Ramsey House (Knox County, Tennessee)

The Ramsey House, photographed by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1934

Francis Alexander Ramsey was born in Pennsylvania in 1764 to Scotch-Irish parents, and moved to Greene County, Tennessee in 1783. That year, North Carolina (which controlled what is now East Tennessee) opened up Cherokee lands north of the French Broad to settlement, and Ramsey, James White, and several other explorers began making excursions into what is now the Knoxville area in search of new land. On one such expedition, Ramsey discovered a game-rich beaver dam pond which he named "Swan Pond." He was issued a grant for Swan Pond and its surrounding land in November 1786.[2]

Ramsey's rise to prominence in the failed State of Franklin (1784–1788) kept him occupied for the remainder of the decade, and it wasn't until 1792— after he had been appointed clerk for the newly formed Southwest Territory— that he decided to move to Swan Pond, which lay just outside the territory's new capital at Knoxville. Ramsey chose to build his new house on a peninsula in the pond, although due to malaria concerns, he was forced to drain the pond before the house was constructed. London-trained architect Thomas Hope designed the house, and probably built it between 1795 and 1797.[2]

In the years after its completion, the Ramsey House came to be part of a sizeable plantation. Upon Ramsey's death in 1820, the house passed to his eldest son, W.B.A. Ramsey. In 1840, W.B.A Ramsey sold the house to his brother, J.G.M. Ramsey (1797–1884),[2] who had taken an active interest in the region's history, and had built a large mansion nearby to the east, known as "Mecklenburg," overlooking the fork of both the French Broad River with the Holston River and the no longer extant Lebanon In The Fork Presbyterian Church, along the nearby and present-day Asbury Road. Mecklenburg was noted for its 4,000-volume library containing numerous 18th-century documents pertaining to the settlement of Tennessee.[4] In 1857, J.G.M. Ramsey gave the Ramsey House to his son, also named Francis Alexander Ramsey, as a wedding present.[2]

Parson Brownlow's depiction of his rival, John Crozier Ramsey, being drummed out of the Confederate Army

J.G.M. Ramsey played an active role in the economic development of East Tennessee. He helped establish the region's first medical society, served as president of the Bank of East Tennessee, and fought to bring railroads to the region.[3] In the late 1850s, as one of the directors of the Bank of East Tennessee, Ramsey ran afoul of Knoxville's fiery newspaper publisher, William G. "Parson" Brownlow.[4] Brownlow relentlessly accused the bank's directors, who along with Ramsey included Ramsey's brothers-in-law, John H. Crozier and A.R. Crozier, of defrauding the bank's clients. He also accused Ramsey's son, John Crozier Ramsey (1824–1868), whom Brownlow called "a few degrees removed from an idiot,"[5] of creating false pension funds for employees. His continued attacks helped Horace Maynard defeat John Crozier Ramsey for the district's Congressional seat in 1859.[6]

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Ramseys, who were states' rights Democrats, sided with the Confederacy,[3] drawing them further into conflict with Brownlow, who was a radical anti-secessionist. In December 1861, John Crozier Ramsey, who had been appointed Knox County's district attorney, had Brownlow jailed on charges of conspiring to burn railroad bridges in East Tennessee. The Ramseys demanded Brownlow be hanged, but the Confederate Army, fearing a public backlash, released him. Due in part to Brownlow's influence, J.G.M. Ramsey's Mecklenburg mansion— with its invaluable library— was burned when the Union Army occupied Knoxville in 1863.[4]

With Mecklenburg in ruins, the Ramseys, who had fled to South Carolina on approach of the Union Army in 1863, decided not to return to Knoxville.[4] The Ramsey House was sold to William Spurgien in 1866,[2] and afterward began to deteriorate. J.G.M. Ramsey eventually moved back to Knoxville in the 1870s, and was deeply saddened at the state of the Ramsey House. His autobiography, written during this period, included a poem lamenting the house's decline.[7]

In 1927, the Bonnie Kate Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker at the Ramsey House commemorating the site as the birthplace of J.G.M. Ramsey, whose book, the Annals of Tennessee, had become an important work on the state's early history. In the following decade, the house was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey. In 1952, APTA's Knoxville Chapter purchased the house with the help of state and local governments, and began restoring it. The roof and windows were replaced, and an old log cabin was moved to the site to represent the cabin used by the Ramseys in the 1790s while the main house was being built.[2]