Last week I told a little about Dr. Swancey W. Kennedy (1844-1923), who served as a physician in the Fork, the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston rivers. As promised, I have begun perusing the 40-plus diaries of his daily activities. Although the year written on the initial page of each diary is sometimes difficult to read (or has been entirely obliterated by age), I think the earliest one I have is from 1888. In his first entry, Dr. Swancey W. Kennedy says he went to see James Wayland, among others.

I’ve often wondered about the Wayland family, because a few times a week, I travel the Fork road named for them. Who were they? The earliest ones of the area came from Sevier County and first lived across the French Broad in the Seven Islands area, having been born in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Generations of Waylands are buried in several other Knoxville cemeteries, but the ones I’m focusing on are those of the Fork.

James Monroe Wayland, born in 1857, was a farmer who once had a post office in his home and served as a mail carrier in his Fork community, where he was interested in the improvement of schools and roads. He married Mary Isabelle Kennedy in 1876. He was elected as a constable in the Fork in 1886, and later served as magistrate and foreman of the Knox Grand Jury in 1929, when a record 44 indictments were made against bootleggers. Robert Wayland, also an officer, married Dr. Swancey Kennedy’s daughter, Magnolia.

Gravestone of James M. Wayland and wife Mary Isabelle

We rarely get a glimpse of a woman’s character for that period, but in 1890, when Mrs. Eliza J. (McMillan), wife of L.H. Wayland, died of “consumption” (tuberculosis) in Riverdale, she was memorialized in an obituary which stated:

“For more than a week, her life has been linked by a single thread, soon to be sundered by the cruel hands of death. Gradually she weakened, more feeble became her voice, slower became her heart pulsation, nearer and nearer drew the end until at last the summoning angel called, and the cords of life gave way. Her spirit took its heavenward bound to the joys of endless day. The once familiar voice is now hushed, that face which always wore a cheerful smile is pale and wan, and indeed a loving one is before us, wrapped in the stillness of death. She proved a devoted Christian and died with a living faith in Christ. All her pains and afflictions she bore without a murmur. She felt that they were the open gateway to untold felicities beyond. The thought of death seemed to make her happy. The “river of death seemed but one short span.”

Some members of the Wayland family were businessmen and active in politics in the Fork. Many were successful farmers, as was Felix Grundy Wayland (1829-1907), who had been a Union sympathizer, while his brother was a Confederate captain during the Civil War. Most members of the Wayland family in the Fork are buried at Old Salem on Wayland Road, but others are buried at Mt. Harmony, Asbury, and Huckleberry Springs.

Another interesting incident I learned about was from 1897, when one of the Wayland men filled a Plumlee man full of buckshot for saying ugly things about his sister. I can’t wait to read the 1897 diary to see whether Dr. Swancey Kennedy ministered to Plumlee’s wounds, but perhaps some stories are best left 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.

Enjoyed this article? Read more of Jan Loveday Dickens’s stories about the people, places, and history that make the Fork community unique.

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