Old Mechanicsville

In 1867 the brothers Joseph and David Richards brought more than a hundred Welsh families from Pennsylvania to work at a rolling mill, buying ground from the railroad executive Charles McClung McGhee for what became Tennessee's first successful Welsh colony. The next year they and Hiram Chamberlain founded the Knoxville Iron Company, and some Knoxville fences still carry iron cast there. Black laborers settled in the Middleton-Weatherford Addition. Residents voted to join the city in 1882, and it became the Ninth Ward in 1883; the Moses School dates its building to 1930.

What the plaque says

Old Mechanicsville Founded by Negro settlers and Welsh immigrants, Mechanicville became a thriving community whose 2,000 citizens were annexed to the city in 1883. The area earned its name because it was home to skilled craftsmen employed by the Knoxville Iron Company, area mills, and the railroads. These mechanics helped bring the Industrial Revolution to Knoxville. On July 18, 1980, Mechanicsville was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 1.2 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.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 2.0 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 — 15 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

• Knoxville College — 0.4 mi
• The Assault Upon Fort Sanders — 0.6 mi
• Civil War Hospital — 0.7 mi
• Old Gray Cemetery — 0.7 mi