Although secondary sources say Elisha Cheek was an octoroon from Virginia, where and when he was born, his lineage, and his parentage are not well documented.[4] There were at least three Cheek families in Virginia (as well as fifteen in North Carolina) in the 1780s but I have been unable to locate Elisha. The 1790 census was destroyed in the War of 1812.[5] What is clear is that he migrated to middle Tennessee around September 1799 when Anthony Sharpe agreed to sell him a 320 acre tract of land for 500 pounds.[6] This was an important property in several ways and became the core of Cheek’s many landholdings. It had only been wrested away from Native American control a few years before; in 1794, in one of the last conflicts in the a Euro-American woman collecting hickory nuts was killed by Indians on the property in “Sharp[e]’s old field,” which bordered the river.[7]
After Cheek’s time, in the 1830s, the road was improved and a fine double-arch stone bridge was built over the Red River just south of site. A stage coach line operated along the route for twenty years, with an associated stage inn called Rock Rest, until the completion of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1858. Later, the Kentucky Road became [old] Federal Highway 31W. Today the main highway and county line no longer follow the old road bed and instead run to the east of the site. The historic stone bridge over the Red River was so badly damaged in the May 2010 flood that it appears it will be lost.[8]
By 1802 Cheek had built his Stand, located about 270 feet west of the Kentucky Road and very near the spring cave, which he utilized as a water source and for refrigeration. He also built a gristmill on the river and a whiskey distillery. The exact size and layout of Cheek’s Stand is unknown as the structure reportedly burned in the 1820s. It faced the road, east; today a large, irregular limestone rock, which served as the front porch, marks its location.[9]
[10] In 1802 the French botanist Michaux was travelling from Kentucky towards Nashville as part of his tour of the Ohio valley. He later wrote, “[t]he first habitation I met with on entering Tennessee, belonged to a person named Cheeks[sic] of whom I conceived a very bad opinion.”[11] The Stand was not a refined place, of course, but what especially alarmed Michaux was the drinking. He wrote that his opinion of Cheek was based on “the conversation he was having with seven or eight of his neighbors, with whom he was drinking whiskey immoderately.”[12] Fearing alcohol related violence, Michaux quickly left the tavern and proceeded about three miles down the road toward Nashville, spending the night at the same farmer’s house who had hosted Louis Philippe’s party a few years before. But Michaux saw no actual violence at Cheek’s Stand, and he freely admitted heavy drinking and associated bloodshed were common in the entire region. Indeed, although the Frenchman was uncomfortable with the rough hewn and whiskey soaked nature of frontier society, his account suggests Cheek’s Stand was a popular gathering spot for local inhabitants,
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish ornithologist and artist traveling from Kentucky towards Nashville and his ultimate goal of Natchez in April 1810, when he stopped at Cheek’s Stand. Wilson was motivated by curiosity as well as the need for a place to stay on the road, as he admitted in a lengthy letter he penned a few days later. After visiting the small village of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Wilson stopped for several days and explored the surrounding Kentucky countryside, including an extensive cave. While there he also heard of caves used for darker purposes; he heard the story of the murder at Cheek’s Stand. Wilson wrote that “report made some of them places of concealment for the dead bodies of certain strangers who had disappeared there. One of these lies near the banks of the Red River, and belongs to a person of the name of -------, a man of notoriously bad character, and strongly suspect, even by his neighbors, of having committed a foul murder of this kind, which was related to me with all its minutiae of horrors. As this man’s house stands by the road side, I was induced, by motives of curiosity, to stop and take a peep of him.”[13]
Wilson briefly described Elisha Cheek, calling him a mulatto man, “above the common size, inclining to corpulency, with legs small in proportion to his size, and walked lame.”[14] Wilson also wrote that Cheek’s “countenance bespoke a soul capable of deeds of darkness.”[15] His account is important in another regard, being the only one to inquire about Cheek’s point of view in the affair.
