Piecing History Together

 

Springplace Greenway

  At the Springplace Greenway in East Knoxville, Tennessee, Thursday morning, the park was abuzz with the excitement of getting ready for something special.  Leaf blowing put the finishing touches on the walkways.  A covered object had been placed on the brick platform created a week or so ago.  The colorful Parks and Rec truck was pulled up close to the pavilion and event supplies were being offloaded.  That's where I caught up with Whitney. 

Knox County Parks & Rec

She is big smile and energetic when I ask her,

 "What's happening today?"

  "Well, today we are having a Dedication Ceremony!"

  "A Dedication Ceremony?" I ask as I jot down what she's telling me.  Whitney works for Knox County Parks and Recreation.

Whitney getting ready

"Yes!  A Dedication Ceremony for a sister millstone." A man moves a podium into place in front of the covered object.  Whitney continues to tell me, "This is the sister stone to the stone at the bottom of the hill.  And now it will be part of our parks system."

She also tells me that there were a lot of stones from the old mill and that there have been books about Buffat Mill written and are at the local library. Today is the remaining sister's, Miss Polly, 91st birthday! It is Miss Polly who is representing the local family who has given the sister stone to the park.

Miss Polly's gift of the stone, Whitney explains, "Keeps that part of the history together which is what the family wanted and what we're really excited about."

The ceremony starts at 10:30 a.m. with cake to follow. At the library a librarian is interested to hear about Miss Polly and the sister stone. She says she's also heard about rennovations taking place in "Daisy Town" which is apparently similar to Elkmont...one of the temperature-cooler places in Knoxville where people had summer homes. Speaking of summer, this is our third or fourth day of full-on summer day. Up in the 90's, a full sun for whole day. A gentleman at the Burlington library in East Knoxville has been taking extra care of the flowers out front. Inside I am directed to a little online reading for more information on the Buffat Mill. One photograph from the source: Knox County Two Centuries Photograph Project gives a "circa" date of 1870. Circa (abbreviated ca.) means at or around a certain date. That would put the Buffat Mill operating in an overlapping time period of when Thomas Hughes started Rugby, TN.

A book called Knoxville Heritage, Knoxville Fifty Landmarks (copyright 1976 Junior League of Knoxville) sports photgraphy by Ron Childress. The forward written by Wm. J. MacArthur, Jr. tells us that "Knoxville was in its earliest days a center of government, commerce, and culture in an agricultural land" (5). And that it was never part of the plantation South. The original Buffat Mills was a complex of buildings including the main house (which the family called "The Maples"), a miller's cottage, smokehouses, a wash house, barns, and a utility building. There is a Diary of Elisa Buffat digitalized, online in the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection. Elisa wrote, "I was married to Alfred Buffat on September 14th 1865 [the year the Civil War ended]. We lived with his parents for two years and nine months, then moved to Spring Place Mills where he had built us a home. Ed was born at his grandparents' old home August 13th, 1866. We moved in our new home in June 1868. It was more convenient for Alfred to be near the Mill where he had to manage everything. He was doing so much business right after the war, grinding day and night. He had two men to run the mill, sent a big load of flour to town everyday. Also ran the sawmill, he had several hired men living on the place and kept them working at the Mill and on the farm. I enjoyed keeping house, everything new, and plenty to live on" (103, Mss, Some Recollections of My Childhood Days and Incidents of My Life During the Civil War, written and copied in the year 1916).