TONY STINNETT, Courier Co-Editor
Tuesday, July 10, 2012 3:26 am

Despite what has been reported in local media, Elizabeth Pease is not on a crusade to have the blasts of a cannon stopped during Cannon County home football games.

Pease, who resides at Beaver Dam Farm, says she was misrepresented at the June Board of Education meeting when lawyers indicated one of the stipulations of purchasing a 6.27-acre lot of land which runs behind the high school football field was to stop the cannon blasts.

The family asks that the cannon be redirected, Pease said.

"My family does not want to eliminate the cannon," Pease said. "We are not opposed to the cannon. All we want is to put the cannon on the softball field and aim it at another piece of land we own there. It boils down to consideration. This is an old house and it can't take the shockwave of the cannon. All I requested was to point it in a different direction."

According to Pease, the blasting of the cannon has resulted in plaster coming off of walls, seperation of the chimney from the house and the loss of a valuable piece of china.

Pease also was displeased the farm was referred to as the Pease Farm during the Board meeting. This misrepresenation ignored history, she said.

Beaver Dam Farm, which should be the reference instead of Pease Farm, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. It is the former 1,000-acre plantation of prominent Tennessee Congressman William Cannon Houston, serving from 1905-to-1919. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1920.

Houston died on his plantation, Beaver Dam, in August, 1931.

"This is a historic landmark in this community and it is one of the few that is on the National Register of Historic Places," Pease said.