Kelly Jackson of Rossville has a small silver pitcher that she thinks was designed to hold syrup or some kind of liquid but now holds a little history related to the Hotel Patten.

Ms. Jackson came into possession of the pitcher because she had done payroll, accounts payable and computer work for Lookout Mountain businessman William Frank Hutcheson, who died of cancer in April and whose family had headed Peerless Woolen Mills in Rossville.

Approximately two years ago when Mr. Hutcheson was vacating and selling the mill complex and moving his offices for his commercial real estate business and other ventures to the former Georgia unemployment office adjacent to it, he was trying to clean out the structure with Ms. Jackson.

“All the rooms had stuff filled for decades and decades,” she said.

One item they found was a box that had some nice china in it. Since Ms. Jackson was moving into a new residence, he thought she might want it.

Only after looking in the box further did she find an item even more valuable – the pitcher.

Ms. Jackson, whose mother, Pat Jackson, was operations manager for Mr. Hutcheson, said Mr. Hutcheson told her that it had belonged to one of his ancestors dating back several generations.

“He (the ancestor) liked the pitcher and was friends with the man who ran the Hotel (Patten) and he gave it to him,” Ms. Jackson remembered Mr. Hutcheson telling her. “He went to some kind of presidential banquet there and he liked the pitcher.”

Mr. Hutcheson’s grandfather was John LaFayette Hutcheson Sr., who had come from Sweetwater and established the Peerless Woolen Mills after serving as general manager of Park Woolen Mills, also in Rossville.

W.F. Hutcheson, a brother of Mr. Hutcheson Sr., had been an official with Mountain City Mills, a flour and meal processing plant located in a still-standing building near the southeast corner of King and 10th streets in downtown Chattanooga.

W.F. Hutcheson is also remembered for the large brick home he built on South Crest Road. It had been designed by noted Chattanooga architect S.M. Patton.

The Hotel Patten – which is now a government-subsidized facility for the elderly and disabled called Patten Towers -- had opened in 1908 and was built by J.B. Pound with financial backing from such people as Z.C. Patten and J.T. Lupton.

The first manager was Charles Alexander, while longtime manager John Lovell, for whom Lovell Field was named, came to work at the hotel as auditor in 1910 but did not begin serving as manager until 1918.

Perhaps the presidential banquet where the pitcher was presented to one of the Hutcheson family members was the one given for President William Howard Taft.

He had come to Chattanooga during his successful campaign for president in 1908, and a lavish banquet was given in his honor at the hotel on Nov. 10, 1911, during a goodwill tour he was making on his way back to Washington, D.C. Also during that same visit, he stopped in Rossville.

Whether any of these people were involved in the presentation or receiving of the pitcher is apparently lost to history. Also not clear is whether President Taft or another president or dignitary ever put his hands on or used the pitcher during the banquet.

Besides Hotel Patten and Chattanooga, also inscribed on the pitcher are the name, “R. Wallace,” the number, “0721,” and the words, “Silver Soldered..” The 10-ounce size of the piece is also etched on it.

Ms. Jackson, who was unfamiliar with the Hotel Patten until after getting the pitcher, said she is now unemployed, and will probably have to try to sell the silver piece.

That may be hard when the time comes because she admires it quite a bit.

“Anything to me that is silver is pretty,” she said. “It is just unique.”

Jcshearer2@comcast.net

Inscription on the silver pitcher