Old Gray Cemetery

06/04/2026

The arboreal embrace of William Henry Fizer’s (1861-1937) gravestone has increased since the photo taken six years ago. The change spurred this deeper look at his interesting life.

Fizer was born in Mt. Sterling, KY, where his father, Samuel Fizer, drove the stagecoach from Paris to Mt. Sterling. William moved to Knoxville in 1885 and that same year married young widow Tennessee (“Tennie”) Young Gurley (1860-1938), daughter of Civil War Col. Isham Young. Tennie’s first husband, an engineer with the ETV&G RR, died at age 30 in a railroad accident in 1881, leaving her with two small children.

Fizer first worked for the Knoxville Brick Co., and, as co-owner and VP, was later in charge of building the brick, 4-story Palace Livery Stable* on State St which he bought in 1886. He was a fine brick mason (the Palace was described as mammoth and palatial), but his main interest was horse racing and training. He sold the brick company in 1889 and from approx. 1900-1903, his primary residence was in St. Louis where he stabled up to 20 horses and raced several at the Delmar Park Jockey Club. He and Tennie traveled widely attending races. They had only one child of their own, a son who died in 1896 at age three of pneumonia.

For several years Fizer owned as many as 100 horses which he kept at his New Orleans stable.
His horses were some of the biggest winners in 1902 there, but the following year he was barred from entering after using stimulants on his horses. He made every effort to have the horses reinstated as the property of Tennie but was repeatedly denied. Doping was a common practice, and in 1904 he was reinstated and dominated racing news for the next several years. He won acclaim as the trainer of Pink Star, the 1907 winner of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. In 1908 his horse Pinkola took first place in the Latonia Derby in Latonia, KY; and in 1909 Florial took first place at KY Oaks. In 1920 he was the trainer for a string of horses owned by silent film actor William Farnum in New Orleans.

Fizer’s last win was at the 1929 Rainbow stakes in Yonkers, NY, netting $2,530. Tennie, who no longer traveled with him, said that he wrote 4 or 5 letters a week sharing his enthusiasm for the races. In 1931, four of Fizer’s horses perished in a stable fire in New Orleans, and this was the last time his name appeared in St. Louis newspapers. In Feb 1932 his name appeared in a Notice of Bankruptcy list in the News-Sentinel. In ensuing years, Fizer continued to attend the winter races in NYC but no longer entered horses. In Feb 1937, against his doctor’s advice due to high blood pressure, he traveled to NY to attend the races and died there in Bellevue Hospital at age 75. His obituary in the Knoxville Journal said that “the sport of kings lured him to his death.” Tennie said she didn’t know how the family would ever manage without his letters. His step-daughter said he always called Knoxville his home, although he stayed mostly in hotels in the Blue Grass region.

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*The Palace Livery Stable on State St. and the Pryor Brown Stables on Church Street were consolidated in 1895. The new business, known as the Knoxville Livery and Stock Co., on the corner of State and Clinch Sts, was owned by Pryor Brown and managed by D.A. Carpenter. Around 1915 the original Pryor Brown stable on Church Street became the Pryor Brown Garage and Transfer Co., and the first automobiles to use it were parked in horse stalls (KNS, Jan 15, 1952).

06/01/2026

Some pretty trees blooming in Old Gray now.

05/24/2026

One of the most revered citizens in Knoxville history was Capt. Joseph Jacques (1825-1885).

Capt. Jaques was born in Knock, Westmorland, a small village in Cumbria, England. He was the son of William Jaques (1765-1852) and Mary Hudson. The family traveled from Liverpool to Baltimore on the Hannah Sprague in 1842. They settled in or near Abingdon, Washington County, VA, where his parents are buried.

Joseph started with nothing and continually advanced, first working as a stone mason, then for a planter for $5 a month. He then moved to nearby Saltville, VA, to work for a salt mining firm (the 1850 census lists him as a clerk). In 1853 and 1854 he ran a steamboat line based in Loudon which ran between Chattanooga and Knoxville, thus the title “Captain.” He superintended construction of the vessels in Pittsburgh while educating himself on every aspect of this new venture. He was also an agent of the ETn&Ga RR for which the steamers were constructed. The 1852 manifest of his steamer Loudon from Pittsburgh to Nashville lists an incredible amount of merchandise, plus 85 cabin passengers and 80 deck passengers. The three successive steamers were the Loudon, Tennessee and Knoxville. For a brief time in 1857 he operated the light steamer Joseph Jacques from Knoxville to Louisville where passengers continued on 4-horse coaches to Montvale Springs, total time on the TN River 1-1/2 hrs.

