Family Researching in Greene County TN (2024)

BAILEYTON AND OAKLAND SEMINARY
Baileyton
Originally settled around 1780 and known as Laurel Gap, this small community was renamed Baileyton in 1892 and incorporated in 1915. This busy crossroads village had many general stores, smith shops, drug stands, saw and planing mills, saddle and harness shops, a flouring mill, tannery, shoe and boot factory, creamery, Masonic lodge, silent movie theatre and circus grounds. The first institution of higher learning in northern Greene County, Oakland Seminary, was chartered here in 1883.
Oakland Seminary
The seminary consisted of a two-story schoolhouse, dormitories, and a 1500-seat auditorium. Affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, It was an “Inter-denominational, non-partisan, co-educational academy”. To comply with County High School Law, the seminary consolidated with the County High School Board about 1913. Baileyton High School took over the property about 1917, utilizing the old grounds and buildings before a new high school was built on this site between 1938 and 1940.
Horton Hwy

HISTORICAL ROARING SPRINGS
Refreshed the Indians….... Sustained the early settlers it attracted….. Powered a 19th century grist mill until 1941….. Tennessee homecoming 1986
Roaring Springs Road

TENNESSEE CIVIL WAR TRAILS
Tennessee Civil War Trails tells riveting stories of battles and leaders, and much more. You'll learn about some of the state's 275,000 enslaved men and women who self-emancipated, and the 20,000 self-liberated warriors who fought for freedom in the U.S. Colored Troops.
Your explorations will take you to houses and mills that played a role in the war, and small towns and farms where families found themselves swept up in the conflict. Some communities found themselves divided over secession and slavery, causing a "war within a war" that left deep, lingering scars. Though the state seceded and supplied 120,000 soldiers to Confederate armies, United States sentiment was also strong here, particularly in the eastern part of the state. 31,000 white Tennesseans fought for the Union, more than any other Confederate state. And more battles were fought in Tennessee than any other state except Virginia.
Interstate 81 North Rest Area

EBENEZER
1½ miles south, an early Methodist society in Tennessee was organized in 1790. The family of Henry Earnest, who settled here in 1779, comprised four fifths of the membership. The annual convention of the Western Conference was held here in 1795. Stone Dam Campground was nearby.
Intersection of Chuckney Pike and Chuckney Hwy

EDWARD CHALMERS HUFFAKER
July 16, 1856 - January 3, 1936
Born near Sevierville, Tennessee, Edward C. Huffaker earned degrees in mathematics and engineering. Between 1890 and 1892, while experimenting with gliders, he discovered the principle by which a curved wing surface generates lift. His work formed the foundation of modern aeronautics. Huffaker worked with Dr. Samuel Langley at the Smithsonian, the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, and Octave Chanute here in Chuckey.
Intersection of Chuckney Pike and Chuckney Hwy

"I HAVE WRESTLED WITH POVERTY"
Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 to poor, uneducated parents in a small building that served as a kitchen to Casso's Inn in Raleigh, North Carolina. When Andrew was three, his father died after saving two of his wealthy employers from drowning in an icy pond. A few years later, Johnson's destitute mother apprenticed Andrew and his brother to a local tailor. At age 15, Johnson and his brother got into a legal dispute with the tailor and ran away. Two years later, Johnson returned to Raleigh to try to settle the dispute. Then he led his mother and stepfather over the Appalachians here to Greeneville. From his humble beginnings, Johnson started on the road to independence and, eventually, the presidency of the United States.
"Yes I have wrestled with poverty, the gaunt and haggard monster; I have met in the day and night; I have felt its withering approach and its blighting influence..."
Andrew Johnson 1862
East Depot Street

A PROFILE IN COURAGE
Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, on the eve of the senatorial vote in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, exhibited his great love for the democratic process when in reply to extreme pressure he stated, "I do not recognize your right to demand that I shall vote either for or against conviction. I have taken an oath to do impartial justice... And I trust I shall have the courage and honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of my country."
His courage and honesty dictated that he cast the deciding vote of "not guilty." this act of conscience, on May 16, 1868, cost him his political career but reserved for him an illustrious place of honor in the role of preserving constitutional government.
College Street

AN EARLY HOME
Andrew Johnson and his family lived in this two-story brick house from some time in the 1830s until 1851. During these years, Johnson’s life changed drastically as he ventured from the tailoring trade into politics. After being elected alderman of Greenville, he became mayor. From then on his rise was steady to state representative, state senator, and United States representative. In 1853 he was elected governor of Tennessee and was sent to the United States Senate in 1857.
Intersection of E Depot Street and N College Street

