Albert Miller Lea

Lea trained as a soldier-engineer, finishing fifth in a West Point class of thirty-three in 1831. When Tennessee created a chief engineer's post in 1836, he took it and ran a staff that measured connected altitudes to plan transportation routes. His assistant, C. W. Nance, wrote a dissent questioning Lea's judgment, the state printed it beside his only report, and the office lapsed. Lea went on to survey the Iowa-Missouri line and is probably the first to use the name Iowa for part of the Midwest. He later served the Confederacy as an engineer in Texas.

What the plaque says

Richland: Birthplace of Albert Miller Lea Built circa 1796 for Major Lea and Lavinia Jarnagin Lea, the brick house on this land is one of the oldest in Grainger County. The ninth Lea child, Albert Miller Lea, was born here in 1808. Lea assisted in two major land surveys in Tennessee and present-day Iowa. In 1841 he served as Chief Clerk for the U.S. Secretary of War John Buell. The land called "Richland", so named for the creek that run past, is some of the earliest land deeded in the County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 18 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Blount Mansion — 19 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Museum of Appalachia — 21 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.
• Norris Dam and Norris Dam State Park — 23 mi
  TVA's first dam, finished in 1936 on the Clinch River, and the state park beside it with the 1798 Rice Grist Mill, built for a valley whose families were moved out.

More markers nearby

• Janeway Cabin — 1.6 mi
• Blaine's Crossroads — 1.6 mi
• Emory Road — 1.7 mi
• Horace Maynard — 8.2 mi