Many individuals will make their way on Easter to their respective places of worship. If you pass through rural areas on any given day, you might wonder where that little frame country church came from. How long has it been there, and who built it? If it’s an old church that stands in the Fork, the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston rivers, Enoch Huffaker might have had a hand in its construction.

Enoch Huffaker

Born in 1848 to Samuel and Mary (Underwood) Huffaker, Enoch Underwood Huffaker was just 13 when the Civil War began, so he was among those left behind as his older buddies and the grown men marched off to battle. When the need arose just a couple of years later, he used his woodworking resources to make a coffin to bury a neighbor’s baby. He did such a good job, that he was asked again and again to help inter the dead as the war dragged on.

Enoch’s distant kin, Jesse M. Huffaker, was among the few survivors of the Sultana steamboat explosion that happened on the Mississippi River while bringing soldiers home after the war. Once the war ended, Enoch bought a horse-drawn funeral coach and continued to serve his community as undertaker. One thing led to another, and as he honed his carpentry skills, he began to build furniture and structures as well. His work included churches, houses and other buildings throughout the Fork, as well as some in Sevierville, New Market and near Fort Sanders in Knoxville.

The houses he built included Peter and Nancy (Huffaker) Keener’s home, constructed of hand-planed poplar at Seclusion Bend in what we now know as Seven Islands State Birding Park. Bethel Church at the park’s entrance also bears Enoch’s handiwork. The knots and rustic character of the second-grade lumber are today appreciated as part of the interior’s charm and beauty. French Broad Methodist (originally Riverdale Methodist) is another example of his projects.

A descendant of Revolutionary War veterans Michael Huffaker and his son George, Enoch was well-versed in civic service and entrepreneurship. Generations of Huffakers endeavored in occupations such as woodworking, ferry running, preaching and making pottery from the rich, red clay of the French Broad River banks. Besides carpentry, Enoch learned the art of embalming and continued to work as an undertaker and funeral director throughout his life, eventually having a mortuary and funeral supply store. Enoch Underwood Huffaker died in 1936 at the age of 88, believed to be the oldest undertaker in the state at the time, but his craftsmanship still stands in rural churches, much of their history forgotten in the Fork.

Jan Loveday Dickens is an educator, historian, and author of Forgotten in the Fork, a book about the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers, obtainable by emailing ForgottenInTheFork@gmail.com.