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Knoxville Chronicles is a podcast series produced by the Knoxville History Project highlighting some of the most interesting of the city’s old stories that still have relevance today.The Knoxville History Project is an educational nonprofit with a mission to research, preserve and promote the history and culture of Knoxville, Tennessee.Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org
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In early 1794, barely just over two years after the town of Knoxville was established, a short but strange news item appeared in the Knoxville Gazette. A detachment of soldiers, 30 miles outside of Knoxville, encountered a “creature” that appeared nothing like they had ever seen or heard about before. And it wasn’t happy to see these soldiers in it…
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Following on from "Halloween Begins," the holiday puts on a mask and heads out on to Knoxville city streets. Although trick or treating and jack-o-lanterns were uncommon here until the early 1900s, by the roaring twenties, Halloween began to take on a livelier, and sometimes a darker turn. Costumed revelers paraded all parts of downtown, especially…
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Some holidays haven't changed much over the years. Fourth of July has always been noisy, public, and hot; Easter is always centered around church, and Thanksgiving mainly revolves around a family meal. But Halloween is the shape-shifting monster of holidays. And like the Blob, it just keeps getting bigger. In this episode, take a brief historical j…
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Love in the Time of Upheaval: The Cansler Elopement
20:31
20:31
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There are some names in Knoxville history that seem rarer than others. Cansler is one. In Mechanicsville, there’s a Cansler Street, and on University Avenue, a Cansler Building. Off Western is the old Laura Cansler School, a former “colored” elementary school, now home to Wesley House. And in East Knoxville, there’s the Cansler Family YMCA. The Can…
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The elegant old weather kiosk on the corner of Clinch Avenue and Market Street looks like something built for an Exposition of the beaux-arts era. But in fact, it was originally installed in 1912, not long before Knoxville’s gigantic and elegantly appointed National Conservation Exposition of 1913. People used to gather around it to see what the fe…
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In 1856, before the Civil War, Dr. William J. Baker, with assistance from a few others including his suffering patient, hurried medical science along a bit by performing one of the first hysterectomy surgeries in the United States here on Gay Street. Of that historic team of four surgeons, the youngest is the one best remembered today. Knoxvillians…
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The Knoxville area once known as the Bowery included hundreds of little shops: secondhand stores run by immigrants, some early African American barber shops and movie theaters, some of the city’s first Chinese laundries, some of the city’s last livery stables and blacksmiths, and drugstores that sold things that mainstream drugstores wouldn’t. It w…
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Adolph Ochs: The Printer's Devil (Season 1)
18:00
18:00
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The pilot episode of Knoxville Chronicles tells the story of Adolph Ochs, a kid who was scared of a graveyard while he learned the ropes of newspaper publishing here in Knoxville as a Printer’s Devil. The lad went on to become the founder of a major American institution, a cultural leader who changed a whole profession, established a landmark, and …
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This short story focuses on the ghostly happenings at an old double-house, actually two small antebellum houses linked by a vestibule, at 309 East Cumberland Avenue, on the eastern fringe of downtown. The house was torn down at the onset of Urban Renewal in 1959, but part of its story remains. Originally written by Jack Neely for the Knoxville Merc…
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Knoxville's Thanksgiving Traditions (Season 1)
6:23
6:23
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This short podcast looks back on how national and local events influenced the celebration of Thanksgiving in Knoxville, connecting seemingly disparate events such as the Siege of Knoxville during the Civil War, prohibitionist Carrie Nation’s visit in 1906, and later, even UT football. Written by Jack Neely and read by Todd Ethridge Produced by the …
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A Dickens of a Knoxville Christmas (Season 1)
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7:27
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This short account looks back on how Knoxville’s Christmas traditions were influenced by one of the most popular authors of all time, Charles Dickens, and his most beloved story, A Christmas Carol first published in England in 1843. Written by Jack Neeley and narrated by Todd Ethridge. Produced by the Knoxville History Project. Sound design and edi…
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Three days before Christmas in 1893, Whittle’s sawmill by the river exploded and the disaster proved to be a portent of trouble ahead on the streets of Knoxville. While for some, Christmas was a quiet, family affair, with gifts and Christmas trees, for others it was a time for looking for some fun or for some trouble. The ensuing mayhem meant that …
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Professor Ijams and the Asylum (Season 2)
13:36
13:36
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One of Knoxville’s oldest buildings, the old deaf school (now Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law), with its 1848 date proudly on the front, still stands on Summit Hill Drive. The school had barely begun to prosper when it was commandeered during the Civil War for use as a military hospital. After the conflict, Prof. Ijams, one of th…
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From the day it was finished in 1903, the mortar had hardly dried between the bricks at the Southern Railway Station before people began complaining it wasn’t nearly big enough for the job. But there was one face that everyone got used to seeing every day–a woman in uniform and a white hat. Her name was Maggie Lattimore. Although she was an African…
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The Night The FBI Collared a Nazi Spy at the YMCA (Season 2)
9:17
9:17
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The man everyone knew as Walter Othmer, worked quietly as an electrician on Market Street near the Pryor Brown Garage. In 1944, he lived at the downtown YMCA, which offered simple, dormitory-like accommodations for guys who were new to town. He may have seemed like a regular guy –he was a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a very small mustache.…
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