The weather’s unpredictable and often unpleasant, and festival season hasn’t started yet. History offers several things to celebrate:
Feb. 5 is the day Knoxville kicks off its 225th Anniversary series of events. It’s also the 267th birthday of Col. David Henley, the U.S. War Department agent for whom Henley Street and Bridge are named. In 1797, he played a key role in investigating former Gov. William Blount for a bizarre treasonous conspiracy to make the Louisiana Territory a British colony.
Feb. 6 is the 220th anniversary of one of the most significant things ever accomplished in Knoxville, the completion of the original Tennessee Constitution. It was signed by 55 delegates from across the Southwestern Territory, among them Andrew Jackson, James Robertson, and W.C.C. Claiborne, and about nine others who have counties named for them–in Knoxville’s most capacious office, that of David Henley, at the southwest corner of Gay and Church.
Ask your favorite Vol fan if they know the importance of Feb. 17–and give them a hard time if they don’t. It’s the 124th birthday of Gen. Robert Neyland (1892-1962), the Texas-born, West Point-trained coach who brought a mediocre regional college football team to national prominence, including at least one national championship (depending on whose polls you follow) and two Rose Bowls. Though he’s the subject of a large statue at the stadium named for him, he’s buried under a simple soldier’s stone at National Cemetery on Tyson Street.
Feb. 21 is the 141st birthday of newspaperman Alfred Sanford (1875-1946), who hired the famous Olmsted Brothers to design what was known as the Sanford Arboretum, for 20 years a wonder to behold along the river near the intersection of Kingston Pike and Cherokee Boulevard. It contained an example of every known tree and shrub indigenous to Tennessee. Unfortunately, it did not long survive his death, and was subdivided into residential lots.
Feb. 22 is the 189th birthday of Peter Staub (1827-1904), the Swiss immigrant who established Staub’s Opera House, the city’s first big auditorium, in 1872. Later U.S. consul to Switzerland, Staub was twice elected mayor of Knoxville. He was killed in a horse-cart accident in 1904; Staub’s Opera House, later known as the Lyric Theatre, was demolished in 1956 for a department-store project that was never built. Serving only as a parking lot for about 20 years, it eventually became the site of Plaza Tower.
Feb. 25 is the 203rd birthday of Perez Dickinson (1813-1901). Born in Amherst, Mass., Dickinson had a younger cousin named Emily who wrote poetry, but he was best known here as a prosperous “merchant prince.” His Island Home, the getaway built for his bride who died before she ever saw it, still stands on the campus of the Tennessee School for the Deaf, and inspired the name of the adjacent neighborhood. The nearby island, now the site of an airport, is known as Dickinson Island.
All of February is Black History Month, but Feb. 26 is the 120th birthday of Ida Cox (1896-1967), who was one of the great jazz and blues singers of the 1920s and ‘30s. Born in tiny Toccoa, Ga., Cox was different from her contemporary rivals in that she wrote most of her own songs, like “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues.” She performed in Knoxville only occasionally, but moved here after a stroke in the late 1940s to live with her daughter, and spent the last 20 years of her live singing in the choir of the Patton Street Church of God. While she lived here, she flew to New York to record her only album, Blues for Rampart Street, with the Coleman Hawkins Quintet. She died of cancer in 1967 at Baptist Hospital.
Few people are born on Feb. 29, the date that comes around only every four years, but it’s the shared birthday of two both associated with Gay Street. Gioacchino Rossini, who never came to America but who is celebrated each spring with the Knoxville Opera’s Rossini Festival, turns 224 that day. It’s also the 180th birthday of Thomas O’Conner, the prosperous banker, president of Mechanics Bank & Trust, who shot erratic businessman/philanthropist Joseph Mabry to death on Gay Street in 1882, and then died in a shootout with Joseph Mabry Jr. Today, the Rossini Festival covers the area where all three men died within moments of each other.
Featured Photo:
Jazz and blues singer and songwriter Ida Cox (1896-1967) only occasionally performed in Knoxville during her prime, but she spent her later years here, living near Five Points, during which she recorded her only album. She’s buried at New Gray Cemetery on Western Avenue.
Photo courtesy of Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound.
Jack Neely is the director of the Knoxville History Project, a nonprofit devoted to exploring, disseminating, and celebrating Knoxville's cultural heritage. He’s also one of the most popular and influential writers in the area, known for his books and columns. The Scruffy Citizen surveys the city of Knoxville's life and culture in the context of its history, with emphasis on what makes it unique and how its past continues to affect and inform its future.
Share this Post