Mary Ann, daughter of James Stephenson, one of the Four, and his wife, Nelly, was born in South Carolina, in 1774. She married Mr. Sandifer. They reared a family in South Carolina. The son of Mr. Sandifer and his wife, Mary Ann Stephenson, married Miss Wylie. Of this union were several children born.
Misses Sarah and Hephzibah Sandifer, now living on Rocky Creek, near Rossville, are two of their children. These two maids own and live upon a farm on Rocky Creek, on which, by prudence, industry and economy, they make a competency and some to spare. These ladies are nice, quiet members of the old Catholic Presbyterian Church. Their farm skirts Rocky Creek where the old cow ford was in Revolutionary times. Here at this cow ford is the place William Anderson crossed and made his escape from forty pursuing British and Tories. This was in June, 1780. The old Anderson home is just over the hills across the creek from the Sandifer home. The home is in sight; the creek still flows as then; but the living creatures of that day are all gone. But their brave deeds are living and moving as well as the water in the channels of that historic creek.
Here Mr. Anderson lived when he volunteered for the war. He left a loving wife and three children: Mary, the oldest, and Robert and William. He left a bountiful supply for his wife and children—horses, cattle and hogs, and a crib full of corn, and a smokehouse well supplied with provisions, old ham and well cured side meat. But, oh, the uncertainty of this world's goods! On the return of the British and Tories from the vain pursuit of William Anderson, her husband, they, knowing his skill and bravery and being chagrined on account of his escape, destroyed and carried away everything she possessed. Soon after this occurrence Mr. Anderson was surprised and killed on Fishing Creek, near where Fort Lawn now is. Her resources for the support of her three children were her energy and will to work. She built a dam and put in a fish-trap on Rocky Creek. Her seven-year-old daughter, Mary, assisted her mother. They worked in water up to their knees all day building that dam, but they succeeded in catching an abundance of fish. They would prepare the fish and hang them above the fire in the rude chimney, so as to dry them for a future day.
Mrs. William Anderson, nee Stephenson, had two brothers, James and William, in the army, and one brother, Robert Stephenson, who went from Ireland to the coal mines near Newcastle, England. This Robert is the father of George Stephenson, the celebrated inventor of the locomotive. He built the first locomotive that moved on the surface of the earth. This was 1814 to 1830. The child, Mary Anderson, who, when seven years old, was such substantial aid to her mother, married Joshua Smith and became the mother of four able ministers of the gospel in Tennessee, and the great-grandmother of Senator E. W. Carmack. One of her nephews, Napoleon Bonaparte Anderson, belonged to the Tennessee Conference for forty years. The Andersons near Pulaski are the descendants of her brother, Robert Anderson. One of the Andersons near Pulaski sent eleven sons to the Confederate army, ten of whom returned at the close of the war. William H. Anderson lives at this time on an estate near Pulaski, Tennessee. The substance of the above history is gleaned from the third volume of "The Women of the American Revolution."
There is another place on the Misses Sandifer's farm of interesting history. It is a cave in the banks of Rocky Creek. There was a farmer who had only recently come from England at the beginning of the war of the Revolution. His name was John Ferguson. He and his good wife, Isabella, would not take part against their neighbors, most of whom were Whigs, nor did they wish to oppose their recent countrymen. Mrs. Anderson, after being robbed of all she had, gathered her maturing crop, and, to keep out of the way of the marauding Tories—the country being overrun with British and Tories—called on Mr. Ferguson for advice. He concealed her corn in a cave under a hill on the creek's banks. Through Mr. Ferguson's kindness and ingenuity he was of great help to Mrs. Anderson and other Whig ladies of that neighborhood.
Robert B. Anderson and I visited these historic spots last July. We took dinner with the two happy maids. It was a bountiful repast and thoroughly enjoyed by the two visitors. The old cave is there yet, but the washings from the fields have partly filled its mouth. Some old fence rails are sticking up out of the mud and sand in the cave's mouth. May the good Lord preserve these two happy, good, and what society calls old maids, and may they conclude not to deprive some nice gentleman of good and suitable helpmeets any longer. Selah.