Old Knox County Courthouse

On April 12, 1862, Union volunteers led by the civilian scout James Andrews seized the locomotive General in Georgia and raced north, with conductor William Fuller chasing them on foot, handcar and other engines until the General ran out of fuel 18 miles short of Chattanooga. Andrews was hanged in Atlanta on June 7, and seven more raiders, convicted as spies after being taken to Knoxville, on June 18. Eight escaped, six were exchanged in March 1863, and Private Jacob Parrott received the first Medal of Honor.

What the plaque says

Old Knox County Courthouse The third courthouse of Knox County was across Main Avenue to the north from 1842-1886. There twelve Union raiders who were charged with train stealing in the 1862 Great Locomotive Chase in Georgia, were tried in 1863. One was convicted. The trial was then adjourned and the prisoners sent to Atlanta because of increasing union raids in East Tennessee. The courthouse was used as a hospital for the wounded of both armies in the fall of 1863.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — steps away
  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.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 1.3 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 16 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Museum of Appalachia — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Treaty of Holston — steps away
• Staub's Theatre — steps away
• James Park Home — steps away
• Blount Mansion — steps away