You might not be quick to assume Knoxville has a dog in the Philadelphia vs. Boston fight. But if Super Bowl 52 had happened a couple of centuries ago—back when the main sports were horse racing and cockfighting–there might have been partisans on Gay Street, important Knoxvillians who had lived in either city, and perhaps still felt some loyalty to his or her favorite east coast metropolis.
Several of Knoxville’s earliest settlers were from the greater Philadelphia area, or within a day’s ride of it.
Samuel Carrick (1760-1809), who founded both our first church (First Presbyterian) and the college that evolved into the University of Tennessee, is believed to have been born in York County, Pa. Francis Alexander Ramsey (1764-1820), an important early settler, patriarch of an influential family, and builder of Ramsey House, was born and raised in Adams County. Both Carrick and Ramsey’s homes are less than 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
Charles McClung (1761-1835), the patriarch of one of the most powerful families in Knoxville history, for whom many things are named, was from Lancaster, Pa., a little closer to Philadelphia. In fact, we know that he lived and worked in Philadelphia for a time, and probably passed Ben Franklin in the street more than once before coming south at age 27. He famously laid out downtown Knoxville’s streets, choosing their names, several of them—Walnut, Church, Locust–were inspired by names of famous streets in Philadelphia.
And then there’s William Blount, of course, who was from the salty part of North Carolina, but spent a lot of time in Philadelphia—particularly when he was considering an unusual document called the U.S. Constitution, which he eventually signed.
So several of Knoxville’s founders knew Philadelphia pretty well. Some of them were literally Patriots, veterans of the Revolutionary War. Would they have rooted for the Eagles? I wouldn’t want to try to disprove it.
However, though probably fewer in those early days, there were some Bostonians here, too. One was George Roulstone (1767-1804), who had even started a newspaper in the Boston suburbs of Salem and Essex. Fortunately for us it didn’t work out, leaving him no choice but to move south and found Tennessee’s first newspaper, the Knoxville Gazette. He gave a bit of a Boston accent to this frontier capital.
In years to come, Knoxville’s Massachusetts contingent only grew. Merchant Perez Dickinson (1813-1901), from whom we get the name Island Home—it was his personal cross-river retreat—was from Massachusetts–as was Charles Coffin (1775-1853) who was president of our university when it established its current campus on the Hill, and Joseph Estabrook (1792-1855), who had helped found Amherst College before he came south to become an important in UT history (his namesake building on the side of the Hill is soon to be demolished).
Horace Maynard (1814-1882), one of the founders of the Republican Party in Tennessee. A popular politician first as a Whig, Congressman Maynard was the guy who started the still-unbroken chain of Republicans representing Knoxville’s Second District in Washington, and did so even when his home state was calling itself Confederate. He grew up in Westboro, about a day’s walk from Boston.
Believe it or not, the guy who founded Knoxville’s first Baptist church, James C. Moses (1818-1870), was a former Bostonian. He his brother, John, had a great deal of influence on lots of things here, including the planning of Market Square.
So like it or not, Knoxville owes both its Republican Party and its Baptist Church, in part at least, to Bostonians. If you’re rooting for the Patriots, think of them.
Whether you’re eating baked beans or cheese steak this Sunday, you’ve got some company in Knoxville history. Taken all together, there are probably enough prominent early Knoxvillians from both Boston and Philadelphia to make a football team of each, though some of them had physical issues; Estabrook, for Boston, had asthma, or something like it. Carrick, for Philadelphia, was fat. I’m not ready to lay odds on which would be the favorite.
Leave a reply