Category: History
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Butterfly, Tenn.
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…
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Kingsport in the 1890s, the Bridge Between the Boat Yard and the Model City: The E.C. Barnes Story
Many know Kingsport as the “Model City” incorporated in 1917, but it didn’t happen from a blank slate with a big bang. Before the planned city, there was a thriving riverport community. King’s Port (or Boat Yard) was settled in 1761, incorporated in 1822, and faded after the Civil War as railroads replaced boats as…
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Cornerstone of a Community: The Stone Family Story
Tom Parham was recently inducted into the Dobyns-Bennett High School Alumni Hall of Fame. These are Jeff Fleming’s remarks upon his induction. I want to tell you a story with all the triumphs, tragedies, and unexpected twists of a bestseller. But this isn’t fiction—it’s the story of the Stone family, a family whose history is…
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Kingsport’s Bain vs. Batman’s Bane
If you know anything about Batman, you know that Bane is a villain. But Kingsport’s Bain is one of the good guys. I’m always fascinated to learn the names of the people who built this town from scratch, names that were otherwise unfamiliar to me and perhaps lost to time. They may not have been…
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Ross N. Robinson
Generations of Kingsport eastside students have grown up singing, “Let’s give a cheer to RNR, to the colors white and blue”. As a John Sevier alumnus, RNR’s archrival, I never gave much thought to the man behind the school’s name. In my formative years, RNR might as well have been in a neighboring city. The…
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The Little Girl of Rotherwood Mansion
Virgealia “Jill” Denny Looney Ellis was a leap year baby in 1928. Since 2024 is a leap year, I wanted to honor her. Mrs. Ellis was the counselor for generations of students at both Douglass High School (before integration) and Dobyns-Bennett High School (after integration), including me. She made a lasting impression, and I was…
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The Bachman Legacy: How a Kingsport son became Chattanooga’s ‘First Citizen’
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…
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Catalyzing Kingsport: Strategic Responses to Demographic Shifts
Reflecting on the past year prompts us to delve into the underlying rationale behind the inception of the Move To Kingsport program, which began 24 years ago, predating the seismic shifts caused by the pandemic-driven “Great Relocation”. It was a proactive response by community leaders who foresaw our region grappling with a recurring issue seen…
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Rivers of Legacy: Tracing Tennessee’s Origins from Kingsport to Nashville
Recently, my son was traveling from Kingsport to Nashville for a business trip. To break up the monotony from time-to-time, he would call and say, “I just pulled off at this exit, tell me about <insert city name>.” In this case, it was Carthage, Tennessee. I explained that Carthage was located on the Cumberland River…
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When Ridgefields & Fort Robinson were county neighborhoods
There’s an old adage about each generation carrying the baton for one leg of the race before handing off to the next generation to carry it for the next leg. And once we do, future generations may not remember how hard it was to move the needle in a positive direction. It’s human nature to…
Kingsport Spirit 