The Watermelon Stone

It would be interesting to know just where Father Sloan first found the rock shaped like a watermelon. Since I have been told that Father and Mother Sloan with their young son John C., came to Franklin from Shelby County, Kentucky in 1935 on horseback, it seems most likely the rock was found after coming here, but as far back as anyone living in my adult lifetime seemed to remember the watermelon rock had sat at the end of the big stone step of the Sloan home, which was built prior to 1850.

They went back and fourth to Kentucky many times and I have wondered if this rock may have been on the doorstep of the Cosbys or Shackelfords or maybe the Wingfields or Garlands.

After the death of America White Shackelford Sloan in 1902 the watermelon rock was taken to the home of David Layfayette and Emily Jane Sloan-Overbay, the latter a daughter of Father Harvey Sloan and Mother America.

Here at the home of my grandparents Overbay the watermelon rock and the big stone step were soon reunited for the Sloan Homestead was sold and upon the west or back of the house was built the telephone exchange and on the south at the side of the house was built the Franklin Evening Star building. The brick home on the corner was for awhile used for an Interurban station but was soon torn down to make way for a new station building which is at present (1949) used for the R.E.M.C. office.

It was at this time when the Sloan home was torn down that my grandparents Overbay bought the big stone and step and had it moved to their home at 98 West Adams Street here in Franklin, and they placed it at the west end of the large L shaped porch of the theen newly remodeled house.

After the death of Grandfather Overbay in 1917 my grandmother Emily Jane Sloan Overbay came to make her home with my parents, Dr. James and Frances Emily Overbay-Richardson and with her, among other things, was brought the watermelon rock and the big stone step.

The step was placed at the north approach to our North poarch and here it has been ever since the watermelon rock sat near the stone step for several years, but some years after the death of my grandmother Overbay in 1918, my mother told her cousin Myrtle Sloan Williams, the daughter of James W. Sloan who was a son of Father and Mother Sloan, that she might have the watermelon rock. It was not after my mother’s death in 1937 that Myrtle took the rock to her home in Birmingham, Alabama and placed it there at her doorstep. There it sat until cousin Myrtle moved into an apartment about 1945. At that time the rock was taken to the home of a daughter of cousin Myrtle’s, Ruth Annett Williams-Anderson and her husband, Julian Anderson, in Birmingham.

When the Andersons decided to locate in California, August 15, 1949 brought the watermelon rock from Birmingham and placed it on my porch near the big stone step.

Julian and Ruth Annett and daughter, Ann Anderson are visiting enroute to California and so today the big stone step ande the watermelon rock are together again as they were more than a century ago. And about them are playing four children, all great great grandchildren of John Harvey and America White Shackelford-Sloan. They are Ann Anderson, Jimmie, Frances and Alice Richardson.

If this rock were human it would have a lot to talk about. The step would tell the rock how it was serving the fifth generation in the persons of the three Richardson children, all of which have been born since the rock left for Birmingham. They no doubt would talk about old times and recall the days of joy and sorrow in the way of weddings and funerals while they were together at the old Sloan home. They would have something interesting to say about the first Interurban car that came into Franklin from Indianapolis and stopped in front of the house. They would recall that exciting day when a mob lynched a man and after the mob had taken him from the jail he broke away and ran down the street, jumped the fence into the Sloan front yard and layed down along side of the house at the end of the big stonestep to hide, only to be pounced upon by the angry mob and taken to the north edge of town and hanged.

The rock and the stone would also remember the regular Sunday afternoon family get togethers while they were at the Overbays that would tax the capacity of the large front porch. There were in those days a good many of my mother’s people here in Franklin, but today I and my children are the only Sloan or Overbay descendants still living in Franklin or even in Johnson County.

The rock and stone would also discuss what the future holds for them. Will they be together 100 years from now as they were a century ago?

This rock could have been on the doorstep of the plantations of either John Shackelford (John and Anne White-Shackelford) or of John Cosby back in Kentucky and no one now living would know, just as my children would not have known its history if I had not placed it in writing.