Interesting Facts About Jonesborough, TN

(c) 2012 Cathy Kennedy’s Blog

Last week, I wrote about Hometowns USA in which I mentioned Jonesborough, TN.  This past weekend, we visited the quaint town for the first time in many years.

Strolling the streets of Jonesborough is like stepping back in time. There are structures which date as far back as the late 1700s, such as the Chester Inn where three US Presidents slept – Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, & James K. Polk and the Washington County courthouse pictured below.

(c) 2012 Cathy Kennedy’s Blog

Interesting facts about Jonesborough:

  • Jonesborough is Tennessee’s oldest city established in 1779
  • Listed as one of the top ten most haunted towns in America
  • Storytelling Capital of the World
  • Receives about 100,000 from around the world annually
  • Home to a Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site, where you can see the remains of shovel-tusked elephant, a semi-aquatic pot-bellied rhino, a saber tooth tiger, red panda, alligator or even a humpless camel.

The historic district of Jonesborough is currently under restoration. The city is burying utility lines underground to return the street view to its simplicity and charm from the 1700s. We hope to return in the coming months when temperatures cool a bit to do another photo shoot and to tour more of the old buildings.

T2Q:

Women wearing period clothing in Jonesborough
  1. Thinking about the past, sometimes causes us to daydream about what it would have been to live hundreds of years ago. If you could, would you want to live in another time? For how long – a day, a week, years?

  2. What do you like most about the past – the way of life, the fashion, the buildings, ….?

Visit Miss Jenny and the rest of the Alphabe-Thursday classroom for more homework assignments of the letter ‘I’  and while you’re hopping around, be sure to play along with Miss Amanda in her latest edition of Thursday Two Questions.

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11 comments

  1. This is a place I’d love to visit.

    I often think the demise of interaction was both the garage door opener and the cell phone.

    People are so cocooned in their homes or so isolated by their technology.

    I’m not sure I’d like living like my Grandmother did (no electricity or indoor plumbing) but I think if we lost cell phones it wouldn’t be a bad thing.

    Thanks for an interesting link to Alphabe-Thursday’d Letter “I”.

    A+

  2. 1. It’s good to think about then and what it would be like, but I tend not to want to visit such a time as before in regards to being a black woman.

    2 There are things to love. The untouched places that gave beauty. Really working together as a family and in community, And I guess just the feeling of ‘those days’, it’s kinda nostalgic even when I didn’t experience it.

    Happy weekend!

  3. Now that’s one old town!
    Fun T2Q. I’ll have to look into that!
    I think they are burying telephone lines in the neighborhood next to ours. Then it’s our turn! We have a lot of large trees and have had a bunch of ice storms in the last few years. Guess it’s not for the same reasons as Jonesborough, but it will help! {:-D

  4. When I was was a kid, I so much wanted to live in Walnut Grove. It is funny, I love electronics a lot, but I would give them up in a heartbeat to be able to travel back in time to the Laura Ingalls time period.

    The reason I would want to go back is for the real sense of community that we have lost as we have gained new ways to communicate. I don’t even know all my neighbors in this 10 apartment building. Even as a kid, I knew I had to behave because the neighbors would tell my mom. Today sadly this has been lost. That is why I would want to go back.

  5. don’t know that much about Tenessee, so thanks for the informative post. I would like to try the past living in royalty. 1800’s when they were wearing the big huge dresses? I love the costumes. Back in the days, royalty can have anything and everything they wish, no is just not a word servants would speak of. Now a day royalty isn’t as royal since there are many tools and opportunities for someone to be hugely successful if they one day came up with something great.

  6. Cathy, this is a great post! We lived in Tennessee for 17 years, and loved visiting towns like Jonesborough. One of the things that Rod is looking forward to, since we are moving back to Georgia in a few weeks, is driving up into Tennessee when the leaves are turning.

  7. I have never been to Jonesborough, not even close to Tennessee since we moved to the US a year ago. But it sounds like a place I should visit.
    It may sound like a nice fantasy to live ‘back in the good ol’ days’, but in reality I believe those were really hard days and we would have a very hard time trying to adjust to it.

  8. Jonesborough is a great place to visit, though it’s been a while since I’ve been there. I’d love to live back in the day! I think I could do without everything except maybe the washing machine!

  9. Very interesting… I would like to visit one day. Not sure about the haunted part…LOL

    1. I would love to live back during the Pony Express days. I wouldn’t be the typical female though in a skirt. I’d be wearing pants like the men and riding on the Pony Express. I think I’d like to try it for about a week.

    2. I love being around horses and in those days everyone had them. I would like living simpler, but I know that I would miss having conveniences like indoor plumbing, electric, refrigeration! I’d get tired of hauling water in for a bath, too. I’d have to take one or two a day!!

  10. Thanks for this info! We may be driving down that way later this year and will make sure we make Jonesborough a stop on the way!

  11. I love Jonesborough. Especially the antique stores. I need to make a trip over there pretty soon. I didn’t know that about the top 10 most haunted.

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