Another case of “have you seen this marker?”
Picture of marker by Margot Kline of Knoxville, Tennessee, courtesy of HMDB.org.
According to a story posted on the MetroPulse, a Knoxville, Tennessee news outlet:
At the center of a years-long controversy concerning possible private development of the old Lowes Ferry site, also known as Stoney Point, off Northshore just east of Admiral Farragut Park, is a large stone monument denoting the birthplace of David Glasgow Farragut. It’s been there for 111 years, until lately, that is. Sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the marker was installed in 1900 when a flotilla of riverboats bearing national press and dignitaries, chief among them naval hero Admiral George Dewey, steamed to the site from downtown Knoxville. For decades thereafter, the marker was easily accessible to people waiting for the old ferry, and in the late ’40s was the subject of a national-park effort that apparently didn’t work out….
Read the full story here in a report from Jack Neely:
Damn the Mementoes? Admiral Farragut’s Marker Disappears.
I pressed this earlier on the Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial page, but wanted to offer some additional background on the marker here. The news article mentions some of the recent efforts to ensure the public had access to the marker:
Since the 1970s, it’s been behind a fence, on formally private property. John Fitzgerald owned it then; after his death a few years ago, his widow and heir Lylan proposed to develop the peninsula without necessarily insuring public access to the birthplace and monument, though local officials had been hopeful about working something out, if only a walking trail from the adjacent county park. …
When dedicated, the marker stood near a ferry and the Farragut family homestead. As noted in a National Trust for Historic Preservation article last year:
The original Stoney Point Farm was 640 acres of thick forest located on the border of Indian Territory. Farragut’s father, Jorge Farragut, bought the property and received a license to run a ferry, and in December 1797, four years before the future Admiral’s birth, he hacked out a clearing in the wilderness, built a 20 x 40 foot log cabin, plowed the fields, and moved there with his young family.
Farragut’s father came to America, from his home in Minorca, Spain, in 1776 seeking to fight in the American Revolution. Jorge moved to Tennessee after the war, remaining close to his friend John Sevier.
Unfortunately, a year ago the land owner sought and received a permit to sub-divide the area for lake front developments. The site has not been surveyed or examined from an archeological perspective. So there are many questions as to what resources might lay under the brush and among the rocks.
Hopefully this marker will be “found” in good order and restored to its proper location. With connections to Revolutionary war and Spanish-American War heroes, this marker’s history is as interesting as the subject it honors.
Local preservationists have pressed for the preservation of the site, and have a website with more information.