Almost immediately after arriving at the Stand, Elisha Cheek invited Alexander Wilson and another man to see the nearby spring cave, the supposed victim disposal site, which Wilson quickly agreed to. Cheek led the way, carrying the lights and discussing the features of the cave, and Wilson followed with his hand on his pistol. The third man stayed near the entrance. Cheek stopped before a small waterfall in the passage, “complaining of a rheumatism.”[16]
In a remarkable underground encounter, Wilson directly confronted Cheek. Cheek himself succinctly summed up the rumor against him for Wilson; that “I killed somebody and threw them into this cave -----I can tell you the whole beginning of that damned lie.”[17] Cheek told Wilson a lengthy tale explaining how the rumor came about. Wilson then asked Cheek why he didn’t “get the cave examined by three or four reputable neighbors, whose report might rescue his character from the suspicion of having committed so horrid a crime. He acknowledged it would be well enough to do so, but did not seem to think it worth the trouble.”[18]
In the end Wilson concluded that “[w]hether this man be guilty or not of the transaction laid to his charge I know not, but his manners and aspects are such as by no means to allay suspicion.”[19] Yet judging the man on the basis of locally accepted drinking patterns and rough conversation, like Michaux, or on countenance and manners, like Wilson, is problematic. Wilson himself was an eccentric naturalist who collected bird corpses and made large scale drawings of them on his journey, which must have seemed bizarre to early Kentucky and Tennessee residents. At times he also carried in his jacket a live pet Carolina Parakeet, a species now extinct, which he would produce to the astonishment of fellow travelers.
Unfortunately for historians (and Cheek’s reputation), Wilson did not record Cheek’s version of events in his letter. It was already quite long, as he explained to recipient Alexander Lawson, and it would take too much space. Instead, Wilson wrote that he would tell it in person. In another letter a few days later, Wilson made light of the whole incident, placing the murder at Cheek’s Stand in the context of horror stories and ghost tales. In a flirtatious missive to Miss Sarah Miller he wrote that “[f]rightful stories are told of some tavern keepers, who are suspected of destroying travellers and secreting their bodies in these caves. If I were not afraid to give you the horrors, I would relate an adventure I had in one of the most frightful of these caves with the fellow to whom it belongs, and who is strongly suspected of being a murderer, even by his neighbors…If I hear or see any ghosts or hobgoblins between this and Natchez, or anything worth telling, you may depend on hearing from me.”[20]
The trajectory of the story of the murder at Cheek’s Stand was now established; an unflattering portrayal of a dark man, a local villain, with no voice beyond his denial to Wilson, stained with a heinous crime, with hints of the supernatural. The legend of the murder at Cheek’s Stand only grew after Alexander Wilson’s visit. While the original rumor was remarkably simple, a detailed version, with multiple victims and suffused with folkloric elements, appeared in 1886. Goodspeed’s History of Robertson County details this greatly expanded and highly influential version of the story. In it, Elisha Cheek, described as an octoroon with a white wife, was now said to prey on many wealthy travellers on the Kentucky Road. There was supposedly a sinkhole of unfathomable depth on the hill behind his Stand where he disposed of the bodies of his victims. In this telling, howling dogs refused to leave the sinkhole area including a strange dog; after twelve days the strange dog died. A man on horseback with a dog following had been seen the night before, when the disturbances began, near Cheek’s place. “A superstitious dread of the cave existed from that time forth, and it was asserted that the ghost of the murdered man had been repeatedly seen in that vicinity, and that Cheek, for several years before his death, never ventured from his house after dark.”[21]
Accounts from the twentieth century show further embellishment. Several accounts suggested that the sinkhole on the hillside communicated with the back of the spring cave. The property overseer claimed to have half a shoebox of human teeth washed out of the spring during freshets, along with a gold watch and “some old Spanish and English coins at the bottom of the pit in the cave.”[22] The same source also told of ghost riders, unusual lights, and mysterious voices in the vicinity of the Stand and cave. The story of Cheek’s neighbors mocking him at his funeral also appeared for the first time.[23]
An examination of Cheeks Stand Cave and nearby surface sinkholes sheds doubt on several elements of the story. First, a thorough exploration and mapping of the spring cave in 2009 failed to reveal any back entrance or associated sinkhole, nor evidence that another entrance existed in the recent past. There are certainly no pits in the cave itself, nor significant domes which extend upward close to the surface. As for the much repeated story that human teeth (not to mention coins and a gold watch) had washed out of the stream passage in high water episodes, it is frankly unbelievable. There is a series of rimstone dams and pools in the underground stream passage which make any such migration from the back of the cave to the entrance impossible.[24]
Having failed to find any physical evidence inside the cave supporting the folklore, I initiated a surface survey to look for the sinkhole which Cheek reportedly used to dispose of his victim(s). While there are many sinkholes on the ridge above the Stand, and I have not have inspected every one thoroughly, none so far lend support to the story. Plotting the location of the sinkholes shows that none directly overlay the cave passages. Nor are any of them “unfathomable” in depth; most are very shallow. Finally, none of the examined sinkholes have openings nearly large enough in which to dispose of a body.[25] This has been the case for many decades. In December 1934, Daniel Carter, a knowledgeable African American living on the property, took A. L. Dorsey and Allison Link to examine sinkholes on the ridge, including one with rocks piled up outside called Cheek’s Hole, which was supposed to be the murder victim disposal site. Dorsey wrote, “…it was claimed the Cheek Hole had no bottom. However, it must have had since it is now filled up with rock.”[26] This early attempt to determine the veracity of the Cheek legend failed to substantiate the folklore; recent field work in the cave and on the surface has had a similar result.
