Despite this revitalization, the city is staying true to its historic roots.Just up one of the many Knoxville hills lies a reminder of Knoxville before the skyscrapers, the football stadium and the underground music.
A man named James White once served in the Revolutionary War. For his service, the government granted him several land properties. In 1783, the man from just north of Charlotte in Iredell County headed westward to Tennessee to pick up his grants. By 1800, he had about 125,000 acres of land in the Knoxville area and in parts of West Tennessee.
On one of his plots of land in the Fall of 1785, White, his two oldest sons and a couple family servants came to one area in Knoxville to build a simple two-story log cabin. He went on to plant the first crops, turnips, in order to have a form of sustenance during the cold winter. When the rest of his family moved to Knoxville, White added on to the property, building to accommodate for seven children, two adults and a number of servants.
In 1796, Tennessee became the sixteenth state in the United States and Knoxville became the first state capital. Governor William Blount had asked White if he wanted to give up some of his land to make a new capital city in the Territory South of the River Ohio. This was the beginning of Knoxville and today, the site where White built his house is now James White's Fort and has been a chance for visitors to experience early Knoxville history since 1970.
White didn't stay on this property very long, leaving the growing city in 1793 to live on a more secluded plantation until he died. His property, however, remains as a symbol of what Knoxville once was back in colonial times. The fort is quaint, small in size, but big in terms of historic artifacts and serves as a chance to contemplate what life would have been like in the late 1700's.
The main house and the kitchen are original structures, with the exception of the doors, windows and roofs. The other buildings are restorations of what was originally there.
Inside each of the buildings, visitors will find many artifacts, or replicas in some cases, common to the home during that time and pamphlets of information are given to every visitor explaining each room and each building in careful detail.
The bedroom took up the entire second floor and could fit as many as 25 people in the multiple beds. The beds were placed on rope framings, sparking the phrase "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite." Bedbugs were a commonality in this time period and would frequently make a home among the old straw or corn husk mattresses.The kitchen was separately built from the main house, with the intention of preventing a catastrophe in case the kitchen the caught fire. Families tended to rise and get out of bed at around 4:00 in the morning and breakfast would be served an hour later. Dinner, what we call lunch today, would be served around 12:30, and an evening meal (our dinner) would be served around 5:30. Waking up early coincides with going to bed early, with bedtimes occurring at 6 p.m. for the children, 7:30 p.m. for the men and between 8 and 9 for the women.
The kitchen was considered the slave's area and was rarely used as an eating area for the family. The slaves even had their own beds in the corner of the kitchen. Through documentation, it is known that the family had a slave cook named Sally, who was the only slave to not be freed when White died. She eventually was freed in MIssouri by White's daughter, Cynthia.
Also included in the property is the family's well and smokehouse, which proved essential for watering the livestock and for providing pig roasts and other meats for the family. All parts of the animal were used by the family, similar to the buffalo out in the Great Plains. The blood was used for blood pudding and sausage. The head was boiled down for making souse or head cheese. The entails were used for food storage and even for children's toys. Even the bones were used, making great fertilizers when grounded up.
The final house in the loop of note is the weaving house where, as the name suggests, was used for making cloths and other linens. In an era where stores were not of great intake, making homemade thread for clothes, linens and bedding was essential for everyday life. For one garment, it took about three months from the moment the sheep was sheared to the time the finished product was complete. At one time, it was common for an average East Tennessee man to own just three sets of clothes.
It may be small, but James White's Fort is a great destination to step back in time a bit and get a taste for how colonial life in Knoxville occurred. The fort is one of several attractions in the greater metro area that strives to produce a closer look into the history of Knoxville before the days of Fulmer, Manning and Summitt, adding another dimension to the already mulit-dimensional city by the Smoky Mountains.
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