Making People Into Ghosts: Reconstructing the Legacy of J.G.M. Ramsey

These baby shoes, likely belonging to Ramsey or one of his siblings, were photographed at the Ramsey House Museum in one of the children's rooms. The house represents a wealthy rural childhood for Dr. Ramsey, benefitted by his father's influence in the region and maintained by the labor of those the family kept enslaved.

This bedroom, also at the Ramsey House, would have belonged at various points to each of the wives of Francis Alexander Ramsey. The elder Ramsey had three wives during his lifetime, the first, Margaret "Peggy", being mother to J.G.M.

This bookshelf holds several copies of J.G.M. Ramsey's influential historical text The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century, as well as the last remnants of his personal library. The bulk of the Ramsey family library had been housed at the Mecklenberg plantation, which was burned during the seige of Knoxville in 1863.

This is the exterior of the Ramsey House. Completed in 1797, the home was commissioned by Francis Alexander Ramsey and originally named Swan Pond for the private pond overlooked by the house. The grounds and home were maintained by the people enslaved there, who lived in the stone wing seen in front, or in additional structures around the property.

This kitchen sits within that antechamber seen above so as not to conduct excess heat into the main living areas. As many as six enslaved women lived in the small room above the kitchen, close at hand to attend to the desires of the Ramsey family.

This pen holder belonged to J.G.M. Ramsey and was well-used in the course of his academic work. It has three handles, each showing white ceramic where the gold and blue glaze has been worn away by repeated use. 

These small objects, largely sewing tools, sit in the parlor of the Ramsey House museum. They would have been kept in the home in order to attend to quick mending of clothing.

This display in the upper floors of the Ramsey House depicts aspects of the agrarian lifestyle embraced by similar plantation owning families. The Ramseys would have had a herd of sheep at their property whose wool would be processed using the various tools shown here.

This stone marker memorializes the former site of the Lebanon in the Fork Presbyterian church at which Ramsey was a pastor and the cemetery in which he is now buried. The cemetery sits atop a hill overlooking the original site of Ramsey's Mecklenburg plantation.

These three graves belong, from left to right, to John and Arthur Ramsey, sons of J.G.M. Ramsey, Ramsey himself along with his wife Peggy, and Francis Alexander Ramsey along with two of his wives.

This pathway runs along a stone wall bordering the Lebanon in the Fork Cemetery. To the right of the path are train tracks.

This is the grave of J.G.M. Ramsey. In addition to his dates of birth and death, the inscription reads "Author of Annals of Tennessee. A patriot, a scholar, and a Christian."

The inscription opposite J.G.M.'s on the same stone is dedicated to his wife, Peggy. 

This is the present site of the East Tennessee Historical Society founded by J.G.M. Ramsey. The building houses the administrative offices of the organization, as well as a museum of local history.

Here is the downtown Knoxville rail station as seen from the Gay Street bridge. Ramsey was deeply influential in the building of rail infrastructure through Knoxville.

This obituary ran in Knoxville area newspapers following the death of Dr. Ramsey. This specific clipping is housed in a scrapbook in the Ramsey Family collection in Special Collections at the University of Tennessee library.

This cover page preambles a bill of sale of a Black child to a family member on the part of Dr. Ramsey. It reads "J.G.M. Ramsey Bill of sale to J.G. McKnitt Ramsey negro boy Allen $600.00 Oct. 10. 1839." The associated bill of sale describes Allan as being eight or nine years old at the time of the transaction. This document is also housed in the Ramsey Family Papers.

Also stored in the Ramsey Family Papers, this is the pardon issued by President Johnson for J.G.M. Ramsey following his exile from Knoxville and subsequent warrant for arrest related to his actions as a Confederate. Unable to attain a state-level pardon due to long-standing enmity with Governer William Brownlow, the family saught pardon at the federal level.