In 1926, a one hundred-year-old Indian woman fantastically emerged from the woods at the Masters School, a school for underprivileged children near what is now Desoto State Park on Lookout Mountain in northeast Alabama. Her name was Nancy Emmaline Callahan Dollar.
Recently widowed, she found herself homeless and in need for the first time in her life. A rugged and stout Cherokee standing six feet tall with a pipe clenched in her teeth and followed by a mongrel dog and six chickens, she was a sight for the kids to behold. They were mesmerized by her and immediately put her up in one of the empty cabins on the campus grounds and tended to her every need. When the owner of the school, Colonel Milford W. Howard, returned from California to find the old Indian woman there, he too soon fell under her spell.
Granny Dollar, a term of endearment since she never had children, became a local legend and the favorite subject of journalists and writers for years to come. Most of the stories she told were the stuff of legends, like hiding out during the forced relocation of the Cherokee Indians, bitten by poisonous snakes three times, and losing almost everything in the War Between the States. Other stories surrounding her might have been exaggerated, but one thing is certain, everyone who met her knew right away she was a walking monument of life and history.