First Presbyterian Church:

Knoxville’s First Church

THE FIRST CHURCH established in Knoxville - the congregation of First Presbyterian - was founded in 1792, but they did not erect a building until 1816. James White (1747-1821), the founder of Knoxville, donated some of his landhis former turnip patch - for the construction of the first church building. In 1809, a building committee was founded. Construction on the first building began in 1812 and was completed in 1816. In 1853, the first building was replaced with the second church sanctuary. The church became the de facto birthplace of Knoxville’s first synagogue, Temple Beth El, which met here in the 1860s, as well as the African American congregation known as Shiloh Presbyterian.

During the Civil War, the 1853 church building was used by both the Confederate and Union Army. Confederate soldiers kept their horses in the graveyard, and when the Union took control of Knoxville in 1863, the building was used as a hospital and barracks. The church building, which was in serious disrepair, was returned to the congregation in 1866.

The current church, the third on this site, was built in 1903 and designed by Knoxville’s Baumann Brothers in the Neoclassical style. It was expanded from the 1920s through the 1980s.

First Presbyterian’s famous graveyard, the oldest in Knoxville proper, was here before the first church building was erected and is the final burial place of many prominent early Knoxvillians. Governor of the Territorial South of the River Ohio, U.S. Senator, and signer of the U.S. Constitution, William Blount (1749-1800), and his wife, Mary Grainger Blount (for whom both Maryville and Grainger County are named), are buried here. John Williams (17781837), a U.S. Senator, lawyer, and great-great grandfather of noted playwright Tennessee Williams, is also buried here. Other prominent individuals include Hugh Lawson White (1773-1840), U.S. Senator and one-time president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, who ran a popular campaign for the U.S. presidency in 1836; Samuel Carrick (1760-1809), the Presbyterian minister who was the first president of Blount College, which much later became the University of Tennessee; Margaret Humes (1777-1854), the thrice-widowed first owner of the Lamar House; and Knoxville founder James White (1747-1821).

About one-tenth of the marked graves date are from the summer and fall of 1838, when a plague of unknown nature killed hundreds of Knoxvillians. (One grave references the “fever” specifically.) The graveyard was closed to new burials in the 1850s, but a few exceptions were made, including that of Abner Baker (1843-1865), a popular young Confederate veteran lynched for killing a man on the courthouse lawn in 1865.

In 2019, the congregation of First Presbyterian Church received an East Tennessee Preservation Award from Knox Heritage for a multi-year restoration of the interior; this included the re-exposure of a historic stained-glass window in the sanctuary when it was covered up during the construction of the balcony in 1920.

For more information about First Presbyterian Church or to attend a service, visit FPCKnox.org.

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