Joseph did not serve in the Civil War but did provide provisions for the Confederate Army, actions that resulted in a presidential pardon. He married Jane Whitaker of Lindell, Smyth County, VA, in 1853. Lindell is midway between Abingdon and Saltville.

Around 1855 he was appointed Depot Agent of ETV&G RR Co in Knoxville around. While DA, he was elected Mayor of Knoxville 1858. In 1859 he was elected as one of 30 delegates to attend the state democratic convention in Nashville and in 1861 to the Knoxville Board of Aldermen.

He was elected president of the ETN&V RR in 1868 and held the post for the period of its reclamation following the Civil War, which had destroyed pretty much all but the roadbed, and involved clearing an enormous debt. In 1869 he was appointed to a finance committee for the ETN&Ga RR. That year he was also elected Gen Supt of the Holston Salt & Plaster Works at a salary of $5,000 where 23 yrs before he had worked as a common laborer for $12 a month.

In 1870 the Jaques family moved permanently to Knoxville. In Jan 1873, the Jaques Italian style residence, known as Annandale, was completed on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central which occupied an entire city block. (The house was demolished in 1909 to make way for the new Knoxville High School.) At some point he kept a pet deer in a clover field near the depot.

Capt. Jaques had a shock of bright red hair, a florid complexion and was said to have a big heart and a big brain. A favorite motto of his was “Politeness is mighty cheap.” He was known for his charity and deep humanity. In 1875 when a bridge collapse resulted in the death of the engineer, Capt Jacques, then Railroad Superintendent who had been nearby inspecting roads and arrived at the scene in time to witness the accident, was said to have wept like a child.

Jane and Joseph had no children of their own but raised Jane’s sister’s child, Susan Ayers, who came to them quite young and was their heir. In later years Capt. Jaques founded and was president of the E TN Natl Bank and was a trustee of the Deaf & Dumb Asylum. His wife was a member of the Broad Street ME Church, corner of Broad and Fifth, and though he never joined, he was beloved by its members and pastor, Rev. William Bays, and through the years he covered any deficit on church ledgers.

Capt. Jaques died of a heart attack on Jun 19, 1885, at age 60. His obituary said of him, “he was self-made, a quiet, retiring, modest man...a public-spirited citizen and a fine example of what a young man of force and sense can do for himself in this free country.” The full eulogy given in Gray Cemetery by Rev. William Bays was also published in full.

There were several sterling homages in regional newspapers, but the one that touches most was a note from Rev. Bays, also an exemplary character, to the Asheville Advance announcing the death: “He was a man of large heart and great benevolence and in some respects the best friend I have found aside from my own family. I feel that in his death one of the real props of life has been removed. Truly in the midst of life we are in death. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.”

05/16/2026

Catching Old Gray’s catalpa tree in bloom mid to late May is always a delight. Catalpas have long been planted as ornamental specimens in parks and arboreta for years, and there are now many naturally occurring hybrids, but, still, they are not that common.

The leaves are huge and the blooms are orchid-like with central colors of purple, magenta, and yellow, and they smell wonderful. The common name is “Indian bean tree” because of the long seed pods. An arborist friend tells us the tree is easy to propagate from seeds, is a relatively fast grower, and tolerates most soil types and drought conditions once established. It’s at the end of the center drive, and if you come in the next week or so you can enjoy the blooms.

05/10/2026

An important figure in Knoxville’s railroad history is Joseph Armbruster (1831-1906). Born in Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany, Armbruster emigrated to America in 1848 at age 17 unaccompanied by any relatives. He was a skilled cabinetmaker and worked that trade in NY for six years.

