This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/RgB.2ACE/568 Message Board Post: Maryville Times, (Blount Co. TN) Saturday, June 7, 1902: "Editor Times---“Permit me to thank you for the historical sketches of Maryville, recently published by you, giving the names of a number of the progressive and prominent men, that selected and laid off a plat of ground for a city in one of the most beautiful localities in all East Tennessee, an an elevated plain, surrounded by fertile valleys. Looking southward, one can behold the Smoky Mountains that intervene between North Carolina and Tennessee. Down by the foot of which flows the Little Tennessee on her westward course, on past Chilhowee, Citico and on past the Henley, Bartley and McGhee homesteads. Some three miles farther down where the Tellico River, coming east intersects with the Tennessee, and the old Federal Road crosses the river and leads on back east, was the Central Stage Route from Georgia and Alabama, to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I was a small boy but remember some of the stage drivers, among them was John Gamble, Julius Fagg and Richard Reagan! , who was the husband of my young mistress, Miss Patsey Black. But I did not know what a slave was as they were very kind to me. My mother told me that my master gave me the name of one of the men he voted for, William H. Harrison, who was elected President in 1840. My master’s name was John Black, and he, in company with his wife, emigrated from Tuckeyhoe, Virginia, and settled in East Tennessee when it was a territory. They brought my mother with them, who lived until 1867 when she was taken to her reward. My step-father, Henry Skip, was a tanner and was employed a long time by John McClain of Morganton and Esq. John Griffitts of Unitia.” ---W.H. Dickson, National Soldiers Home, Dayton, Ohio.