Happy Holidays!!! The history of Oak Ridge Tenn and John Hendrix.

[stipes]

Robertsville had a prophet. Yes, right around the year 1900 John Hendrix’s life underwent such a transformation that his community nicknamed him “The Prophet.”

He and Julia had married in 1888. They found a fresh spring and built a primitive one-room cabin a few yards away. They planted an orchard with apples and pears, set up their garden and had four babies – Jesse, Elsie, Lela, and Ethel.
Then diphtheria hit. Baby Ethel got sick and died. The family was turned upside down with turmoil. Julia couldn’t cope with her grief so she took the other three children and boarded a wagon with her brother. They went to Arkansas and John never saw any of them again.
As people often do during a time of trial, John became very religious. He began taking long walks in the woods praying for understanding. One day while in the woods he heard a thunderous voice speak to him. The voice promised that if he would sleep with his head on the ground for forty nights John would be shown the future of his land.
So he did it. He chose a spot near a fence row and settled in. People in the community heard about it and came to check on him. Mary Ann Johnson from New Hope Gap was so concerned that she tried to persuade him to go back home. But John wouldn’t do it. So she brought some quilts and laid them on him. She also brought him some chicken soup. Another neighbor walked by one morning and found him with his hair frozen to the ground. She said that the sound of his prayers would make your hair stand on end.
Forty days later John reappeared from the woods. He began to tell anyone who would listen that he had indeed seen visions about the future. While some people were intrigued, others were skeptical and called him crazy. Though good farm folk have strong values in faith, nine-year-old James Braden even got a whippin’ from his mother for believing John.
The first vision John told was that a railroad line would be run down by the Clinch River and pass Katie Worthington’s farm. He said they were going to cut a tunnel right through Black Oak Ridge. He said that a spring in the mountain was going to collapse as a result of that tunnel. Within 18 months the L&N Railroad did exactly as John had predicted. The Clinton newspaper ran an article about it in 1902.
John’s visions continued. He said that a spur would be built off that main railroad line. It would run down into Robertsville, then turn down toward Scarbrough running beside his farm. He marked the trees with an ax on his property which would be cut down for it. He said the rail lines would also run right through where Mary Ann Johnson’s back porch was.
John said a city would be built along Black Oak Ridge where thousands of people would live. He said big factories would be built down in Bear Creek Valley inside which they would be building things. He said the seat of authority would be built between Sevier Tadlock’s farm and Joe Pyatt’s place. He predicted that lime would someday be used as fertilizer and that an invention would be made that would transport people and freight through the air. He said what was going to be built in Robertsville and Scarbrough would help win one of the greatest wars that would ever be. He described from one vision that there would be loud noise, confusion, and that the earth would shake. John even named those in his community who would still be alive to see all these things happen, and who wouldn’t still be alive including himself.
On June 2, 1915 John Hendrix died of tuberculosis. John had found a new wife, Martha Jane Gregory from Blount County near the Great Smoky Mountains. She had seven children, then she and John had one more child together whom they named Curtis. When John died two of the girls had also gotten sick and died. The other two older daughters had married and moved away leaving widowed Martha with twelve-year-old Andrew “Murray” and six-year-old Curt. They buried John at the top of the hill overlooking his farm and Curtis planted a boxwood bush beside the gravestone. He was 49 years old and World War I had just begun. Martha’s oldest daughter and husband moved back to the farm to help care for her and the farm. World War I came and went without any sign of the city John had predicted. Years passed and most people forgot about the visions of John Hendrix.
In 1942, still a primitive community without electricity the good folks of Robertsville, Scarbrough, and the neighboring communities of Wheat and Elza received a letter from the U.S. Government stating that the War Department was taking possession of 59,000 acres of their farmland for a war emergency.
One thousand families were forced to find a new place to live immediately. They had to move what possessions, livestock, and harvest they could haul in two to four weeks and leave the rest behind. Every family grieved as they left their homes, farms, churches, friends, and their deceased ancestors and children buried on the farms they loved so dearly. The government numbered the cemeteries and John Hendrix’s gravesite was coincidentally numbered “40″.
Even before these families had finished moving, the construction crews came in. They began demolishing the old farm houses and constructed thousands of small houses instead. The railroad spur was constructed and ran right beside John’s farm just as he had said it would. Now forty years after John’s visions there was a “city built on Black Oak Ridge”.
“Bear Creek Valley was filled with big buildings”, which they called the Y-12 plant. The X-10 and K-25 plants as well were constructed to “build things” which were very secret and about which only Washington, DC knew completely. The government administration buildings were built “between Sevier Tadlock’s farm and Joe Pyatt’s place”.
On August 6, 1945 the B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” carried “people and freight through the air” to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshema which created the “loud noise, confusion and earth shaking” that John had seen in his visions. The uranium U-235 for that first atomic bomb was revealed as having been the “secret war project” produced in Oak Ridge. This led to the end of World War II and indeed helped “win one of the greatest wars that will ever be”.
That project known as the Manhattan Project has been called the greatest accomplishment of the 20th century. That city, Oak Ridge, Tennessee has become the site of inventions that have changed the world forever.
Grace Raby Crawford, John’s step-grand daughter and co-author of “Back of Oak Ridge” said, “We who left our homes hold no resentment. We are proud of the great part it had in the winning of World War II and feel that we did not sacrifice our homes in vain.” People in the community who had heard John’s predictions began to say, “I guess John Hendrix wasn’t crazy after all.”
So Robertsville’s prophet turned out to be right, and today John Hendrix is called the Prophet of Oak Ridge...

[RaumVogel]

That is fascinating.Thank you so much for your post! My Uncle worked for the war department at Oak ridge and I was able to visit there a couple of years back.I wasn't able to stay long...I wish I had.