During a five-week period in late 1861, five pro-Union men from the Pottertown community were hanged by Confederate authorities in retaliation for the destruction of the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad bridge over Lick Creek, approximately three miles southwest. Henry Fry and Jacob M. Hinshaw were hanged at Greeneville. Jacob and Henry Harmon, father and son, and C.A. Haun died on the gallows at Knoxville.