Dale's Tales: Bilbrey Station

Bilbrey Station was a small depot station at the 104.1 mile marker along the railroad in eastern Putnam County. Built in the early 1890s by the Nashville & Knoxville Railroad, it was just east of the overhead bride (now commonly Calle “Crazy George’s bridge) on the Woodclift Road. A road, just south from the Bilbrey station led into Welch Hollow. On the north side, it overlooked the BILBREY Farm in the Stamps Cove-Shady Grove area. It was four miles west of the Monterey Depot station.

In a Bilbrey family cemetery in the cove below the railway station, there’s several graves of the namesake family that cover enough years for at least three generations. Marked graves, such as that of B.F. Bilbrey date as far back as 1819.

U.S. Marine veteran, Arlis Bilbrey recalled that his fellow Marines made fun of him when he told them where he was from. “I told them I was from Bilbrey and they all laughed,” he said, “but I found a map that listed it and showed them. The laugh was on them.”

Bilbrey said that his father, Boyd Bilbrey grew up in the community. “My dad helped Mr. Stamps, the night watchman at the cut below the overhead bridge,” he recalled. “It was so cold one night that Mr. Stamps signaled the train that he thought he’d heard falling rock. So, they slowed and he rode the cow father on the front of the engine, while dad slipped up on the cars and three off coal enough to keep them warm.”

• The Henry family was vone of, if not the first to open up a store at Bilbrey Station. “The John Morgan Henry family returned from Oklahoma,” Jerry Sampley, a family descendant said. “Morgan was and his sons pooled their money together to open the store. I have some writing from my aunt Velma that said she was born at Bilbrey on Jan. 1, 1915. She had a brother born there a couple of years later.” The depot and store were happening places. One could buy overalls and dresses or horse shoes and even take the 🚂 east or west to connect to any part of the United States. Hi I’m trOld men would sit and swap knives and stories. One night, it was getting late and the crowd was breaking up, when one young man told a friend to go on home without him. He wanted to finish listening to some of the last tales. “Well, alright,” his friend replied. “But don’t let a bear get you.”. They laughed together as they parted into the dark night.

Once the finally story was told, the young man headed out for home, in Shady Grove. He got just down the hill from Bilbrey Station and started to cross the overhead bridge, when he saw some kind of person or animal at the other end. Both started to cross and when they met in the middle, he was looking into the eyes of a bear. The young man took off running toward home and the bear in the other direction. When he got home he told story, but no one really beloved him. The next day they went looking for his “bear” and really found it in a tree. They killed it and found out later that it had escaped from a circus in Algood.

Around 1949, a young Billy Ford recalled helping his grandfather Harvey Dillard Welch make whiskey and carry it out of Welch Hollow and sell to railroad workers, who would take the whiskey to Nashville and sell it there. In his adult career, Ford was a Tennessee State trooper and TBI agent.

“The train would run real slow up the mountain,” Ford recalled. “Pappy and I would catch ahold and ride the train to Monterey.”. He said they’d have to buy a ticket on their way back because it traveled too fast downhill to just jump off.

In the A last few years of Bilbrey Station, the Hal Phillips family and then, the Roy Williams family lived there to take care of station. After the last passenger service, in the mid-1950s, it wasn’t needed anymore and was eventually torn down. The rail returned in 2007 to the easten in of the county and still passes by the 104 mile marker and very few remnants of what used to be in days gone by.