Bob Reich <<robert.reich>>
writes

Recently, my son, Will and I visited the Huffaker home and ferry
station in East TN. The home was built in 1832 and was occupied until very
recently. The home is now abandoned, but the owners granted unfettered access to
us. The original log cabin site is long gone and lost. This home had
outbuildings and slave quarters, but there is some question about the “slave
quarters" as slaves were not common in East TN. Indentured servants, however
were. We were searching for artifacts.

The home is the site of a 1790's ferry across the French Broad River at Seven
Islands. It was frequented by Indians and whites alike. The pilings are still
there. Original notes and papers of Edward Huffaker were discovered in the barn
in the eighties. It since has been scoured.

Edward Chalmers Huffaker Papers

Aviation pioneer Edward Chalmers Huffaker (1856-1937), born in Sevier County,
Tennessee, worked with Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk in 1901.

He earned degrees from Emory and Henry College and the University of Virginia.
In 1893, E.C. Huffaker submitted his paper entitled The Value of Curved Surfaces
in Flight, based upon his new theory of lift resulting from observations of
soaring birds, to the Congress on Aerial Navigation. Two years later, in May of
1895,the Wright brothers wrote the Smithsonian Institution requesting
publications on flight. Edward C. Huffaker's paper and his application of
Bernoulli's principle to the generation of lift as air flows over curved
surfaces were among those they received. Huffaker built successful and
unsuccessful early gliders with Chanute. He also worked with Langley and the
Wright Bros. He is credited with determining the lift characteristics of foiled
wings when flat plate wings were the primary focus of the day. The genius of
Edward Chalmers Huffaker significantly connected this special Tennessean with
the Wright brothers' historical first powered flight. Aviation changed the world
forever and E.C. Huffaker earned a place in the history of early flight.

Edward Chalmers Huffaker was enshrined at the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame on
November 8, 2003.

To learn more about Huffaker’s contributions to powered and unpowered flight
visit page 188 + on-line and in the book

A history of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines By John David
Anderson