He came to Knoxville in 1854 and immediately began working for the RR as a carpenter. That year he helped build the first freight depot in Knoxville on Jackson St (now Ave) for the ETV&G RR. He became master of car building and repairs on the ETV&G in 1860. During the Civil War, when railcars were either destroyed by Longstreet or thrown in the river, Armbruster was employed as a Union bridge builder and relocated to Huntsville, AL. In 1864, he assisted in rebuilding the Loudon Bridge which had been burned by Confederates. After the war, he returned to Knoxville, supervised the building of rail shops, and was soon promoted to chief car inspector.

Armbruster married Mary Clark (1839-1876) in 1871. Mary died in June 1876 at age 37. He next married widow Margaret Grant Tolmie (1849-1914) in Sep 1876. Margaret was a native of Glasgow, Scotland, and came to America in 1854, possibly with her first husband Robert Tolmie (1844-1872), also a native of Glasgow. (We wrote about the Tolmie RR men in Dec 2019.)

Robert was shot at the rail yard after a dispute with another rail employee in 1872. The couple had a two-year-old son, Andrew Tolmie (1870-1951), who began working for the railroad at age 15 as a carpenter and retired as a machinist after 50 years. For every one of those 50 years he was elected treasurer of the Hill City Lodge No. 58, Intl Machinists Assn.

Joseph and Margaret had two children, a daughter (Mary Ann named after his first wife) and a son (Joseph George). At age 72, just two years before his death, Joseph was lauded in a Knoxville Sentinel column for being the oldest citizen still employed by the railroad.

The new Jackson Avenue freight depot built of brick and completed in 1889 is now the site of Jackson Terminal, a popular event venue.

We can only imagine local excitement over the first passenger trains when previously the only mode of transportation was horse and buggy. Looking back to that day in Jun 1855 when the first ET&Va passenger trains rolled into Knoxville, we share the words in the Knoxville Register: “As we stood last week and saw the swift passenger train dart up to our very city, and the omnibuses carry their loads of passengers in three minutes to our sumptuous hotels, we vividly realized that a new era for Knoxville had arrived.” One of the proudest looking on must surely have been 24-yr-old Joseph Armbruster.

05/02/2026

Many thanks to the David Amburn team for their work at Old Gray this morning. 13 volunteers gathered unwanted garbage, raked leaves, and cleared limbs from the area. Our south wall has never looked better!

05/02/2026

One of the loveliest monuments in Old Gray is that of Rosa Florentine Aurin McKinney (1875-1903).
Rosa’s grandparents Johan (John) and Johanna Aurin and their three sons came from Saxony, Prussia (Germany) in 1848. Rosa’s father Charles Augusta Aurin, the youngest, was 11. The men were cabinet makers. The family spent a little over a year in NY then moved to ETN in 1850.

Charles came to Knoxville in 1856 and established a lumber plant which was partially destroyed during the Civil War. At the onset of the Civil War, he mustered in under Lynch's Light Artillery Company in Jefferson Co. as a private in the Confederate Army. He was captured at Vicksburg July 4, 1863, and held as a POW first at Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, then Camp Morton in Indianapolis, IN. He was released after taking the Union Oath on January 2, 1865. After he returned to Knoxville, he rebuilt the lumber plant, then worked for a time for East Tennessee & Georgia RR, and last founded the first exclusive furniture store in Knoxville. After five years his health began to fail, and he turned to real estate with an interest in coal property.

Little is known of Rosa’s early life. In 1888 she was an honor roll student at the Girls’ High School on Union Ave. In 1893 Rosa, her mother, sister, and brother were among a party of 60 which attended the Chicago World’s Fair. The party, led by Knoxville city school teacher Prof. L. S. London, left Knoxville on July 16 aboard the Knoxville, Cumberland Gap and Louisville RR and spent two weeks at the Fair. The rail round-trip excursion fare was $15.

Rosa married Arthur Jarnigan McKinney (1862-1940) in Oct 1896 in the Centennial Baptist Church on Deaderick Ave. The Aurins were founding members of the German Lutheran Church, corner of Asylum (now Western Ave) and Broadway—and, in fact, the Aurin men had done much of the construction of that building—but Centennial had attracted many young people and was a popular wedding venue at the time. Arthur worked for the Mester-Newcomer Dry Goods Co and a few years later was an employee of Daniel Briscoe Bro & Co.