The documentary record establishes Elisha Cheek as a shrewd and remarkably prosperous man. He was already a significant landowner in Robertson and Sumner counties by 1800, owning 920 acres according to a tax list from that year. In the following years Elisha Cheek bought and sold numerous parcels of real estate. These included the purchase of 640 acres at a Sheriff’s delinquent tax sale in 1803 for a remarkable $11.61. By 1809 he owned 274 acres in nearby Davidson County. In 1814 he bought an additional 228 acres on the Red River. Although he also frequently sold land, he had accumulated enough property by his death to leave each of his four daughters significant land holdings, over 100 acres for at least three of them. He also left land to one of his son-in-laws and a small parcel to a granddaughter. This was all in addition to his main holdings, which he bequeathed to his wife Elizabeth and (eventually) his son, also named Elisha. Cheek also owned considerable personal property in addition to the distillery and grist mill, such as agricultural tools and livestock, as well as a dozen enslaved men, women, and children.[27]
Even though negative rumors swirled around him for the years, Cheek was never as isolated as the legend suggests. Geographically, he was surrounded by kinfolk; his wife, his son, all his daughters and their husbands, and others. By 1812 two of his neighbors were A.B. Cheek and Abraham Cheek, though their exact relationship is unclear.[28] Court records reveal that Elisha was thoroughly integrated into county affairs. For example, he attended Court, served as a road overseer, was appointed a juror, witnessed a will, settled a relative’s estate, and was a litigant in a lawsuit over debt.[29] One of the first generation of whiskey distillers in the region, Cheek helped establish an important and long lived local industry. Although competitors, Cheek had close relations with local distillers and tavern-keepers. In 1818 Henry Frey and Nathanial McCrary posted part of the required yearly $2000 bond for Cheek’s Stand. Frey was the partner of distiller and tavern-keeper John Hutchison, while McCrary owned an ordinary in the county.[30]
While Elisha Cheek had a reputation for violence, he was the owner of a tavern in a newly ordered society. Early stands such as Cheek’s were rough places, as Michaux observed, and as proprietor Cheek sometimes had to enforce order. This is reflected in the documentary record. In a February 1804 court case, Cheek was found guilty of Assault and Battery against Joshua Browder, but the jury must have thought it justified as the damage award was one cent. About the same time Stephen Jett also sued Cheek for Assault and Battery, but Cheek was acquitted. Cheek’s feisty nature never disappeared; in February 1818, just a few months before his death, Cheek was again the subject of an Assault and Battery suit, which was not resolved at the time of his death. But these were minor, compared to the murder he was rumored to have committed.[31]
Men drinking, occasional fights, indebtedness, all were part of life at Cheeks Stand. In another indication these taverns or ordinaries were unusual spaces, in 1808, Cheek applied for a copy of a recently purchased land deed, explaining that a monkey had gotten to his papers and destroyed the original warrant. Where could one see a monkey in early Tennessee? At Cheek’s Stand, apparently. No wonder a later newspaper advertisement for Cheeks Stand referred to it as both a Public House and a “House of Entertainment.”[32]
The documentary evidence reveals that Elisha Cheek was a complex and prosperous man embedded in a network of kin and neighbors, with extensive local business ties. The physical evidence fails to support the allegation of his murderous activity; he almost certainly did not deposit a murder victim in the spring cave or into a sinkhole on the ridge above the Stand, though many believed it at the time. Cheek was pushed totally outside the margins of respectable local society only after his death, as the stories of his misdeeds grew. Over time, Elisha Cheek’s purported evil behavior was increasingly explained using racial theory. Cheek, it was emphasized, was an octoroon from Virginia, and his dark complexion was linked to his supposed “dark deeds,” even by observers like Scotsman Alexander Wilson, who was no friend of the institution of slavery. This racialization of anti-social behavior became more important as the nineteenth century progressed, as it allowed local whites to easily explain Cheek’s supposed murder(s). Like many landowners in the area Cheek was a slave-owner, but as with other aspects of his life, his actions were more complicated than the legend suggests.
