Blount Mansion

Knoxville begins with a treaty. On July 2, 1791, William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, signed the Treaty of Holston with the Cherokee near the mouth of First Creek, before more than a thousand Cherokee people and their chiefs. It was called a treaty of peace and friendship, but it was aimed at settling boundaries and gaining land, and the Cherokee reportedly called Blount "the Dirt Captain." That fall James White's land was divided into 64 lots and sold by lottery, and the town was named for the Secretary of War, Henry Knox.

Blount began his house in early 1792, a frame building in a country of log houses and the largest in the area. Its Native American name was reportedly "the House With Many Glass Eyes," for its many windows. The city planned to tear it down for a parking lot in 1925, the Blount Mansion Association saved it, and it opened as a museum in 1930. It is Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark.

Enslaved people were part of daily life here from 1792 through the Civil War, and an 1797 deed lists 26 people enslaved to the Blount family. The museum names several. Hagar and Venus came with Mary Blount's dowry. Jack, Hagar's son, was the only person to cross the mountains with Blount in 1790. Cupid, a skilled builder, may have directed the mansion's construction, and Sall cooked in the detached kitchen. Cupid and Sall had two daughters, Nann and Issabella. Billy Blount sold Cupid and Sall on August 27, 1806.