ahead--which led him from one
unfortunate locality or enterprise to another, as long as he lived. About
a year after his marriage he settled with his young wife in Gainsborough,
Tennessee, a mountain town on the Cumberland River, and here, in 1825,
their first child, a boy, was born. They named him Orion--after the
constellation, perhaps--though they changed the accent to the first
syllable, calling it Orion. Gainsborough was a small place with few
enough law cases; but it could hardly have been as small, or furnished as
few cases; as the next one selected, which was Jamestown, Fentress
County, still farther toward the Eastward Mountains. Yet Jamestown had
the advantage of being brand new, and in the eye of his fancy John
Clemens doubtless saw it the future metropolis of east Tennessee, with
himself its foremost jurist and citizen. He took an immediate and active
interest in the development of the place, established the county-seat
there, built the first Court House, and was promptly elected as circuit
clerk of the court.

It was then that he decided to lay the foundation of a fortune for
himself and his children by acquiring Fentress County land. Grants could
be obtained in those days at the expense of less than a cent an acre, and
John Clemens believed that the years lay not far distant when the land
would increase in value ten thousand, twenty, perhaps even a hundred
thousandfold. There was no wrong estimate in that. Land covered with
the finest primeval timber, and filled with precious minerals, could
hardly fail to become worth millions, even though his entire purchase of
75,000 acres probably did not cost him more than $500. The great tract
lay about twenty nines to the southward of Jamestown. Standing in the
door of the Court House he had built, looking out over the "Knob" of the
Cumberland Mountains toward his vast possessions, he said:

"Whatever befalls me now, my heirs are secure. I may not live to see
these acres turn into silver and gold, but my children will."

Such was the creation of that mirage of wealth, the "Tennessee land,"
which all his days and for long afterward would lie just ahead--a golden
vision, its name the single watchword of the family fortunes--the dream
fading with years, only materializing at last as a theme in a story of
phantom riches, The Gilded Age.

Yet for once John Clemens saw clearly, and if his dream did not come true
he was in no wise to blame. The land is priceless now, an