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The Nicholas Gibbs House, 1793

Have you ever been driving around your town and caught a glimpse of an older-looking home or building out of the corner of your eye? Have you ever stopped to wonder when it was built, and by whom, and wonder about the stories behind it? I wasn't born or raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, but parts of my family have lived in the area for the better part of two centuries. I went to college in Knoxville and I live here now. And I do find myself wondering about the oldest and most historic places I see around here. Which ones are the oldest? How many are left? Where are they? Who built them? How did they manage to survive this long, while many others are long gone? How much longer will they last in a fast-growing city, where the new replaces the old every day? Why can't I find the answers to my questions all in one place? Did I just miss my exit while I was daydreaming?

This website is my attempt to address the second-to-last question. It has photos and information about the oldest surviving homes, buildings, cemeteries and all kinds of other human-made things in the Knoxville and Knox County area, as well as the surrounding counties. I am trying to go out and physically visit each location and take my own pictures. I'm also trying to find the most accurate, authoritative background information on these places that I can get to accompany the photos. This information will come from online resources, books, maps, libraries like the Knox County Library's McClung Collection, and hopefully from people much smarter about this stuff than I am.

It's fun, but it's time-consuming, and there are quite a few locations I haven't made it out to yet. (For those, I'm going to steal images from Google Maps' Street View feature where possible, and use them until I have pictures of my own.) So if you're wondering why I haven't included a particular location, or don't have pictures of it, it may be because I didn't know about it, or haven't had an opportunity to visit it yet, or haven't found good, authoritative information about it yet.

I have set a couple of rules for inclusion on the site:

1- Whatever it is, it has to still exist. In other words, you could go there and still physically see at least some remnant of the original house, cemetery, or whatever it is. If it's gone, it's gone. Restorations and renovations, yes, but no replicas or recreations. (Of course, I'm planning to add a section to the website that breaks my #1 rule; just because I can. See item #6 below...)

2- For now, I'm only including locations that date back to 1865 or earlier. I want to make sure that I include all the oldest locations that I can before focusing on anything newer. I think the oldest places deserve the most attention. They will likely need that attention in the coming years, to help ensure their preservation. Also, setting a cutoff date will help keep this project focused and well-defined. After I run out of antebellum locations to include, I'll probably start adding post-1865 locations. And why 1865? Well, in addition to being able to use the word antebellum, anything that is still around from 1865 or before survived the US Civil War era, and a lot of places did not.

These are my rules. They are arbitrary, but hey, it's my website.

There are three ways to view the locations that are included on this site, and they are all included in the sidebar on the left:

1- Find it by date- click on a decade to find a list of locations that were constructed during that decade.

2- Find it on a map- the Overview Map is covered with pins to mark historic places. Click on a pin to go to the webpage for that location.

3- Find it by name- Alphabetical Index of locations.

I am also in the process of adding in three more areas to the site:

4- People- pages about the people who have lived in this area over the centuries, and how they are connected to the historic locations on this site.

5- Events- pages about important (and some not-so-important) historic events in the area, and how they are also connected to the historic locations on this site.

6- Places that are now gone- Local historic locations that, unfortunately, no longer exist.

There isn't much information in these last three areas yet, but I will be adding info as I get it. Stay tuned!

If you like, you can drop me a line at boglekevin@gmail.com.