Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- 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
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- 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
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- 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
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- 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
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- '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
Jonathan Waverly Bachman fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. He then came to the First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga and ministered to all creeds, classes and colors during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, becoming recognized as the city's chaplain.
Born in 1837 into a family of 10 to Jonathan and Frances Rhea Bachman at their Roseland Farm in what became Sullivan County, Tenn., Jonathan Bachman studied in a log schoolhouse before entering Fall Branch Academy, Blountville Academy, Emory and Henry College, and in 1860 Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He and brother Nathan "did much charitable and religious work among the rabble of Five Points (near today's Chinatown), a place of evil eminence in those bygone days." When the Civil War broke out, the brothers returned to their native state.
Jonathan Bachman enlisted as a private in the 19th Tennessee. He was receiving orders from Gen. Robert E. Lee in the West Virginia campaign and later served under Gen. Stonewall Jackson during the mid-winter Romney campaign. He raised and commanded the 60th Tennessee Volunteers in the summer of 1862.
During the siege of Vicksburg, he was captured and exchanged, then resumed command. At one point his horse was shot under him. While on parole in 1863, Bachman married Evalina Dulaney, daughter of pioneer physician, Dr. William R. Dulaney, of Blountville. He served as a Confederate chaplain from October 1864 until the end of the war.
After caring for congregations in East Tennessee, Bachman came to Chattanooga in 1873 as pastor of First Presbyterian Church, then at Seventh and Market streets. He served his congregation for more than a half century, presiding over a move in 1910 to a new sanctuary at 554 McCallie Ave.
The Bachman home was nearby at McCallie and Houston streets. John Wilson's "Chattanooga's History" noted that Bachman was "tall and slender with a quick military step, a light brown mustache, bright blue eyes and a smile of ineffable sweetness." He would rise early, work in his garden, and complete his sermons and literary work before noon. Then he would "visit his flock and anyone else in trouble."
Bachman "could relate to everybody from the highest to the lowest and had a personality that made you rise to your best." While he later served as national chairman of the United Confederate Veterans, he labored to build friendship among former Union and Confederate soldiers. The pastor was instrumental in the founding of the Bonny Oaks Industrial School as well as the Associated Charities, today's United Way.
Bachman loved to hunt, shoot and ride, but his favorite hobby was fishing. The minnow's pond in his garden provided ready bait. He raised all kinds of trees, vegetables, and flowers in his backyard. He grew trees from seeds and named them after Confederate generals.
He and his wife read regularly to their children from the Christian Observer and the Youth's Companion. By the time his daughter, Ann, was 10, she had read the Gold Thread, Pilgrim's Progress, Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, The Poems of Ossian, Don Quixote, Swiss Family Robinson and all the works of Charles Dickens and Walter Scott.
During the Yellow Fever epidemic, the pastor sent his wife and family to Sweetwater and stayed to care for all people, black and white, rich and poor throughout the community. At home he read aloud each morning the 91st Psalm: "Surely he shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence."
When he died in 1924 at age 86, more than 5,000 people attended his funeral. The Bachman Tubes at Missionary Ridge were named in his honor.
His wife Evalina had died in 1898.
Survivors at his death included Mrs. William (Frances) Magill, Mrs. Charles (Mary) Anderson, Mrs. Charles (Anne) Hyde, Mrs. Charles (Evalina) Buek and Nathan Lynn Bachman, later a U.S. senator.
In 1904 Nathan married Pearl Duke of the well-known North Carolina family. Their daughter, Martha Bachman, married Thomas McCoy, an attorney from Asheville, N.C.
The mountain summer home that belonged to Sen. Nathan Bachman and Martha Bachman McCoy was transferred to the Town of Walden in a gift/sale after she died in 2004. It is now the McCoy Farm and Gardens and is open to the community and for weddings and events.
Frank (Mickey) Robbins is an investment adviser at Patten and Patten. For more, visit Mccoywalden.org and Chattahistoricalassoc.org.