This brings us back to the story of Elisha Cheek’s funeral. Did hateful neighbors really mock him at his funeral? Perhaps, but it seems unlikely. Presumably among those present were his grieving wife, son and daughters, his four sons-in-laws, his bondsmen, and close friends. The original source for the funeral story was the same overseer who embellished other aspects of the folklore. And where did the funeral take place? No one knows where Elisha Cheek is buried, though local tradition states he was interred in a stone wall on the property. Would there have even been a public funeral in that event? The whole story is doubtful.[33]
Elisha Cheek’s death did bring to light two additional aspects of his personality which confound his image as a simple villain. Although we know nothing about his previous religious practices, Cheek professed a belief in God in his Will, which he dictated in 1818, a few months prior to his death. His Will did something else; it freed from slavery Charles and Beck, two of the dozen enslaved persons on the farm. While slaveholders might manumit their elderly slaves to eliminate their heir’s obligation to care for them, this was not the case with Cheek, who instructed that they “be set free and maintained during life out of my Estate.”[34] This is not exactly what one might expect as the final act of a local villain.
In conclusion, the legend of Elisha Cheek and the murder at Cheek’s Stand cannot withstand the insights of biography, grounded in local history, and sustained by physical evidence. But the newly complicated Cheek I have discussed today is, I think, more realistic, more ambiguous, and far more human than the black-hearted man who was scared to leave his house because of ghosts. Lastly, I would suggest other figures in early Tennessee history could perhaps benefit from a similar reassessment.
[1] Louie E. Spivey, “Ghosts Ran Wild Around Rock Rest; Legendary Site of Several Killings,” The Sumner County News, August 23, 1962, p. 9.
[2] The Goodspeed Histories of Montgomery, Robertson, Humphreys, Stewart, Dickson, Cheatham, [&] Houston Counties of Tennessee (Columbia, Tennessee: Woodward & Stinson, 1972 Reprint of 1886 Edition) pp. 832, 833; Mrs. Archie Thomas, Chronicles of Robertson County as appears in the Springfield Record, August 1908 (Springfield, Tennessee [?]: 1922 [?]) p. 19, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Dr. J. S. Malloy, “Reminiscences of Robertson County,” p. 7, typewritten manuscript, ca. 1887, Unpublished Scrapbook, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Catherine Holman and Jean Durrett, Historic Robertson County: Places and Personalities (Springfield, Tennessee: N. P., 1970) p. 11; Walter T. Durham, Old Sumner: A History of Sumner County Tennessee from 1805 to 1861 (Gallatin: Sumner County Public Library Board, 1972) pp. 24, 25; Harold Lynch, “Area Cave’s Legend Is Filled With Ghosts,” Nashville Banner, July 18, 1974, p. 45; Yolanda G. Reid and Rick S. Gregory, Robertson County, Tennessee, Home of the World’s Finest, Celebrating 200 Years (Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing, 1996) pp. 38, 39; “Cheek’s Stand,” Eastern Robertson County Historical Quarterly 5 (1): 13-15 [1998].
[3] F. A. Michaux, Travels to the Westward of the Alleghany [sic] Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Return to Charlestown… (London: J. Mawman, 1805) pp. 182-187; Clark Hunter (ed.), The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson (Philadelphia: American Philosophic Society, 1983) pp. 341-358.
[4] Goodspeed, p. 832; Cheek’s Stand, p. 13; Holman and Durrett, p. 11; Reid and Gregory, p. 39 state that Cheek claimed to be a Spaniard; Lynch, p. 45 calls Cheek a “dark, swarthy Scottsman [sic]”.
[5] 1st Census of the United States 1790, Record of the State Enumerators, 1782-1785: Virginia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908. Reprinted by Southern Historical Press, Greenville, 1995) pp. 40, 41, 64; Head of Families at the First Census of the United States Taken in Year 1790: North Carolina (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908. Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1992) p. 214.
[6] The deed was proved in Open Court in October 1799. Robertson County Minute Book Vol. 1, 1796-1807, p. 117; the deed was entered January 17, 1800. Robertson County Deed Book B, p. 277. There are no Cheeks listed in the Sumner County Tax Lists 1787-1794.
[7] Malloy, p. 7.
