Read more Chattanooga History Columns
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- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
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- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
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- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
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- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
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- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
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- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
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- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
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- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
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- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
If you wished to buy a diamond for your sweetheart in 1913, one store in town stood out - Edwards & LeBron Jewelers at 805 Market St. The Chattanooga News on Sept. 15 extolled the craftsmanship of the jewelers, Frank Edwards and Otis K. LeBron, and their building.
Thrown open to the public on the firm's 10th anniversary, the store was "unsurpassed in the entire south." Edwards & LeBron was a wonderland of sparkling beauty: diamonds and emeralds and rubies, china from England, France, Germany and Austria, and glass and crystal from Sweden. Otis K. LeBron had designed the establishment from its buff exterior sitting on antique verde marble to the symphony of blues and greens that decorated the many interior departments, creating a "harmonious work of art."
The firm relied on the artistic skill and creativity of its two proprietors, Edwards and LeBron, and two employees, C.A. Armstrong, master of watch repair, and W. J. Frink, engraver extraordinaire and marvelous creator of clever small mechanisms that graced the windows of the store. According to the News, there were "no finer window displays in the entire world than those made by the Edwards & LeBron store." In addition, thousands of visitors came to marvel at Mr. Frink's "wonderfully constructed mechanical window displays."
Edwards, a diamond specialist, handled the store's financial affairs, managing the office and keeping the firm's records.
He came to Chattanooga in 1885 having learned the jewelry business from the workbench to the selling and buying of gems. His first job was management of the watch department for E.P. Durando, who had opened his shop in 1872 and was said to "have sold more diamonds in his time than any other jeweler in Chattanooga." Edwards bought an interest in the Durando firm in 1885 and became part of the management team. Durando died in 1902 and Otis LeBron bought out his interest a year later. The Durando firm thus became Edwards & LeBron, the enterprise of two remarkable craftsmen and businessmen, each gifted with "mechanical ability" and "artistic temperament."
Otis LeBron had arrived in Chattanooga in 1889 from Illinois. His father and grandfather worked in the jewelry trade, and he was the great-nephew of Prince Charles LeBrun, a one-time treasurer of France. He started his career with W.R. Fischer, who later became part of Fischer-Evans. After joining Edwards, LeBron associated with Chattanooga royalty when he made at his expense crowns for the queens of the May Festival. Each year, "he fashioned a different and more dazzling crown." He also made crowns for the queens of the Cotton Ball and the Junior League Ball.
LeBron lent his talents to many Chattanooga enterprises. He planned the street decorations for the Confederate reunion in May 1913. He chaired the merchants' committee that brought light to Market Street. This installation of electric lights in the "Great White Way" was admired for both its practical side of lighting the street as well as its decorative effect.
LeBron promoted his business and his city. In the Chattanooga Times, January 1925, he boasted of his business acumen. Edwards & LeBron had opened its doors allowing its customers to enter the store from both Market and Broad Streets despite "hoots of derision." Their success prompted other merchants to do the same. LeBron believed that their jewelry store was the first to install a telephone. Their workforce grew from 5 people in 1903 to 23 people in 1925.
In 1949, Edwards & LeBron held a celebration to commemorate its 79th year showcasing special exhibits. The public enjoyed music and refreshments while viewing Masonic jewelry, the first watch sold by Hamilton Watch Company, Windermere sterling silver tea sets, Lenox china served in the White House and a LeCoultre collection of fine jeweled clocks. Of course, one could also see flawless rubies, emeralds, blue diamonds and pearls.
In 1959, the company went into bankruptcy and was reorganized. Edwards & LeBron vacated the Market Street building in August 1961. The assets of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses were purchased by a newly organized company, Jewelers Inc., which opened at 511 Georgia Ave. After 91 years, the purveyors of sparkling treasures, Edwards & LeBron, had lost its gleam. But Fischer-Evans, which traces its beginnings to 1869 and trained Otis LeBron, carries on the quality jewelry tradition at 801 Market St.
April Mitchell and Suzette Raney work in the Local History Department of the Chattanooga Public Library. For more information, call 643-7725 or visit the library.