Walnut Hill, the most historic home you’ve probably never heard of.

I remember when City Manager Ray Griffin wanted stationary commemorating the three phases of Kingsport history—settlement, the first incorporation (1822), and the second incorporation (1917). That’s right, Kingsport was incorporated twice. The actual port city was incorporated in 1822 but lost its charter after the Civil War. The current city was incorporated in 1917. The old city wasn’t annexed to the new city until 1963.

In my opinion, he was trying to acknowledge the rich history that preceded the modern industrial city that overshadowed the rest. Ray was a history buff and as far as I know that was the first time any government official had asked that question. So, Hal Spoden was consulted. His opinion was that Kingsport was settled in 1761 when the British built Fort Robinson (later Fort Patrick Henry) at the terminus of the historic Island Road that led to the Long Island of the Holston, a sacred Cherokee site.  Remember it was British Colonial America at the time and the area generally north of the Holston was assumed to be part of the Virginia colony. That’s because there was no agreed upon survey establishing the 36-30 parallel, which was supposed to be the dividing line between Virginia and Carolina according to the Royal Charter. Settlers weren’t supposed to be in the area. Nevertheless, they came, which created a “squabble state” where settlers squabbled about which colony they belonged.

Colonel Gilbert Christian was one of the Virginia soldiers that helped build Fort Robinson. He and six others decided to build cabins in the winter of 1761/1762, intending to settle permanently. However, they learned that they had settled on land already granted to Edmund Pendleton, so they returned home to the valley of Virginia. He vowed to return and in 1775 he did just that. He built a large log home on the north bank of the Holston at the mouth of Reedy Creek. He called it, “Walnut Hill”. He assembled an 850-acre plantation that stretched from what we would recognize today as the Netherland Inn all the way to Church Circle on both sides of Reedy Creek.

This would’ve been long before TVA dams tamed the river, so it would have been a necessity to build Walnut Hill on higher ground outside the flood plain. There’s a natural knoll in the bend of Reedy Creek. It’s on the eastern bank opposite the Greenbelt’s covered bridge (that goes under the railroad track). Today it would be located behind the security gates at Domtar.

The Christians lived at Walnut Hill until their passing, the last being Margaret Anderson Christian who died in 1812. In 1815, Walnut Hill was sold to John Lynn, an Irish immigrant who sought out his longtime friend William King, who he had known from the old country. King brought Lynn to Kingsport to manage his prosperous freighting business at King’s Boat Yard (King’s Port). The Lynn’s are the namesake of “Lynn Garden”. Generations of the Lynn family occupied Walnut Hill until 1846 when they sold it to Dr. James H. Vance and wife, Jane Sevier Vance, whose brother David Deaderick Sevier lived at Mount Ida (on what is now Sevier Terrace Drive). They were relatives of Tennessee’s first governor, John Sevier. Dr. Vance treated Union soldiers at Walnut Hill who were wounded in the 1864 Battle of Kingsport. Mrs. Vance was buried on the property in 1886 and Dr. Vance in 1893. Their iron caskets were relocated to Oak Hill cemetery in the 1950s. Their son, John Sevier Vance (commonly called Squire J.S. Vance) ended up with the property, which he sold to the Holston Corporation (a land syndicate of George L. Carter’s railroad interests). He was an early Kingsport pioneer pre-incorporation in 1917. He was a dogged advocate for a modern highway from Bristol to Kingsport, a notion the Sullivan County Commission resisted. The April 3, 1912, edition of the Bristol Herald Courier said, “Squire Vance, of Kingsport, led the fight and won a hard battle. The day before the (County Commission) tabled a proposition to complete the (Bristol to Kingsport Pike).”  In 1918 he celebrated his 63rd birthday, but by 1920 his 50-acre farm on Watauga Street (at today’s Vance Street) was auctioned off. The couple relocated to Trevelians, Virginia to be near their son, Sam, never to return. It is unclear why the Vances moved and their land auctioned, but the newspaper referenced numerous court ordered sales, which is no surprise given the tough financial times on the eve of the Great Depression. Today, the site of Walnut Hill is an isolated corner of the Domtar plant site. Much of the Vance’s riverfront property became the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant because it was the natural low spot of the Reedy Creek drainage basin.

And that’s the story of Walnut Hill, the first permanent settlement in Kingsport and the most historic home you’ve probably never heard of.

The map below shows the railway survey maps that captured the location of Walnut Hill and the old roads leading to it (that no longer exist). Next time you’re on the Greenbelt at the covered bridge, pause for a minute and visualize what it would have looked like in a natural state–no railroad, no wastewater plant, no industrialization. That’s the view Colonel Gilbert Christian fell in love with.