Kingsport Spirit

Today we think of Kingsport as the Model City incorporated in 1917. But there was a previous town incorporated in 1822 that we often overlook in history. It’s interesting to see newspaper articles published two generations before Northern industrialists arrived on the scene to build the city we know today.

The time period was 1876–slightly more than a decade after the Civil War. By this time, Bristol and Johnson City were competing to become the dominant railroad centers for the region and the old boatyard at Kingsport was no longer a necessity for shipping products down river.

Note the agricultural tone of the article. Mention is made of a “drayer’s stand” (a waystation that supports long distance livestock drives to the eastern markets in Richmond and Baltimore along ancient paths). “Kingsport is in the very center of the largest grain growing portion of this and Hawkins County.” There is also mention of two visits by steamboats, but with the advent of railroads faded into obscurity. A railroad wouldn’t come to Kingsport until the early 1900s.

Transcribed by AI from the 1876 Knoxville Weekly Chronicle:

Letter from Sullivan County.

BLOUNTVILLE, TENN., January 29ᵗʰ, 1876.

To the Editors of the Chronicle:

As I am just from a trip to Kingsport, the lower end of the county, I will give the Chronicle readers my observations, and the news I gathered. Going by way of Arcadia, I stopped there for the night, and learned of Mr. H. C. Hicks, who keeps a drayer’s stand, that within the past sixty days upwards of sixteen hundred mules and horses had passed that road, the Reedy Creek road leading from Cumberland Gap, thence to Abingdon, Virginia, on their way south, and that he had fed at his stand over twelve hundred. I also learned from the same gentleman that a considerable number of fat cattle had been driven over that road for the Richmond and Baltimore cattle market. I saw a handsome lot of Hawkins County fed beeves that the Eastern markets—indeed, the same that a correspondent of the Morristown Gazette spoke about being weighed and swum across the river at Kingsport. By the way, the writer remarks, in regard to the bridge across the river at that point, I hope it will awake up the people of Hawkins and Sullivan to the great want and importance of the connecting link between the two counties; and it was only a short time before reading the article by the “Gazette” correspondent that J. W. Ketter, Esq., one of Sullivan’s staunchest justices, informed me that if Hawkins County would build her part of the bridge, Sullivan would be certain to meet her promptly with the other portion. I am just in a situation to appreciate the necessity of a safe passage over that rapid little river, for I was forced to abandon a trip to Rogersville after traveling nineteen miles over bad, muddy roads, on account of it being too deep to ford and no other means of getting across afforded.

The merchants and large grain-grocers of Kingsport and vicinity have been for some time thinking of trying to get the “Harry Heim” to come up on the first good tide, after they could get their grain ready—which could soon be done—and take it off a load; and, if successful, to employ it at all times when there was water sufficient. Now that the irrepressible Spurgin has gotten hold of that popular little steamer, I am pretty sure they will try to carry out their thoughts—especially if the Commodore will undertake it, for he knows he will succeed, since the river from Kingsport to Knoxville lies almost as well as the path to his oldest sweetheart’s home, and he ought to know that well, for he has been traveling it a mighty long time. Many years ago the steamboat “Mary McKinney” made several trips to Kingsport, and one or two other steamers of smaller size have been there; and one large boat—the “Ellen White”—came at one time right within a few miles of the place. Kingsport is in the very center of the largest grain-growing portion of this and Hawkins County, and it now has within the town proper and immediate vicinity four stores, two splendid grist and saw mills, and one woolen factory. If the “Harry Heim” could be induced to visit it only four or five times even annually, it would give new life—although one of its good old citizens used to remark that “Kingsport could say more than almost any other town, and that was, ‘that it was finished.’” For years it did sleep very gently; it was even dead, and made a nice, quiet corpse; but it is waking up and coming to life. It has an excellent school under the training and tutelage of Prof. L. H. Copeland, a very prince of gentlemen and teachers, and it is building, and already has the wall up, for the accommodation of its growing school—a large two-story brick building.

In another and very important matter, Kingsport is greatly helped and blessed; namely, the two churches there—the Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal—are filled with pastors, the noblest of their kind: Mr. Willoughby, of the Presbyterian Church, and Mr. Henegar, of the M. E. Church. They are both young men of unquestioned piety and devotion, of cultured talent, and of a high order of intellect.

Kingsport and Arcadia keep up—Arcadia very aggressively—Temperance Divisions, the only ones in the county. Arcadia now has a daily mail from Bristol, and Kingsport wants to have a route established to Arcadia so that it can have a daily mail too. The people of Blountville and Arcadia are perfectly delighted with their present mail facilities. They have never been so perfect and so satisfactorily carried since they had a mail. Some months since a gentleman in the vicinity of Arcadia started, by registered letter, a hundred-dollar bill to a gentleman in Illinois, and when the letter reached its destination it was a ten-dollar bill only. The matter was placed in the hands of Col. J. B. Minnis of the Special Detective Department, and a very short time since he informed the gentleman mailing the hundred-dollar bill that he had caught the thief and had his money; and the gentleman in Illinois has been made glad, no doubt, by receiving it.

The people in the country cry “hard times,” and there has never been such a demand for cattle, hogs, sheep, and even horses of good quality. On every road I traveled, I met men with whip in hand, trying to buy pigs, calves, and sheep, and still they say there is no money; and the trouble is there is nothing to sell—there is more money than stock. Blountville has two flourishing schools, the best for many years. The county jail has been longer without occupants than it has since the war, I believe. There is less litigation than at any period since our late “domestic troubles,” less crime, and our people free from any prevailing sickness; the weather is lovely, and “the goose hangs atitudium.”

We do most sincerely trust that in our coming Republican Conventions, the old frauds and dead-beats that have so long been eyesores in our party organizations—and that have characterized the leadership in many of our county organizations—will be driven from; for they have kept their places only by sheer impudence, being utterly destitute of principle or ability, and under the pretense of the good of the order let the old warts be cut off—they have disgraced us long enough and we want them cast off without mercy now and forevermore.

HENRY.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-weekly-chronicle-1876-knoxville-we/173796716