Rosa died on Jul 29, 1903, of heart failure. She was only 28 and left two children, five-yr-old Kenneth and one-yr-old Dorothy (or Dortha). Arthur and the children soon moved to Etowah where Arthur established the A J McKinney Dept Store. In 1907 he married Otzie Boyd, head of the store’s millinery dept. They had no children.

The inscription on Rosa’s tombstone—“Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal”—is a quote from a hymn by Irish poet Thomas Moore:

"Come, you disconsolate, where'er you languish;
come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal."

Moore’s works were popular in Knoxville in the early 1900s, were often a program topic of Knoxville literary clubs—Athene Club, Ossoli Circle, Newman Circle—and were frequently featured in the Knoxville Sentinel.

04/25/2026

04/19/2026

Before mowing begins in Old Gray and native wildflowers emerge, one may be reminded of the several-hundred-acre farm of John Dameron that once occupied this area. Dameron (whose name, according to family trees and his tombstone in Shelby, NC, was also spelled Damron) was a wealthy pioneer contractor, businessman, and slaveowner who built many churches and courthouses in East TN. He built Knoxville’s first brick courthouse which once stood across the street from the current courthouse. His slaves, trained as masons, did the labor.

The Dameron land (also called Damron’s Addition) once encompassed Old Gray, the National Cemetery and North Knoxville to around Baxter Avenue. According to his wife the property made poor farmland, and Dameron sold in the mid 1800s. The family moved to a large plantation in Shelby, NC, where John died in 1870. There are no Dameron (or Damron) descendants in Old Gray, but two of his daughters are buried in New Gray Cemetery.

The Madonna is the monument for Eleanor Deane Swan Audigier and her parents, Dr. Matthew Dodson Swan and Celia Ann Garrison Swan. Eleanor, a painter of flowers, might find pleasure in this Spring bouquet of buttercups, red clover, daisies, and lyreleaf sage, all hardy native perennials that thrive in poor soil.

04/14/2026

April is National Poetry Month, and Old Gray is proud to honor Knoxville’s first acclaimed but largely unknown poet, Amy Elizabeth May Rogers (1890-1942). Amy’s father Francis (“Frank”) May grew up in Jonesboro and came to Knoxville to work in wholesale in the late 1880s. He married Georgia May Powell in 1889. The Mays lived at 1316 Forest Avenue in Ft. Sanders, and Amy was a star pupil at the Moses School in Mechanicsville (now Emerald Academy). She married James J. Frederick Rogers (1885-1910) in Nov 1909. She was 19, Fred was 24. Fred’s father was a pioneer doctor who did a lot of charity work in remote sections of Knox County and, at one time, maintained an office in Knoxville. The newlyweds were to spend the winter at the Rogers’ country home at McMillan Station on Millertown Pike. Sadly, Fred died there the following Jan 1910 after an illness of six weeks. Amy never remarried and continued to live with her family on Forest Avenue.

She was elected substitute teacher at Van Gilder School in Feb, 1918, and that summer attended the state’s first Normal School in Johnson City (now ETSU). A normal school was an institution for the training of teachers, a concept that originated in Europe and gained popularity in the U.S. during the 19th century. Her first recognition as a poet came in 1927 when she took first place out of 125 entries in the Knoxville News Sentinel (KNS) poetry contest. She placed third out of 250 in the 1929 contest. That same year she was one of two poets whose poems were considered “so excellent” they were given honorable mentions in the TN Press & Author’s Club with awards made at the convention in Lookout Mtn, Chattanooga.

The 1930s were momentous years for Amy as a poet. She took first place in the state-wide TN Federation of Women’s Clubs poetry contest in May, 1930. Also that month, her poem “The Last of the Orchard” won first place in the Knoxville branch of the League of American Pen Women (KLAPW) contest. Also in May, her poem “Abandoned Roads” took first place in the 1930 Ossoli Circle Poetry contest and was featured in the Jul 12, 1930, Literary Digest published in NY by Funk & Wagnalls, whose editor called the poem “a gem.” It was also featured in the Nov 30, 1930, Christian Leader, the Aug, 1930, North Hastings Review, Toronto, Canada, and in the Nov 1930 Melbourne, Australia Advocate.

