Actor and comedian Johnny Knoxville is from the city. And as they say, the rest is history. Dolly Parton and the Everly Brothers also started their careers from this place. In place of the Open-air Marketplace, there once stood a large building called the Market House. Two lots were set aside for a church and cemetery First Presbyterian Church , and four were reserved for Blount College, the town's first school.
In Governor Blount built his residence, an early frame house west of the mountains, which also served as the territory's capitol. In the town and a U. Army fort near the present corner of Gay and Main streets came under attack by Creeks and Cherokees and would have been overrun if the assailants had pressed their advantage.
After killing thirteen settlers at Alexander Cavet's fortified house, the attackers retreated without making a determined assault on Knoxville. From its founding until the Civil War, Knoxville, an alternately quiet and rowdy river town, served primarily as a way station for travelers to the West. Population grew slowly, especially after , when the state's capital moved permanently to Middle Tennessee. From a population of only in , Knoxville had grown to 2, by and to around 5, by The rapid growth in the s probably reflected the arrival of the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in , an event that promised to make Knoxville a railroad and commercial center.
The railroad also made Knoxville an important strategic center during the Civil War. With economic ties to the South Charleston and Savannah , the majority of Knoxvillians voted to secede from the Union in the June referendum, putting the city's population at odds with most East Tennessee Unionists, especially the fiery editor of Brownlow's Whig, William G. The importance of the railroad in supplying General Robert E.
When East Tennessee Unionists responded by burning railroad bridges and harassing Zollicoffer's troops, the initially lenient commander undertook a campaign of persecution and repression that filled the jail and sent numerous Union supporters fleeing to safety.
When Confederate troops fell back to northern Georgia in the fall of , Union soldiers under General Ambrose Burnside rushed in to take Knoxville and cut the Confederacy's important railroad lifeline. Fearing a rebel counterattack, Burnside rapidly built a series of forts around the town. In need of supplies and to protect against a Federal invasion of southwest Virginia, General Robert E.
Lee detached two divisions of the Army of Northern Virginia under General James Longstreet to recapture Knoxville and reopen his supply lines. Longstreet took up his position northwest of the town ironically, on the present campus of Knoxville College and laid siege to the city. Longstreet believed he could not wait until Burnside was starved into surrender, and on November 29, launched an ill-conceived attack on Fort Sanders, an earthen fort named in honor of General William Sanders, a Union cavalry officer who had been killed by a sharpshooter west of the town on Kingston Pike while the Federal troops fought a delaying action against Longstreet's advance.
The battle of Knoxville lasted under thirty minutes, as Confederate troops found it impossible to surmount the icy and slippery earthenworks and withdrew with casualties. For the rest of the war, Knoxville remained firmly in Union hands.
However, he was not the first Knoxvillian who'd written a genealogical saga about the African American experience in the South before the Civil War. That honor belongs to educator Charles W. Cansler, who wrote a book called Three Generations, published in One of Knoxville's first sports was bowling. Peter R. Knott's Bowling Saloon was familiar on Market Square in the s. Relive history and have fun Bowling again in downtown Knoxville at the extremely popular Maple Hall Bowling.
The big black cannons on the courthouse lawn are made of fiberglass! The originals, Spanish cannons believed to be a gift of Admiral Dewey after the Spanish-American War, defended the courthouse for about 40 years, but were donated to a World War II scrap drive. Learn more about Knoxville's history and heritage , and celebrate Knoxville's th anniversary!
Believe it Jackson Avenue Jackson Avenue, famous for its Victorian buildings and worn remnants of brick pavement, is one of the newest streets in downtown Knoxville.
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