[8] North Carolina Grant #844, January 17, 1789; Joseph C. Douglas, “Investigations at Cheeks Stand Cave, Tennessee: History, Folklore, and Archaeology,” Unpublished paper presented at the American Spelean History Association Meeting, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, July 19, 2011; Thomas C. Barr, Caves of Tennessee (Nashville: State of Tennessee Division of Geology, 1961) p. 397; Doug Drake, Jack Masters, and Bill Puryear, Founding of the Cumberland Settlements, The First Atlas 1779-1804 (Gallatin: Warioto Press, 2009) Map A9; Spivey, p. 9.
[9] Michaux, p. 182; Notes from GPS Survey of Site, September 7, 2010, in possession of the author; Wilson, p. 352.
[10] For Cheek’s lack of literacy, see his Will, “Robertson County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, Bonds, etc. Vol. 2, 1812-1818,” Typewritten Ms., Works Progress Administration, June 1936, Tennessee State Library and Archives, pp. 108, 109.
[11] Michaux, p. 182.
[12] Wilson, p. 352.
[13] ibid, p. 351.
[14] ibid, p. 352.
[15] ibid.
[16] ibid.
[17] ibid.
[18] ibid.
[19] ibid, pp. 352, 353.
[20] ibid, pp. 356, 357. Also see p. 358.
[21] Goodspeed, pp. 832, 833.
[22] Spivey, p. 9.
[23] ibid. Also see “Cheek’s Stand,” pp. 13-15, Goodspeed, p. 833, Durham, pp. 24-26, Reid and Gregory, pp. 38, 39, and Lynch, pp. 45
[24] Douglas, p. 8.
[25] Notes from GPS Survey of Site, September 14, 2010, in possession of the author.
[26] “Cheek’s Stand,” p. 15.
[27] “A List of Taxable Property, 1800,” Sumner County Tax Books 1795-1801, Microfilm Roll 332, p. 253, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Robertson County Deed Book A, p. 161; Annotated Duplicate of North Carolina Grant #4343, Tennessee State Library and Archive; Sumner County Deed Abstracts, 1806-1817 (Wolfe City, Texas: Henington Publishing Co., 1989) p. 105. Abstracted by Joyce Martin Murray; “Robertson County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, Bonds, etc. Vol. 2, 1812-1818,” Typewritten Ms., Works Progress Administration, June 1936, pp. 108-109.
[28] Timothy R. Marsh and Helen C. Marsh, 1st Land Grants of Sumner County, Tennessee, 1786-1837 (Greenville: Southern Historical Press, 2003) p. 154.
[29] Robertson County Minute Book Vol. 1, 1796-1807, p. 239 (road overseer), p. 175 (appointed as juror). Cheek was excused from serving as juror at the next session; in 1804, Cheek witnessed the Will of William Brown. Sumner County, Tennessee Abstract of Will Books 1 & 2, 1788-1842 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1995 reprint of 1956 Edition) p. 10. Compiled by Edythe R. Whitley; “Robertson County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, Bonds, etc. Vol. 2, 1812-1818,” Typewritten Ms., Works Progress Administration, June 1936, p. 191, Tennessee State Library and Archives. In May 1815, Elisha Cheek reported on the sale of estate of Abraham Chuk[sic] to the Court. Elisha bought almost all of the property himself including livestock, agricultural implements, a wagon, and a still; Elisha Cheek and John Strother were sued for debt by Volentine Choate in October 1809 and were found guilty in February 1810, “Records of Robertson County, County Court Minute Book, Vol. 2, 1808-1811,” Typewritten Ms., Works Progress Administration, 1939, p. 129, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
[30] Robertson County Court Minutes Vol. 5, 1818-1820, p. 30; Minutes of the County Court of Robertson Vol. 6, 1820-1822, pp. 320, 444. In the March 1822 County Court session, Frey and Hutchison sued for debt and won a default judgment for $1000 against Cheek’s son-in-law John Strother, who ran Cheek’s Stand after Elisha’s death.
[31] Robertson County Minute Book Vol. 2, 1796-1807, pp. 175, 229, 252, 283, 296; Robertson County Court Minutes Vol. 5, 1818-1820, pp. 14, 30.
[32] Annotated Duplicate of North Carolina Grant #4343, Tennessee State Library and Archive; Davidson County Court Minutes, December 31, 1808; The Nashville Whig and Tennessee Advertiser, May 29, 1819, p. 3 and June 12, 1819, p. 1.
[33] Holman and Durrett, p. 11; Spivey p. 9; Reid and Gregory, pp. 38, 39; personal communication with Shade Murray.
[34] “Robertson County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, Bonds, etc. Vol. 2, 1812-1818,” Typewritten Ms., Works Progress Administration, June 1936, pp. 108-109.