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
After Hamilton County's organization in 1819, the first county court was held at the tavern and stock stand of Hasten Poe, at a location known at the time as Poe's Crossroads. From there, a turnpike ran from the Tennessee River Valley on the east side of Walden's Ridge across to Dunlap in the Sequatchie Valley. Poe's was a way station along a route of the Trail of Tears late in 1838 and a base for Union Col. John T. Wilder's "Lightning Brigade" as it probed toward Chattanooga in August 1863. As late as 1876, however, a study published by the State of Tennessee noted only a few small farms along the road from Poe's Crossroads to Dunlap.
The late 1860s and the decade of the 1870s saw coal mining operations develop to the north of Poe's at Soddy, and for a while, at Sale Creek. As the area around Poe's was similarly close to Walden's Ridge, it is not surprising that efforts would be made to mine coal there as well. Accordingly, in late 1880, Thomas Parkes (sometimes spelled "Parks"), a Confederate veteran from Middle Tennessee who was primarily in the insurance business, began an operation working a seam of coal there under the name of the Hamilton County Coal Co., which was apparently soon changed to the Daisy Coal Mining Co., after Mr. Parkes' teenage daughter, Daisy. In 1881 the small community that sprung up around the mining operation, which included the site of Poe's Crossroads, became known as Daisy.
While the Daisy mine had periods of productivity, other industries eventually developed in that small community. The first of these was the Chattanooga Pottery Co., which began in February 1891. Its charter stated the company was to engage in the "manufacture of stoneware, jugs, pots, fire-brick, tiles and all other products incident to the pottery business." While there were several investors, the "hands-on" owner was James W. Berry, the company's president, who provided the land for the plant in exchange for 370 shares of the company's stock.
The new business got into operation quickly, producing its first carload of stoneware by mid-May 1891. Billed as the "Largest Pottery in the South," the business had two large buildings, 160 feet by 50 feet and 162 feet by 60 feet, the latter of which had two stories. There were warehouses, kilns and the "highest grade of machinery." Berry continued as president until about 1900, when he was replaced by Dwight P. Montague, who also operated Chattanooga Fire Clay works, near the present-day Cameron Harbor.
A series of major changes began in 1902. Charles H. Herty, who worked for the United States Bureau of Forestry, developed and patented a cup and gutter system to collect the pine resin necessary to produce turpentine. When Chattanooga Pottery's manager, C.L. Krager, persuaded Herty that his operation could produce the cups, Herty and other investors bought the business, retaining Krager as manager. Herty essentially left in 1905 for a teaching position, but the next year the company name was changed from Chattanooga Pottery to the "Herty Turpentine Cup Company."
In 1916, renowned ceramic manufacturer B. Mifflin Hood leased existing plants at Daisy and eventually developed two other sites, at a cost exceeding $40,000. The experienced Krager went to work for Hood, whose business manufactured ceramics used by the federal government during World War I. By the 1930s, the Hood and Herty companies together had four significant operations at Daisy, and the 1930 census showed more than 200 persons working there.
Two more enterprises of this nature also operated at Daisy, but were not as significant or long-lasting as the Chattanooga Pottery/Herty and Hood concerns.
The Herty concern continued to make cups, as well as drain and building tiles, until the plant was destroyed by fire in 1941. In November 2016, however, Saint-Gobain NorPro, the current operator of the Hood Tile site, celebrated the 100th anniversary of B. Mifflin Hood's operations in Daisy, which is now Soddy-Daisy. A news release at that time indicated that the 27 employees on the site manufacture support media and ceramic packings to support refining, natural gas processing and chemical processing industries.
Daisy Parkes died in 1904 at age 36. It is unknown if she ever visited the town bearing her name.
Sam D. Elliott, a local attorney and historian, is the author or editor of several books and essays, including award-winning biographies of Gov. Isham G. Harris and Gen. John C. Brown. For more information, visit Chattahistoricalassoc.org.