Mabry Hood House

The Mabry Hood House, also known as the Mabry Hood Mansion, was an antebellum home on the southern side of Kingston Pike in Knox County, Tennessee. The vacant home sat in the path of Pellissippi Parkway, and was demolished when the construction commenced on the limited access highway in the late 1980's. Mabry Hood Road still remains.

The house was once part of a productive 3,000 acre plantation owned by the Mabry family, one of Knoxville's wealthiest and most prominent 19th Century families. Robert Tracy McKenzie states that during the ante-bellum era, George W. Mabry owned the farm but also resided in Knoxville. His brother, Joseph Alexander Mabry, Sr., and Joseph Alexander Mabry, Jr., (1825-1882), both immortalized in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, are also associated with this property. (Joseph Alexander Mabry Jr. was born there.) The Mabry family also built a home in east Knoxville, the Mabry-Hazen House, Knoxville, which is now a historic house museum.

The family's wealth, prominence and political connections are illustrated by how Jeanette Mabry, wife of George Mabry, was treated during the U.S. Civil War. Although George Mabry was officially "neutral" (and never took the Confederate loyalty oath), his Scottish-born wife was an outspoken opponent of succession. Robert Tracy McKenzie reports that Mrs. Mabry threatened to return to Scotland if the South was successful, and informed her husband that she would not lived in the C.S.A. even if "Washington and Jefferson were both raised from the dead". Her wealth, prominence and being female, as well as having Joseph Mabry - an early secessionist leader - as a brother-in-law, are cited as reasons she was not harmed. The neighboring Baker family did not share her views.

The Mabry Hood House was one of several antebellum plantation homes located along Kingston Pike in the western Knox County. (The nearby Baker Peters House and Statesview, both near the intersection of Kingston Pike and Peters Road, still stand.) Mabry Hood was a two-story, Greek Revival style home with a columned, two-story high front portico. Although primarily brick, wood siding was located on the front face of the home behind the portico. Unlike Knollwood, which was located on the top of Bearden Hill, the Mabry Hood House sat close to modern-day Kingston Pike, and near grade.

External links

• TopoQuest.com: Mabry Hood Mansion - Topographic map includes the Mabry Hood Mansion as a black square, before Pellissippi Parkway was extended south. The mansion is located south of the intersection of Mabry Hood Road and Kingston Pike, and north of a kidney-shaped pond.
• Park City Online: Chilhowee Park History

References

• Brewer, Becky French, and McDaniel, Douglas Stuart. Park City, Tennessee: Images of America, Arcadia Publishing (2005).
• McKenzie, Robert Tracy. Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War. Oxford University Press, USA (2006).