Kingsport Spirit

The Brainerd Mission is featured on the cover of this month’s Tennessee Historical Quarterly magazine, published by the Tennessee Historical Society. So, how does this relate to Kingsport? Read on.

The article is based on the remembrances of Chattanooga historian Anne Bachman Hyde (1868-1959) as told to her by her father, Jonathan Waverly Bachman. A simple Google search of her name reveals that her correspondence, research material, historical documents and items are located at UT Chattanooga, UNC Chapel Hill, and the Library of Congress.

Jonathan Waverly Bachman was a native of Kingsport/Sullivan County, Tennessee. Before the Civil War, he was a trained minister, attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City alongside his older brother. They were known for their Sunday School and missionary work in “Five Points” (Chinatown). Five Points was a notorious mid-nineteenth century New York City slum. “Located just east of the fashionable stores, columned banks, and well-dressed crowds of Broadway, its squalor served to remind New Yorkers of the destitution that so closely underlay the city’s surging wealth” (Born in Sin, Nurtured in Crime: The Children of New York City’s Notorious Five Points, 1854).

When war broke out, he returned to his native Tennessee and volunteered his services as a soldier. He fought under Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson before being sent west to the besieged city of Vicksburg. He was chaplain for the 60th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. After the war, he pastored the presbyterian church in Rogersville before relocating in 1873 to pastor the First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga.

That was a tumultuous time. “Through the winter of 1865-1866 the Union Army dismantled the forts around Chattanooga. The military bridge that spanned the Tennessee River was turned over to the city. Discharged soldiers from both the north and the south settled in the Chattanooga area and the city began to grow. In April 1866, the last of the Union troops left Chattanooga.” (Chattanooga.gov, Police Department History).

“(Pastor Bachman) advanced to all, no matter the denomination or former view, the idea of harmony among men, faith in God, and a patriotic belief in a reunited country and who became known as the “Pastor of Chattanooga” (Sullivan County, Tennessee Veterans History, Sullivan County Genealogical Society, 2001).

He was called the “first citizen of Chattanooga” by Charles Alexander McMurry in his 1923 book, “Chattanooga: It’s History and Geography” for his work as the city’s chaplain for 50 years including the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878. His home stood at the corner of McCallie Avenue and Houston Street, which is now adjacent to the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His son, Nathan Bachman, became a United States Senator and built his historic home on top of Signal Mountain in the town of Walden. Martha Bachman McCoy, Nathan’s daughter, donated the house and 38 acres to the town, where it continues to be used as a historic site and wedding venue. The “Bachman Tubes” (highway tunnels through Missionary Ridge) are named in his honor.

Clearly, the Bachmans of Sullivan County left their mark on Chattanooga.

“Bachman” is one of the most prominent early names in Kingsport/Sullivan County. They migrated along the familiar route of so many early settlers from Pennsylvania through the valley of Virginia to the headwaters of the Holston River. They built the family home, Roseland near the convergence of Horse Creek and the Holston River just south of the Long Island. In 1990, it was donated and moved to the Exchange Place Living History Farm where today it stands as a centerpiece readily visible from Orebank Road (pictured below).

But there are more Bachmans. In fact, Howard Long dedicated an entire chapter in his book, “Kingsport: A Romance of Industry” (1993), a preview of which is available on Google Books. Of Roseland he said, “Perhaps no other home in the entire South has sent out from its portals a more far-reaching influence for good than this unassuming farmhouse.”

Most Kingsporters probably don’t know it by name, but the Samuel Bachman Cemetery in an island in the middle of Linville Street. The Fairacres neighborhood was originally the homestead farm of Samuel & Sarah Kitzmiller Bachman. Their daughter, Elizabeth Bachman, married Andrew Martin and they built their home on the property in 1884. Today it is known as the Martin-Dobyns House (pictured below) and was later home to Kingsport’s first mayor and one of the namesakes of Dobyns-Bennett High School.

Yet another famous Kingsport home, Rotherwood Mansion, was owned by Joshua Phipps whose third wife was Ann Bachman. She inherited the property upon his death and their heirs sold it in 1906 to George L. Carter, father of the Clinchfield Railroad. Carter’s manager, Jim Dobyns, resided there for ten years before it was sold to John B. Dennis, financier of modern Kingsport. The Dobyns relocated to the Martin-Dobyns house (pictured above) on the ancestral Bachman property on Watauga Street, where he became Kingsport’s first mayor in 1917.

Bachman fingerprints are scattered throughout Kingsport’s history.

To complete the story on the Brainerd Misson, it was considered a ‘foreign mission’ because it served the Cherokee from 1816-1838, teaching fundamental Christian doctrine alongside basic reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and geography.

If you ever wondered how Missionary Ridge, the famous Civil War battle site got its name, now you know–early missionaries crossed the ridge from downtown Chattanooga on their way to the Brainerd Mission.

Why did the mission close in 1838? The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly removed all Native Americans to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears.

“Brainerd” is still a term synonymous with modern Chattanooga as Brainerd Road is the name of the commercial artery connecting the city to southeastern Hamilton County where I-24 & I-75 converge. It begins at the crest of Missionary Ridge where McCallie Avenue (UT Chattanooga) passes the McCallie School, a well know private preparatory boarding school. It then skirts the Tennessee-Georgia border for approximately 18 miles connecting the once prominent Eastgate Mall, the zoo, airport, Hamilton Place Mall, East Hamilton High School, and eventually ends at the Apison community.

And that’s how Jonathan Waverly Bachman, a native of Kingsport/Sullivan County, became Chattanooga’s ‘first citizen’ and raised Anne Bachman Hyde, who dedicated her life to preserving Chattanooga’s past, and Nathan Bachman, who became a United States Senator.