Kingsport Spirit

Occasionally as I scan old maps of our area, I stumble across a place name that has been lost to time. Such is the case of “Butterfly, Tenn.” located at the intersection of Reservoir Road and Bays Mountain Park Road.

When post offices first began, there was a need for official place names that could be used to establish delivery routes. The post office names could not be duplicated within the same state. Sometimes the first postmaster used his name or his wife’s. Sometimes they had to resort to a 2nd or 3rd choice because the chosen name was already used. No matter how they named it, it had to be unique–and Butterly certainly fit the bill.

As railroads became prevalent, many of the stops (or stations) followed similar naming rules. The evolution of trains required the evolution of time zones used to standardize arrival and departure times, but that’s a story for another day.

The first reference to Butterly I found was on Ancestry.com among the appointments of U.S. Postmasters (see photo below).

The 1887 “Official Register of the United States” published a list of post offices by county. Other post offices in Sullivan County were Arcadia, Bloomingdale, Blountville, Bluff City, Boring, Bristol, Butterfly (E.P. Easley), Childress, Clover Bottom, Easley (postmaster E.L. Easley), Eden’s Ridge, Edgeworth, Fordtown, Gross, Harbour, Hilton’s, Holston Valley, Horace, Island Mills, Kendrick’s Creek, Kingsport, Lawson, Lelia, Mill Point, Morrell’s Mill, Paperville, Peltier, Piney Flats, Ruthton, Samuel, Slaughter, Sumter, Vance’s Tank, Wahoo, and White’s Store. I recognize some of the names through churches or roads, but others I don’t.

Gross? Boring? Not exactly “Chamber of Commerce”-worthy names.

As an aside, many have remarked about “Boring, Tennessee”, a place name that tags our weather, location, and social media posts near Tri-Cities Airport. That’s the lingering power of the original U.S. Post Office list that got linked to a map and then incorporated into a database that still impacts our lives today.

But some names, like Butterly, Tenn., have vanished altogether.

From the 1887 list of post offices, I noticed that E.P. Easley was the postmaster of Butterfly, Tenn. and E.L. Easley was the postmaster of Easley, Tenn. (yet I find no map that shows where Easley, Tenn. is located). Maybe that’s why Butterly was selected, because Easley was already taken. We’ll probably never know.

The Easley family name is one of the earliest names associated with Sullivan County. In fact, the 13th Civil District was referred to as “Easley’s” district in 1834 (Oliver, Thomas, “Historic Sullivan”, Overmountain Press, p. 96). Today we would commonly call the 13th Civil District Rock Springs. It is actually the wedge of land south of the Holston River bisected by I-26 and excluding Sullivan Gardens and Colonial Heights. Sullivan Heights Middle School and MeadowView Marriott Conference Resort and Convention Center are the largest landmarks.

The first newspaper reference to “Butterfly, Tenn.” that I found was in the Louisville Courier-Journal, which included a list of undeliverable letters. With today’s instant communication, it’s hard to understand that a newspaper (in a distant city) was the best way to share this information.

The next reference was a testimonial published in the Johnson City Comet, January 12, 1899, by J.W. Easley on a remedy for piles (hemorrhoids).

Another newspaper to “Butterfly, Tenn.” was in the Jonesborough Herald & Tribune, November 1, 1899. It was a letter from Missouri City, Texas (near Houston) notifying local readers of the death of Edwin L. Easley, one of their “one of our most respected citizens”. The letter goes on to say he “came to this state five years ago” and “was respected by all who knew him.”

The final newspaper references were in 1912, one from Tampa and one from New South Wales. I have no specific date that the Butterfly post office closed, but it seems to be about the time Kingsport was being planned and incorporated.

Then I hit the jackpot with a detailed description by Muriel Spoden in her American Bicentennial book, “Historic Sites of Sullivan County” (1976) where she included a photo of the E.P. Easley house (at today’s 3501 Reservoir Road pictured below.

Spoden wrote: “The Edmund Pendleton Easley house, located on the banks of Little Horse Creek beside Reservoir Road, stands opposite the entrance to Bays Mountain Park.”

“E.P. Easley (1854-1937) built the house about 1889 and erected his country store in front of the house. The store was also the Butterfly Post Office with E.P. Easley as the postmaster. The store and its owner were important to the economics of this area. The people who lived on Bays Mountain traded at Easley’s Store primarily on the barter system. Furs, chickens, eggs, and the like, and even mountain land were traded for store supplies. E.P. Easley was a descendent of the early pioneer Easley family.”

It is unknown to me how long the post office operated, but today it is served by Kingsport.

If anyone has interesting facts or information on Butterfly or the Easley family, I’d love to hear.