The 1850 census shows William and Joseph, oldest sons of Benajmin, were neighbors or lived in separate houses on the same farm. Some time between 1850 and 1860, William Marr must have enough of the pig & whiskey business in Monroe Co. and he moved his growing family to the neighboring Polk county where several copper mines had opened up and laborers were needed. The existence of rich veins of copper ore had been known for some time in this isolated section of Tennessee, but it couldn't be shipped to market profitably. In the early 1800's there were no railroads or even wagon roads to this mountainous area. All travel and commerce had to use trails only suitable for pack mules or oxen. Finally in 1853 a crude wagon road was completed between Hiwassee Town (today called Duck Town) and the city of Cleveland Tn, near Chattanooga, where there was a railhead. This rough wagon road allowed for a relatively large scale mining operations to began. The commercial activity picked up and immediately small villages sprung up near each of the several copper mines. The area expanded so fast that portions of Bradley and McMinn county were split off and the County of Polk created.

    The William Marr family shows up in Polk County in the 1860 census as residents of the 8th district of Ducktown and all of his children are with him except for his oldest daughter Malinda who was now 22 and probably she had married.
 

U.S. Cen 1840	U.S. Census 1850	U.S. Census 1860	U.S. Census 1870	U.S. Cen 1880
Monroe Co.	Monroe Co.	Polk Co.	Polk Co	Polk Co.
William Marr	William Marr 38	William Marr 48	William Marr 60	William Marr 68
1 male 20-30	Gilena Marr 38	Angelina Marr 48	Angelina Marr 55	Angelina 63
2 fem >5	Sarah 9	Sara 20
1 fem 20-30	Benham 8	BJ (Benjamin) 19	Elizabeth 23
	Nancy 6	Nannie E. 15	Gray, Melinda 15
	Jonathan 4	Jasper 11	Jasper 21 (mine
	Joseph 1	Joseph 9	hand)
	Malinda 12	William N. 6	William N. 19	William N. miner

    The significant child for my line is the one called Jonathan in 1850 and called Jasper in the next two census's. Angelina, William's wife probably named this child after her father Jonathan Wright. His will and probate are documented in Monroe Co and he left her a small sum of money (25 cents) when he died about 1850. Their son Joseph does not show up in the 1870 census because he married at the age of 19 and was shown in 1870 census as having a separate household. The two new girls shown in 1870 census could have been children of other relatives and William and Angelina were giving them shelter. This happened to many children because the Civil War destroyed many families. Angelina had a sister with the married name of Gray and Malinda could have been a niece. No records other than the census were found to help document the 20 plus years William Marr lived in Ducktown. Many of the early records for Polk Co were destroyed by fires in the county court house in 1895 and in 1935.

    The lives of the miners and the support workers in Polk county must have been primitive and austere. The Copper Miner's Museum in Ducktown at the old Hiwassee Mine depicted the dangerous and unhealthy working environment in the mines and several shaft mines were dug as far as 356 feet underground. To simplify the shipping of the ore, the mine engineers devised a copper purifying process that crushed the ore and then heated it in large open air vats to boil off the impurities. This required large quantity of wood and soon the heavily forested area around the mines were denuded of trees for fuel. The heating and boiling process created clouds of sulfuric acid which soon killed the rest of the nearby vegetation. By the late 1800's, the copper basin around Ducktown for about 50 square miles looked like the moon; completely bare of trees and brush. Also the sulfuric acid fumes probably had an deleterious affect on the health of people living in the area. The picture on the left  that shows how the mining and churning of the earth destroyed the vegetation. This is a picture of a collapsed mine shaft with green chemically active water near the Copper Miner's Museum. Click on the picture to see more detail.

    There were 8 or 9 mines operating in the 1850-1860 time frame and the miners and their families lived in simple cabin shanties many provided by the mining companies. Some mine owners paid the workers in script which they could use only in the mining company stores. Large contingencies of Welsh and German miners were brought in from overseas because of their experience in mining which made for a polyglot community. All mining operations stopped in 1863, in the middle of the civil war, when the Federal troops moved into area and disrupted operations.  While there were no big battles in Polk Co. a guerrilla type warfare went on for several years with renegades robbing and  killing many of the inhabitants. After the war the copper mines were slow to restart operations as all business in the south lacked leaders, organization and markets.

    How the William Marr family survived without work and in a lawless country can only be imagined. However, by 1870 most mines were able to resume operations and the 1870 census shows Jonathan Jasper (JJ) as being a "mine hand" as was his younger brother William N. The young men frequently began working in the mines at age of 14. The only schools in the area were in session for 3-4 months and families were required to pay tuition. Apparently JJ never made it to school as he could neither read nor write at age 20 according to the 1870 census. He was too young to fight in the Civil War, however, his older brother Benjamin may have been a soldier because their are no further records of him after the 1860 census.

    The history of the Ducktown indicates that around 1878 a depression occurred in copper market and all mines were closed. Ducktown went into fast decline and many workers moved on. JJ must have married Rosanna Clementine Stuart by this time because we know that by 1880 he was working in the coal mines near Anniston, Alabama where his son William Monroe Marr was born Jan. 2, 1880. William Marr Senior apparently stayed on in Ducktown at least past 1880 because the 1880 census shows him to be 68 and lists him as a laborer. No record was found of his or Angelina's death nor their place of burial.

As a side light, the 1900 census for Polk Co shows a Joseph Marr just the right age to be William Marr's son. In 1900 Joseph had wife and five children and one of his boys was named Newt born in 1885. While looking at for graves in the Threewill Cemetery outside of Ducktown, a big tombstone was noted for a "Preacher Newton Marr", born Nov. 17, 1885, died Aug. 12, 1951 and his wife was Luna Morrow 1883-1953. There was a tombstone of a Bonnie Marr next to Newton's with the birthrate of Sept. 2, 1910 and death date of Mar. 27, 1989.  This seems to be the last of the Marr's in the Ducktown area of  Polk Co. Click on the picture to read the inscriptions.
Return to William Marr 1812.