#Devil backbone mississippi full#

Meanwhile, the boys had a number of encounters, adventures and learned more about the wilderness they were about to enter. Perkins and her boys traveled down the Cumberland River to Nashville, where they disembarked and the boys experienced the first of many new adventures.Īfter meeting other families heading for the Natchez Trace and a new life, they joined their wagons and continued on to Franklin, staying at Whites Tavern on Margin Street - where the Old, Old Jail, aka the McConnell House, is now located - and waited for a few more families to join them.

In his first children’s book, “Fighting the Devil’s Backbone The Shadow of E.Z.’s Fear,” Turnbow brings that piece of history to life with tales of “cutthroat” bandits, Indian raids and spies who terrorized those traveling along the Natchez Trace, better known as the “Devil’s Backbone.” It was one of the first highways built by the federal government. Just eight years earlier, in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson sent soldiers to convert the Natchez Trace, an old Indian trail running from Nashville to the busy seaport of Natchez, Mississippi, into a wagon highway. “Imagine the courage that took,” said Tony Turnbow, a Williamson County attorney turned historian and author.

#Devil backbone mississippi full#

Read the full article on .Ī widow with two sons and no family to help her, Sarah Perkins faced a bleak future remaining in Pennsylvania with her boys in 1809, so she got them passage on a keelboat to Nashville.įrom there, they would take the Natchez Trace, which ran from Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi and the southwest Mississippi frontier.