Ramsey House

Thomas Hope, an English-trained architect, probably built the house between 1795 and 1797 for Francis Alexander Ramsey, who had held the Swan Pond land grant since 1786. Its pink local marble is trimmed in blue-gray limestone, with three chimneys, six fireplaces and a dogtrot kitchen wing. The Ramseys ran a plantation here until the Civil War and fled when Union forces held Knoxville. The house was sold out of the family in 1866 and deteriorated until the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities bought it in 1952; it joined the National Register in 1969.

What the plaque says

Ramsey House .2 mile east is the handsome two-story pink marble and blue limestone house built in 1797 by Francis A. Ramsey (1764-1820), pioneer settler, surveyor, college trustee, banker and public official. Ramsey served under four governments — North Carolina, State of Franklin, Southwest Territory, State of Tennessee. The structure also became the property and residence of his sons, Dr. James G.M. Ramsey, physician-historian, and William B.A. Ramsey, Knoxville's first elected mayor.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 4.0 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 — 4.9 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.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 20 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 — 20 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

• Fork of the River — 1.2 mi
• Island Home — 2.9 mi
• Colored (Negro) Department: Tennessee School for the Deaf (TSD) — 3.3 mi
• Speedway Circle — 3.5 mi