wickham stone park ... the movie!

enoch tanner wickham portrait

This is a photographic portrait of Enoch Tanner Wickham taken in the late sixties by artist Ned Crouch.


I am a human man moulded of a divine hand, I am. Every wrinkle in me He doth know for He do be with making me so. Solitariness I have known ‘n must admit to it have I been prone. Yet, enjoy I to be on my own creating beings of the world be known. Being of a divine hand I am so, I am. -Richard of Eire

e.t. wickham, chief tecumseh and cd cover art

E.T. Wickham's Tecumseh statue stood over eight feet tall. With a cocked tomahawk and a war bonnet of real turkey feathers, it was quite an imposing sight!



The statue was built on the backside of the cabin (next to the flagpole in the photo below). Since it was hidden from plain view it gave kids quite a scare when they ran around the cabin.



Recently Clothesline Revival used a black and white photo shot in the seventies for the CD cover art of their album "Of My Native Land". The title of the CD is from a chiseled quote on the base of the nearby flagpole from the poem The American Flag by Father Charles Constantine Pise(1801-1866):

THEY SAY I WOULD FORSAKE THE FLAG OF MY NATIVE LAND,
BUT WOE UNTO THE FOE OR STRANGER
WHOSE SACRILEGIOUS HAND WOULD TOUCH THEE
OR ENDANGER FLAG OF MY NATIVE LAND

whimsical man

Lester Solomon was a contemporary of E.T. who shared similar views about preserving the local wooded areas. This statue was one of the last statues built by E.T. and is the leftmost statue in the previous post.

There is a bit of a whimsical quality about the facial expression which is why I labeled it the whimsical man.

cowboys and indians

Maybe Cowboys and Indians is not quite the right label for these statues. True, there are statues of pioneer Daniel Boone and Indian Chiefs Sitting Bull and Piomingo , but the fourth statue is of a contemporary of E. T. Wickham. This was Lester Solomon, a soil conservationist for Montgomery County, and whose work E.T. greatly respected.

Note that these four statues are not on a raised base as were most of the other statues. E.T. was past 85 when he began building this statue and his age was limiting his abilities to create statues on a grander scale.

The dedication ceremony for these statues occurred on July 13, 1969. The honorable Judge William O. Beach presided over the ceremony as each individual statue was in turn unveiled. It was a festive occasion with the Montgomery County Ramblers providing some musical entertainment for the sizable crowd.

Find more information about these statues at my Wickham Stone Park website.

patriotic verse

E.T. Wickham was very patriotic. Many of his statues had patriotic themes. The World War II Memorial, Alvin York and Patrick Henry statues, as well as his flagpoles come to mind.

E.T. had two flagpoles on his property on Buck Smith Road. One was located next to the World War II Memorial and the other was located next to his log cabin. The flagpole by the cabin stood next to the Chief Tecumseh statue . The bottom of this flagpole was encased in concrete and enscribed with the quote you see above from the American Flag poem written by Father Constantine Pise.

curious bird

Perched high atop the flagpole by the cabin is this curious bird. Is it eagle, turkey,goose or some hybrid?
E.T. never said. This unknown bird had large wings cut from tin and attached to its concrete body.

Look back at the previous photo to see the location of the flagpole and bird in reference to the log cabin.

pioneer cabin

After raising a lot of tobacco and nine kids, E.T. and his wife Annie decided in 1952 that it was time to move from the hollow to the ridge. He had hundreds of acres from which to choose a building site but he finally decided on a stretch of land on Buck Smith Road. There was never any thought about hiring contractors to build the cabin. In the pioneering spirit he built the cabin ground-up using rough hewn logs from a barn he helped build when he was only 15.

The cabin was small, measuring only 11 by 27 feet. Its hard to imagine there were three separate rooms in the cabin. It even had a fireplace in one of the rooms. The kitchen had a small concrete sink that was fed by gravity from a roof-mounted tank. It could not have been comfortable but it suited his needs and it was close to where he wanted to build his statues.

liberty bell

Most of the Wickham statues are now in disrepair. Time and vandals work to destroy all. This section of the Liberty Bell remains.

work break

The year is 1963 and E.T. is shown taking a break from building this statue to honor local and national politicians he admired. One of the politicians is President John F. Kennedy who was assassinated that year. Estes Kefauver, senator from Tennessee, and Patrick Henry,the patriot, were other political figures he admired. Robert Kennedy was added six years later in 1969.

politicians

The four figures represented in this statue are Estes Kefauver, Patrick Henry, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. When the statue was dedicated in 1963 it only had three figures. The fourth figure of Robert Kennedy was added in later. This photo is a rare one actually showing Robert Kennedy. In front of the podium is a concrete sculpture of the cracked Liberty Bell.

chicken wire, rebar, and concrete

E.T. Wickham is shown here sculpting the Sam Davis and Bill Marsh statue. He was 82 when he began work on this statue in 1965 and it took him about six weeks to complete it.

All the life-size concrete statues were built with the simplest of materials. He would use rebar or steel pipe as the base. Then he would fashion chicken wire around the metal to form the body and limbs. Finally cement was applied and formed using a trowel to create the statue.

More information about the handshake statue is available from Wickham Stone Park Davis-Marsh

handshake

This statue shows Civil War hero Sam Davis and bearded Bill Marsh shaking hands near the end of the war. Sam Davis is known as the boy hero of the Confederacy because he was only 21 when hanged for espionage by the Union Army.

Get souvenirs of this statue from the online Wickham Stone Park Gift Shop.

folk art world

Wickham Stone Park (circa 1969) is a collection of folk art, consisting of over 30 life-size concrete statues of political figures,Indian chiefs, politicians,patriots and religious figures. The park is the lifetime creation of Tennessee folk artist Enoch Tanner(E.T.) Wickham (1883-1970).

More information about the folk art of E.T. Wickham is available at Wickham Stone Park.


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