Kingsport Spirit

The Dobyns-Bennett High School Band centennial is best understood as the story of how Kingsport’s school identity moved from scattered rural and county schools to a modern city school system. The band was formed in 1926, the same year Kingsport’s high school moved to Wateree Street, took the name Dobyns-Bennett High School, and began a new public-school chapter. The band was born at that same moment.

The deeper story begins with two Kingsports. The first was Old Kingsport, the river town chartered in 1822 near the Holston River. The second was the planned Model City, incorporated in 1917. They did not become one municipality until 1963, when Old Kingsport was annexed into modern Kingsport. Early references to “Kingsport” schools were not references to the later city school system. 

Old Kingsport was small. Eighty Years of Enlightenment, the retired teachers’ history, notes that Kingsport had a population of 317 in 1833. For scale, by 1870, Sullivan County had 13,136 residents, Hawkins County had 15,837, and Greene County had 24,668. Education in that era was scattered among homes, churches, family schoolhouses, private instruction, and county schools.

The first school with a Kingsport name was “Kingsport Academy.” The earliest teacher reference in the retired teachers’ book appears in 1865. A later newspaper confirms it was built in 1865 and demolished in 1934. This school appears in sources alternatively as Kingsport Academy, Old Kingsport Academy, and sometimes simply Old Kingsport. The location was on Fort Robinson Drive near the baptist church. 

The retired teachers’ book identifies a separate “Kingsport High School” operated by Rev. Alexander Copenhaver around 1876–77. Copenhaver’s work in the area began even earlier. The book says he taught in the cabin at Grass Dale, the historic Groseclose property near today’s Clinchfield Street at West Stone Drive. By the early 1880s, the same source places a Kingsport High School on Reedy Creek, near today’s Cassell Drive at Gibson Mill Road, and notes a medal inscribed “K.H.S., Declamation, 1881.”

Both of these pre-incorporation school references used the Kingsport place name, but they should not be collapsed into one building, one location, or one direct institutional line.

The confusing handoff period appears to be roughly 1910 to 1917. Public records show the older Kingsport High School name still had formal standing: a 1908 charter notice listed Kingsport High School in Sullivan County; a 1910 chancery notice referred to trustees of Kingsport High School and “a large school building and one acre of ground in Kingsport”; a 1914 charter listing again named Kingsport High School; and a 1915 newspaper item reported that “The Kingsport high school begins September 13.” Those records suggest continuity of the older institution, but not a proven legal merger into the later city system.

At almost the same time, the new public-school line was forming around the Model City. In 1910, Kingsport Farms and Kingsport Brick Corporation donated land and money near what became Church Circle, where First Presbyterian Church is located today. A three-room community school opened in 1913. By 1914, Anna Lee Mitchell was principal, and enrollment soon exceeded 200. By 1917, high school classes had moved into the Broad Street Methodist Episcopal Church  because the public school was overcrowded. 

Then came the modern municipal high school. A January 1918 Johnson City newspaper article featured “Kingsport’s New High School,” a modern building costing about $75,000. That building became Kingsport Central, located on Watauga Street at East Sevier Avenue.

In 1926, Kingsport Central moved to the new campus on Wateree Street, now the John Sevier Middle School location, and officially became Dobyns-Bennett High School. That same year, the Dobyns-Bennett High School Band was formed.

Even then, the name transition was gradual. “Kingsport High School” continued to carry meaning for many people long after the official Dobyns-Bennett name was adopted. As late as the 1980s, and possibly later, the school song – played by the school band – still included the line, “Hurrah for dear old Kingsport High School,” before later transitioning to “dear old Dobyns-Bennett.” That memory helps explain the overlap. “Kingsport High School” meant different things at different times: first a pre-1917 county-era institution, then the new city’s high school identity, and later a lingering traditional phrase even after Dobyns-Bennett had become the official and familiar name.

That makes the band’s centennial not just a music anniversary, but a marker of when Kingsport’s modern public-school identity found its song. 

Click the photo below for a video of the live performance.

Source notes: Eighty Years of Enlightenment; The Tennessean, Dec. 13, 1908, and Aug. 12, 1914; The Bristol Evening News, Nov. 11, 1910; The Journal and Tribune, Sept. 13, 1915; The Johnson City Daily Staff, Jan. 12, 1918; Kingsport Times-News, Aug. 3, 1953; Patterson’s/American educational directory references identified by your research.