Category: History
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Walnut Hill, the most historic home you’ve probably never heard of.
I remember when City Manager Ray Griffin wanted stationary commemorating the three phases of Kingsport history—settlement, the first incorporation (1822), and the second incorporation (1917). That’s right, Kingsport was incorporated twice. The actual port city was incorporated in 1822 but lost its charter after the Civil War. The current city was incorporated in 1917. The…
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Antebellum Ridgefields?
I bet many people don’t associate the name “Ridgefields” with “antebellum”. It’s best known as the Olmsted-designed mid-century golf community. That’s right, Olmsted, the same firm that designed Central Park in NYC, Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and White House, and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, among…
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The little girl of Rotherwood Mansion
Virgelia “Jill” Ellis was a Kingsport treasure. I was blessed to be asked to deliver her eulogy in 2021. She freely shared her life stories of growing up in times that are hard for us to imagine and uncomfortable to discuss. A time of segregation and the struggle for civil rights. She was kind, optimistic,…
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Kingsport: Fiscally conservative since…forever
As a former city manager, I know the pressure to provide the highest possible service at the lowest possible cost. Each year staff and board members agonize to cut corners, stretch dollars, and provide value. If you’ve always lived here (like me), you may not realize just how relatively valuable that fiscal conservatism is to…
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What do Old Hickory, UVA-Wise, and I have in common?
I suppose if you go back far enough, we’re all cousins. But it never ceases to amaze me the nuggets I find on Ancestry.com. Each of us has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, and 32 great-great-great-grandparents, 64 great-great-great-great grandparents, and so on. William Roberson was my 4G grandfather. In 1821 he lived…
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Kingsport’s Covered Bridge.
In 1795 a portion of the Island Road was rerouted to pass through Blountville. The Great Road (Stage Road, Wagon Road) was actually a conglomerate of road systems and side trails, and not just one specific road. Blountville and Boat Yard (later Kingsport) became major stagecoach stops. The Great Road generally followed today’s Netherland Inn…
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Sullivan County, North Carolina
I took a trip down memory lane this weekend to my grandmother’s birthplace, McPheeter’s Bend, just across the Holston River from Church Hill in Hawkins County, Tennessee. We used to call it ‘the country’ when I was growing up, but it’s literally 10 minutes from Allandale Mansion on the western border of Kingsport. I saw…
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“Horse Creek Pike” & “Long Island Drive”
As the modern, model city of Kingsport evolved after 1917, old roads and geographic names were replaced with new ones. My friend Jill Riggs-Rich who lives on ancestral land off Sullivan Gardens Parkway (formerly Horse Creek Pike) shared that her “grandparents would leave Horse Creek in a wagon, travel down to where Riverfront Seafood is…
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The story of “Warpath, Tenn.” & Litz Manor
Kingsport is a tale of two cities — the original riverport incorporated in 1822 and the planned, model city incorporated in 1917. The two did not become one until 1963. The model city limits were originally confined to what is today Eastman Road on the east and Riverside Avenue on the west. The southern limit…
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The time Broad Street shrank.
Yesterday’s post explained the evolution of Sevier Avenue and noted that Broad Street is the break point for east-west demarcation in Kingsport. A current firefighter astutely observed that the streets in Nelsontown along today’s Gibson Mill Road have east-west monikers–Gibson Street, Millpond Street, and Windsor Street–and asked if Broad Street used to extend to Stone…
Kingsport Spirit 