‘Hand of God’ guides man to amazing discovery

Michelle Willard, The Daily News Journal, May, 29, 2018

The sticky sweet smell of honeysuckle filled the air as Daryl Webb ducked his 6-foot-tall frame under scrub brush, braving snakes and ticks to show his sister the final resting place of one of Murfreesboro’s founding fathers.

“You’d never know this was back here,” Webb said over his shoulder as he pointed to the toppled tombstone for Burrell Gannaway, one of Murfreesboro’s first city aldermen, in the neglected family graveyard.

The first time Webb heard the name Ganaway (also spelled Gannaway), he had no idea what the name would come to mean, much less that he was living on the same land his Ganaway ancestors were enslaved on in the Barfield community.

Now Webb knows more than probably anyone else about the Ganaways who helped found Rutherford County and Murfreesboro.

Webb, who grew up in Murfreesboro, shared his new-found knowledge with his sister Marsha Springer on Friday afternoon as the two walked the land once owned by the man who kept their ancestors as slaves.

“At first, I didn’t know how to feel,” Webb said after walking the land around the historic house, cabin and remains of a barn all built by his enslaved ancestors.

He also found a connection on his mother’s side to the family for which the city is named.

“We come from two lines of founding fathers, Murfrees and and Gannaways,” Webb said with a grin.

Over the past year, Webb’s feelings have grown into a passion to share his family’s story.

His passion for family history started after seeing Tim and Brenda Fredericks speak in 2012 at the First Baptist Church on Castle Street about photographer and Murfreesboro native King Daniel Ganaway, who is also known as K.D. Ganaway.

“I was looking at family I didn’t know I had,” said Webb, who devotes his time to genealogical research when not working at Schneider Electric in La Vergne.

He met the Fredericks in February 2015 when he attended the second lecture about K.D. Ganaway at the Bradley Academy Museum in Murfreesboro to learn more about the Murfreesboro native who ended up as a world-famous photographer in Chicago.

“We had no idea he was a relative but I said, ‘He looks like Uncle Bob,’ ” Brenda Fredericks said about her first impression of Webb, calling him a “found cousin.”

Since meeting at Bradley, Webb has joined the Fredericks in their quest to uncover the Ganaway family’s lost history.

Webb’s search took him to an interesting place, back to the land on which his home stands. Over the intervening years, the Gannaway land changed hands a few times until most of it was subdivided into neighborhoods such as Southridge.

“I discovered that I actually live on part of the land that my family labored on as slaves,” Webb said.

After his discovery, Webb contacted Steve Maloney, the owner of the historic house and what remains of the Gannaway farm. Two weeks ago, Maloney gave Webb and his family some metal artifacts he found in and around the slave cabin, Webb said.

Tim Fredericks said he was “encouraged” by the artifacts “because they tell a story of love, respect, joy and pride.”

“Yes, slavery and racism is dark and evil, but all of our hearts can be changed from embitterment if we are willing to allow them to be. It all starts with looking into the past and discovering that we are really one people,” said Tim Fredericks, who grew up thinking he was of Costa Rican rather than African descent.

Founding father lost to time

The whole story is hard for Webb to believe.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around,” Webb said. “I’m still trying to come to grips with the land my wife and I purchased … not knowing the significance.”

Webb explained he didn’t inherit the land, instead he and his wife, Donna, bought the home in 2002 in the Barfield community not knowing it was part of a land grant to Burrell Gannaway, the man who owned King Daniel Ganaway’s family.

“More importantly, less than a mile from our home, in a secluded location, stands the home of the slave master and most likely the slave quarters in which my ancestors would have lived,” Webb said, still amazed at his discovery.

Tim Fredericks also expressed his amazement after visiting the land two weeks ago.

“When I touch the logs of this once magnificent home and stand on soil where I know my people walked, slept, cried, labored, bore children, I am humbled because they endured,” Tim Fredericks said.

Webb said his amazement grew with what he found about the man who owned the land and enslaved his ancestors.

After a year of researching his family, Webb made his discovery late one afternoon about three weeks ago. A few hours later, his cousin Brenda Fredericks told him the house where Burrell Gannaway lived was still standing.

And it was on Barfield Road, less than a half-mile from his home near Barfield Elementary School.

The next day, Webb took his 10-year-old daughter, Diora, to the site where their ancestors’ sweat and blood and tears seeped into the land two centuries ago.

“They built this,” he said. “And she’ll always remember what that looked like.”

When he first stepped onto the land, he said he felt as if he could hear the angels of his ancestors calling to him.

“It’s almost like the people out there were welcoming me home,” he said.

“That hand of God, it was the hand of God,” Springer said with an “mm-hmm.”

It seems like God’s hand has guided Webb to tell the story of Burrell Gannaway and the impact he had on Murfreesboro.

Little can be found locally about the man. Webb has found more in North Carolina about one of the first families to settle Rutherford County.

From Rutherford County Historical Society writings and a mention here and there at the Rutherford County Archives, Webb has found some facts about the man who recognized by the state’s government in 1813 as one of the first commissioners of the city of Murfreesboro.

The state appointments were repealed in 1813 and Burrell Gannaway was selected by the people to serve as one of the city’s first aldermen with Nicholas Tilford, Thomas Watkins, William Barfield, Charles Niles, George Sublett and William Ledbetter under mayors Joshua Haskell and David Wendell.

These men also elected Burrell Gannaway as the city’s first treasurer, according to Goodspeed’s Tennessee History and Biographies. Burrell Gannaway served for only one year and later served as a Rutherford County Ranger from 1813-1824.

He was also a founding deacon of the First Baptist Church on East Main Street and a trustee for Union University and the Baptist Female Institute.

Until his death in 1852 from an infected cut on his hand, Burrell Gannaway accumulated wealth by buying, selling and working land in the Barfield community, as well as executing wills and other legal documents, Webb said.

By 1837 he had gathered 790 acres in the Barfield District of Rutherford County and owned 18 slaves valued at $11,600, according to the 1837 Rutherford County tax roll.

“He lived in Barfield and that’s where our family would have labored,” Webb said. “And I live on that land.”

Brenda Fredericks said she was amazed that Burrell Gannaway’s home and at least one slave cabin are still standing on Barfield Crescent Road outside of Murfreesboro.

“The fact that Burrell Gannaway’s home and the family graveyard have been preserved nearly 200 years is evident that we all have been given a task,” Tim Fredericks said. “The task for each and every one of us is reconciliation.”

Reach Michelle Willard at 615-278-5164, on Twitter @MichWillard or Rutherford County Business News on Facebook at facebook.com/DNJBusiness.

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