Mary Grainger Blount (1761-1802) was as beloved by the people of the region as was her husband, William Blount. The city of Maryville was named in her honor as well as Grainger County, Tennessee.  The county of Blount was named in honor of William. A small college started on a hill in the city was named Blount College in his honor and evolved into what is known today as the University of Tennessee.  There are no known photos of Mary Blount. 

Rev. Isaac ANDERSON (1780-1857), founded Maryville College, one of the oldest and most highly esteemed educational institutions in Tennessee. Anderson came with his father's family from Virginia at the age of 21, and located in Knox County. He entered the ministry at Liberty Hall Academy and Blount College (forerunner of University of Tennessee). Soon he became known as an eloquent and effective speaker and a bold and original thinker. He was a Presbyterian and was installed as pastor of New Providence Church in 1812.  Recognizing the need for a greater number of educated ministers, he presented to the Synod of Tennessee, then in session at Maryville, a plan for the organization of a theological school, which was adopted, and the institution was established in 1819 as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary, a name that it bore until 1842, when it was incorporated by the Legislature as Maryville College. During his lifetime, Anderson worked tirelessly for the cause of temperance and the abolition of slavery.

Dr. ANDERSON became the first president, and continued in that position until his death January 28, 1857.

Sam HOUSTON (1793-1863). One of the most colorful and controversial figures in Texas history, Sam Houston was born in Virginia on March 2, 1793. He spent much of his youth, however, in the mountains of Tennessee. There, young Houston became acquainted with the Cherokee Indians, and he spent much time with them, an activity which he much preferred over studies or working on the farm.

With the outbreak of the second war with England, Houston enlisted as a private soldier, and was made sergeant of a company. He excelled in the military and quickly won the admiration of his men and his superiors. After receiving three near-mortal wounds at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, he rose to the rank of first lieutenant before resigning in 1818 to study law.

After a short time, he was admitted to the bar and practiced in Lebonon, Tennessee before running for public office. He sought and won public office and was elected to the US Congress in 1823 and again in 1825. In 1827, Houston was elected Governor of Tennessee by a large majority.

While governor and after a brief marriage that ended unfavorably, Houston quietly resigned from Tennessee politics and returned to live with his longtime friends, the Cherokees. There, he remained until 1832 when he moved to Texas along with a few friends.

In Texas, Houston was elected delegate from Nacogdoches to the Convention of 1833 which met at San Felipe. From that time, Houston emerged as a prominent player in the affairs of Texas. In 1835 he was appointed general of the military district east of the Trinity. He became a member of the Consultation of 1835, and of the Convention which met at Washington on the Brazos in 1836 to declare independence from Mexico. It was there that Houston was elected commander-in-chief of the armies of Texas.

Houston immediately took control of the Texas forces after the fall of the Alamo and Goliad, and conducted the retreat of the army to the site of the Battle of San Jacinto, where on April 21, 1836, his force defeated Santa Anna and secured Texas long sought independence.

In the fall of that year, Houston was elected the first President of the Republic of Texas. After serving his term as President, he served in the Congress of the Republic in 1839-40. Then in 1841, Houston was again voted by a large margin to the head of the Texas government.

After statehood in 1845, Houston was elected Senator from Texas to the Congress of the United States. Still later, in 1859, Houston was elected to serve as Governor of the State of Texas.

As Governor in 1861, Houston was strongly opposed to the secession of Texas from the Union.   Because he was much in the minority on this issue, Houston was removed from office in March of 1861, ending his illustrious carrier in public service.

Houston retired to the privacy of his home at Huntsville, Texas, where died in July of 1863. He is buried in Huntsville's Oakwood Cemetery.

Dr. Samuel PRIDE (1799-1863) was born in Knox County and lived a life devoted to his fellow man.  Pride began his practice as a Maryville physician in 1828 and was a found member of the Medical Society of Tennessee, writing numerous articles promoting public health.

As a public servant, Dr. Pride was elected to the Blount Court where he was named Chairman. He was elected as the first Mayor of Maryville in 1850 and named the first Clerk and Master in 1853.  Pride was also an advocate of education serving as a Trustee for Porter Academy.

Loyal to the South during the Civil War, Pride left Maryville when he thought political conditions made him unwelcome in his hometown.  He administered to the needs of Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Chickamauga where he contracted typhoid pneumonia.  Pride left his work to recuperate in Macon, Georgia, but the disease quickly worsened.  Dr. Pride died on October 25, 1863, and was buried in Macon--never again able to see Maryville, Tennessee, the town to which he devoted so much of his life and talents.

William B. SCOTT(1821-1885) launched the Colored Tennessean, the first newspaper published by a black individual in 1865 in Nashville. The next year, Scott and his son moved his printing operation to Maryville, where he published the inaugural issue of the Maryville Republican for the next ten years which, for the most part, was the only newspaper in Blount County. In 1878, his paper became the Maryville Democrat.  Scott also owed a leather shop.

