It was Sunday, May 24, 1891. A Memorial Sabbath was being held at the First Methodist Episcopal Church downtown at the corner of Clinch and Market Street (then Prince Street, see story here). It had been 30 years since the beginning of the Civil War, and this particular gathering was held by the Ed Maynard Post #14 of the Grand Army of the Republic. The collective of East Tennessee Union Army veterans included many Knoxville notables, including former Mayor William Rule.
There were introductory services and a prayer and the event closed with the singing of America and the Doxology. The sermon was sermon by Rev. Edgar Alonza Elmore, at the time, the founding pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church. Elmore was born in New Market in 1852, old enough to live through the Civil War but not quite old enough to fight in it.
He graduated as Valedictorian of the Maryville College class of 1874. He then moved to the Big Apple to attend the Union Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1877. His work in Presbyterian ministry began in New York City, but he made his way back to East Tennessee by the early 1880s, where he returned to his Alma Mater to teach Latin for four years.
By April of 1886, the good reverend along with 18 congregants organized Fourth Presbyterian Church. On Nov. 7 that same year, the new church held its first service in its new sanctuary, located at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Luttrell Street in what we now call Historic Fourth & Gill. The original church site later became the home of Brownlow School and, currently, the namesake Lofts.
By 1900, Elmore was called away to Chattanooga, where he served as pastor of Second Presbyterian there for years. When he left Knoxville, he was on his second marriage (his first wife died young) and second set of children. He lived out his days there, dying in 1927. He’s buried in Chattanooga Memorial Park.
After Elmore’s departure, the congregation at Fourth Presbyterian was served for nearly a decade by Rev. John M. Richmond. The church’s third pastor, Rev. Joseph P. Calhoun. Early in his ministry, which began in April of 1911, Calhoun began the charge for a new building, the congregation and its needs had outgrown the original. The brick Gothic Revival church with its stained-glass windows was completed in 1914. With that, Fourth Presbyterian moved a couple of blocks west across Broadway into Old North Knoxville. And there it has remained, across Glenwood Avenue from Rose’s Mortuary for over a century.
Fourth Presbyterian in the 1910s/20s where it still stands today (Photo: Thompson Brothers-McClung Digital Archives)
In 2009, Fourth Presbyterian merged with First United Presbyterian Church (established in 1877 at Knoxville College) and became Fourth United Presbyterian Church. The church is currently seeking a non-profit or community organization to lease their beautiful building so the congregation can remain and grow their church.
Sources: Tennessee State Museum & Archives, McClung Digital Collection-Knox County Library, The Knoxville Journal digital archives
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
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