In Sep 1930 she was chosen as poet to compose and read the commemorative poem at the ETHS’ Sep 1930 sesquicentennial celebration of the Rendezvous of Sycamore Shoals on Watauga in Elizabethton, TN. There were vocalists, a band, addresses by ex-Gov Alfred Taylor, and the president of Washington College. Two of her poems were included in the UT Anthology of University Verse 1920-1930 in Jul 1930.

Amy held several offices of the KLAPW including recording secy in 1932 and president 1933 and 1934. In 1934 she was honored at the Natl LAPW conference in Washington for her poem “White Rhododendron” (also titled “Altar Lamp”). Also in 1934 one of her poems was included in the national poetry magazine Kaleidograph. In 1935 she was one of three judges of the Ossoli Circle Poetry Prize.

A big honor came in 1937 when her poem “Abandoned Roads” was included in the Desk Drawer Anthology: Poems for the American People compiled by Alice Longworth Roosevelt and her brother Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who stated “these poems lie closest to the American heart.” The poems were solicited by author and drama critic Alexander Woollcott through his CBS Radio show The Town Crier. Amy’s poem was submitted by a woman in Wisconsin. There were over 376 poems in this volume, selected from 40,000 entries; and although most were penned by little-known poets, there were also several by the greats, i.e., Benet, Emerson, Frost, Harte, Kilmer, Lindsay, Longfellow, Millet, Poe, Sandberg, Thoreau, Whitman, and Whittier.

In 1938 Amy won first place in the Nashville branch of the LAPW poetry contest. She also wrote short stories, and in 1938 her story “Scars,” one of 6,000 submissions, won first place in Writers Digest’s contest. Her work was occasionally read on Knoxville radio stations WROL and WNOX.
Three of her poems were included in the 1939 five-volume North American Book of Verse edited by Henry Harrison of NY. She won first and second prize in the Knoxville LAPW poetry contest in 1939.
Several of her poems appeared in the KNS column “Verse or Worse.”

Amy was one of four winners of poetry prizes in 1940 in a poetry contest sponsored by Breckenridge News of Cloverport, Ky. Also in 1940 she self-published a chapbook of poems titled “Out of the Silence: Poems from the Smokies.” For several years she maintained a cabin in the Smokies which she called “Half-A-Hill.” During summers there, she learned much about the people and wildlife of the Park, and that experience went into those poems. The book was one of two Knoxville books on exhibit at the 1940 fall conference of Southeastern branches of the Natl LAPW in Monteagle, TN.

Amy was a big influence on her students’ literary aspirations. When several Tyson Jr High Poetry Club members’ poems appeared in KNS’ “Verse or Worse” in Apr’39, they were all former students as were half the club members. She also promoted student membership in literary clubs, as seen in her letter in the Knoxville Journal in Jun, 1941, to the new president of the KLAPW urging a return to student membership: “Years ago I was invited to attend the meetings of the KLAPW as a student member. I have a very slight claim, indeed, to the name of ‘poet,’ but the little I have done is due almost entirely to the inspiration of the discussions and the encouragement of members of the branch.”

Amy’s fondest wish was to retire after teaching for 25 years, but because of illness, retired after 23. She died before receiving her first $60 pension check, but the City Council returned to her estate the $240 she had paid into the pension fund. From her Oct 3, 1942, obituary: “…. she was a leader among teachers…. Her teaching career began when Van Gilder was a small school, and she saw it grow into the modern departmental school of today, where UT student teachers gain elementary practice and experience…. Long after some of her students had left school, they came back to show her poems and stories they had written.”

Amy’s poems were referenced in three editions of Granger’s Index to Poetry 1940, ‘53, and ‘62 and were included in the 1931 and 1932 editions of Mountain Life and Work, the Magazine of the Appalachian South. For five years after her death, her mother gave the KLAPW’s Amy May Rogers Memorial Prize. Currently, three of her poems are included in the Poetry Explorer: Your Free Poetry Website https://www.poetryexplorer.net/.