St. Elmo Historic District (Chattanooga, Tennessee) - Early St. Elmo and Chattanooga

Early St. Elmo and Chattanooga

Up until 1838, the Tennessee River was the dividing line between Hamilton County and the Cherokee country. That year, the community of Ross's Landing was surveyed, and in 1839 the village of Chattanooga was established near the fork with Chickamauga Creek. In 1840, the state of Tennessee began to sell the property formerly owned by the Cherokees at the rate of $7.50 an acre. Much of the Tennessee side of Lookout Mountain and the surrounding land was purchased by the Whiteside and Cravens families.

The area at the foot of Lookout Mountain was acquired shortly after the Civil War by Colonel Abraham Malone Johnson and his wife, Thankful Whiteside Johnson. In 1885, Colonel Johnson divided his farm into residential and commercial lots. The name "St. Elmo" was taken from the title of a novel written by Augusta J. Evans Wilson, who had spent several summers on Lookout Mountain and found the view similar to that of St. Elmo Castle in Naples, Italy. Her book, St. Elmo, was published in 1866, and ultimately rivaled Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in impact and influence. St. Elmo became one of the top three best-selling novels of the nineteenth century.

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