ASBURY METHODIST CHURCH
Asbury Methodist Church was named for Bishop Francis Asbury who during the 1700's was a circuit preacher and guest at the Maloney Hotel which stood on this site.
Intersection of South Main St and East Summer St

AUSTIN COMPANY
On Summer Street behind Main Street Place are two murals which depict the tobacco industry. Tobacco was the money crop for many Greene Countians from the early 1800s through the 1900s with warehouses "on every corner". The Austin Company led the state and region in the processing and selling of Burley Tobacco, trading in seventy countries during the 1960s. Local artists, Joe Kilday and Mike Durham, created these murals.
West Summer Street

BENJAMIN LUNDY
Here from 1822-1824 Lundy, a Quaker, published the "Genius of Universal Emancipation," a small monthly paper devoted exclusively to the abolition of slavery. While here he also published a weekly paper, the "Economist and Political Recorder." After 1824, the "Genius" was published in Baltimore.
Church Street

BRIDGE BURNERS
After Unionists burned several East Tennessee railroad bridges on November 9, 1861, Confederate engineer Colonel Danville Leadbetter soon arrived to rebuild the brides and capture the perpetrators. Later that month, his forces captured Henry Fry, Jacob Hinshaw, and Hugh Self and confined them in the Greenville jail. A court martial convicted them on the morning of November 30 and sentenced them to death. Self’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment because he was only 16 years old. That afternoon, “a detail with hangman’s ropes in hand” approached the jail. Fry and Hinshaw, with “hands bound behind them,” marched up Depot Street “in a hollow square of soldiers.” They walked across the railroad tracks near the depot and then “up a gently sloping hill to the edge of the woods where two ropes were dangling from a hung limb of a huge oak tree.” At 2 P.M., they were hanged. “Their bodies were left swinging in the air all that afternoon, and through the night, and until 4 o’clock P.M. the next day.” A witness could see the bodies from his home at the corner of Depot Street andMorehead Street (present day Cutler Street). Unionist prisoners cut the bodies down and buried them under the tree. Confederates reburied them on Andrew Johnson’s property west of town on a rise west of present-day Nanci Lane and called the burial ground the Rebel Graveyard. Their families reburied them again after the war, Hinshaw in a private cemetery and Fry at Blue Springs Cemetery.
“Bridge-burners and destroyers of railroad tracks will be tried by drum-head court-martial and be hung on the spot.” – Colonel Danville Leadbetter, Nov. 30, 1861
Intersection of West Depot Street and Loretta Street

BRIGHT HOPE INDUSTRIES
North about one mi. on Furnace Creek was the Bright Hope Iron Works, built about 1830. Mining and smelting of iron ore and manufacturing of cast and wrought iron products were joined by a paper mill, pottery works, and several other establishments in an early industrial complex. The industries are believed to have failed as a result of the panic of 1837, but their operations are still recalled in the place names of early Furnace Creek and Ore Bank.
Intersection of US 321 and Bright Hope Rd

CAPITOL STATE OF FRANKLIN
This is a replica of the building which is believed to have served as the capitol of the State of Franklin from 1785 until 1788 and which originally stood near the intersection of Main and Depot Streets. At constitutional conventions held there, competing proposals engendered bitter controversy and resulted in the first political pamphlets produced west of the Appalachians. Chief protagonists were three Presbyterian clergymen, Rev. Samuel Houston, Rev. William Graham, and Rev. Hezekiah Balch. The Franklin Legislature, which also met there, challenged the authority of North Carolina by passing laws to levy taxes, raise a militia, establish courts, authorize the performance of marriages, and open a land office.
204 N College Street

CARTER'S STATION
One-half mile south of here, John Carter found an Indian fortified village, made peace with the Indians and established a camp for settlers, shortly after coming here from Surry Co., North Carolina, in 1783. Many settlers and their descendants are buried in the cemetery near the site of the fort.
Intersection of Albany Road and Albany Access Road

1917 CLASSIC AMERICAN LA FRANCE
1st Marker - First motorized fire truck bought by the town of Greeneville and in service from 1917 – 1965

2nd Marker - Nathanael Greene Museum Fire House
Home of “Old Hulda” This Fire House and all the fire fighting equipment are maintained by the Debusk Junior Fire Fighters.

DEATH OF JOHN MORGAN
September 4, 1864
The center of the present block was once the garden of the Williams house where Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan of Morgan's Raiders fame and his staff were billeted. Just after dawn a detail from Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem's Federal forces slipped past Confederate outposts, surrounded the house, surprised and killed Morgan, and captured his staff.
West Church Street