It began, basically, in my backyard. From my deck in Knox County’s historic Riverdale district, I can see across the French Broad to the two-story farmhouse where the Bowman-McBee-Hodges ferry owners once lived. And within my line of sight on the north bank of the river stands the old McNutt/Campbell/Kennedy house, where Knoxville founder James White is said to have lived in a cabin in a corner of the yard in 1785, before moving to First Creek to build his fort at what is now downtown.

In 1994, University of Tennessee anthropologist Dr. Charlie Faulkner excavated the site, unearthing the remnants of a cabin foundation, as well as Native American pottery sherds and tools. The cabin stood next to the creek now called Campbell Branch, along the lane that led to the ferry at the end of Wayland Road off Thorn Grove Pike.

My grandfather once ran the Bowman-Hodges ferry back in the 1950s, and he told my father what he had heard about the area, then my father told me. That’s where my intrigue with local history began, listening to my daddy on Sunday afternoon drives through Riverdale to visit my grandparents. It’s evidently where the roots of Knoxville began sprouting too. I enjoy researching to find the truths about what I’ve been told.

The site is historically significant. A 1994 form submitted to the National Register of Historic Places states that the Great Knoxville Road was originally oriented from the south side of the French Broad to Campbell Branch, but the primary destination of the road changed as Knoxville grew in importance and only short traces of it can be found today.

The McNutt/Campbell/Kennedy house at Campbell Branch began as a story-and-a-half that faced the river. It was probably built around 1796 by John McNutt, who bought the land from James White but later sold it to the Campbell family. The front portion that faces Thorn Grove Pike was added by James Kennedy when he bought the house after the Civil War. My grandfather told how it was built around a piano that was too large to go through the door. Kennedy family descendants clarify that a window was removed to get the piano in. I now live within a couple hundred yards of the old place. And yes, the piano is still there. It’s a mid-1800s Chickering square grand like the one used in Ford’s Theater when President Lincoln was shot.

We also have an old post office and a mill still standing in this area, as well as another historic structure: Knox County’s first stone bridge, constructed in 1894 across Campbell Branch. It has a keystone engraved with the cost and commissioners’ names. People drive across it every day without a clue of its significance. It’s just one more bit of history that’s been forgotten in the Fork.

More, later, on that mill, post office, and the Campbells and Kennedys.

Jan Loveday Dickens is an educator, historian, and author of Forgotten in the Fork, a book about the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers, obtainable by emailing ForgottenInTheFork@gmail.com.