Scott was the first black Mayor of Maryville from 1869 to 1870. Other political involvement included making speeches in other states for the 1876 Democratic ticket in hopes that is would help form a closer alliance between blacks and whites.Another very important contribution Scott made during his lifetime was his part in founding of one of the first black schools in east Tennessee, the Freedman’s Normal Institute, which operated in Maryville for 30 years.

Dr. John Patton BLANKENSHIP (1839-1913) by Sarah B. McNiell, Maryville Historian.  Of his many achievements in 73 years of living, Dr. John Patton Blankenship’s medical career is certainly the most noteworthy.  As early as his student days at Friendsville Institute (predecessor of Friendsville Academy), John Blankenship studied sciences.  At age 20, he came to Maryville to study medicine with practicing physicians Isaac Taylor and Benjamin Morton. By the end of a second year with these preceptors, he was treating some patients on his own.

Unfortunately for the beginning of a new career, the year was 1861.  Within a few months, he had to leave a young wife and make the perilous walk to Kentucky, evading Confederate conscription teams along the way, to join the Federal Army.  He was named assistant surgeon with the Third Tennessee Infantry, USA. In Kentucky he was able to attend a few lectures at the medical school of the University of Louisville.  While gathering medical supplies to use with his unit, he fell ill with typhoid, complicated with pneumonia. As federal forces abandoned Kentucky, the Third Tennessee Infantry departed without their assistant surgeon. Ironically, Dr. Blankenship was saved from death by civilians in Confederate-held Williamsburg. He rejoined his unit in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, early in 1863, but, not fully recovered, he was given an honorable medical discharge in April of that year.

 Dr. Blankenship returned to Maryville and, as his health improved, began practicing medicine and surgery in Blount County.  In 1866, shortly after war’s end, a severe epidemic of small pox broke out in the area and the young doctor was named Blount County Physician and Health Officer, a position he held until the end of the century. One of his first acts was to order a “pest house” constructed at the edge of town to isolate those with “the pox.”

 He worked diligently to improve sanitary conditions at the county jail, in the town streets and alleys, and along Pistol Creek.  You can imagine the challenge—all those horses and occasional ox carts in the streets, privies out behind the town’s houses, a livery stable at the creek’s edge (earlier there had been a tanning operation along the waterway), stagnant mill ponds up around the horseshoe bend.  Dr. Blankenship wanted clean water, a clean environment, and clean people.  He gave speeches and wrote newspaper articles to that effect.  Later he lobbied the Tennessee General Assembly to pass legislation giving local government power to enforce clean-up.

 Among all his duties, Dr. Blankenship took time to further his medical education at Vanderbilt University’s young medical school.  With his work with preceptors and years of experience in practice, he was able to complete Vanderbilt’s degree requirements in five months in 1874-75.  His course included lectures and demonstrations, followed by examinations, laboratory dissections, and clinics at Nashville hospitals and the state prison.

 With his skills and interests whetted by these new studies, Dr. Blankenship helped establish the Blount County Medical Society and became its first president.  Medical societies, of course, sponsor continuing medical education, urge good health practices among the populace, and discipline physicians to assure good standards of practice.

He later affiliated with the Tennessee Medical Society and the American Anti-Tuberculosis Association.

Deeply interested in the betterment of Maryville and Blount County, Dr. Blankenship was politically active. In the rather grim postwar years of 1867-69 he was a member of the Union League of Maryville.  League minutes quote him as stating his understanding of the League’s purpose as “the elevation of all without distinction of race, color or creed.”  In a period when there was still bitterness and some fear that the gains of the war—the end of slavery and the preservation of the union—might still be lost, the League firmly believed that loyal, Union Republicans must retain control of government.

  Dr. Blankenship was a Republican and across the years served as a delegate to numerous county and state nominating conventions for his party.

In the last decade of the 19th century, he was a founding member of the Maryville Board of Enterprise—most likely an early version of our current Economic Development Board, but probably with private rather than public funding.  He was especially interested in the expansion of railroads for trade and tourism.  He was a life-long Presbyterian, a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the International Order of Odd Fellows and Masonic lodges.

  A family man, he was twice left a widower, first with four teenage youngsters, and second with three very young children.  He managed to find a third wife who became his companion and a loving mother to his children.  In his medical practice he was aware of the challenges faced by families, especially illness, poverty and alcoholism. He became an advocate for the temperance cause in Maryville.  Perhaps his last medical call was to deliver a baby in Cades Cove in January 1913.  Riding home in a snowstorm, he became ill and died a few weeks later.

Major Will A. McTeer (1843-1925) played an important role in the formation of Blount County.  Besides being the first Judge of General Sessions, he held many other important positions in the community and at his church, New Providence Presbyterian.  He also served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War and wrote a journal of his experiences.  Of the eighteen men who joined the Union Army with McTeer, only five returned home after the War.

Soon after returning from battle, McTeer became a noted lawyer in Blount County.  He was the first judge of the Court of General Sessions and also represented Blount County as a Ligislator.  McTeer later served as a Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Maryville City Recorder, a Trustee of Maryville College and numberous other high-level positions in the community.

An eloquent writer, McTeer penned the histories of both New Providence Church and Eusebia Church.  He also wrote many articles for the local newspaper publications.