The Bleak House
United Daughters of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis Chapter #900, visited two historical homes in Knoxville for their April meeting. The Bleak House and Crescent Bend homes were visited by UDC members.
Both homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Bleak House belongs to Local Chapter #89 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It is also called Confederate Memorial Hall. The Bleak House is one of the area’s premier wedding sites today. The gardens are three acres and was designed and planted more than 100 years ago. There are five terraced levels that descend to the Tennessee River. The landscaping consisted of fountains, pools, ancient shrubs and wisteria.
The house is an Antebellum Classical Revival style house and was completed in 1858. The home was built for Robert Houston Armstrong and his wife, Louisa Franklin. It was given to the couple as a wedding gift by the bride’s father.
The Armstrong’s named the home after Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House” novel. The bricks in the house were molded on-site using slave labor. The Bleak House inscription reads: Bleak House, the home of Robert Houston Armstrong and Louisa Franklin Armstrong, is an Italianate style mansion completed in 1858.
During the siege and Battle of Knoxville, Nov.17-Dec. 4, 1863, the house was Confederate General James Longstreet’s headquarters. A sharpshooter unit, “The Elite Twenty,” occupied the house’s second floor east-facing windows, as well as the lower. They were armed with British Whitworth rifles, accurate to about 1,500 yards. On Nov. 18, when the Federal line was 750 yards east of the house, Union General Williams P. Sanders ordered Lt. Samuel Benjamin in Fort Loudon to put a cannon shot through the Bleak House tower to dislodge the sharpshooters. Called “The Prettiest Shot of the War” by the Federals, it hit the second floor of the house at its southeast corner killing three of the sharpshooters. Their pencil portraits are on the tower’s interior north wall.
That afternoon, Sanders was mortally wounded, reputedly by a sharpshooter, after watching Capt. Stephen Winthrop rally the Confederates. Federal officials renamed Fort Loudon in honor of Sanders.
During the fighting, Mrs. Armstrong and her daughters were confined to an upstairs bedroom for their safety. A sentry was instructed not to allow them downstairs without permission. Mrs. Armstrong once defied the sentry, and when she refused to return upstairs, he fired a warning shot into the stairway, where the .58 caliber minie ball remains today.
On Dec. 4, General Longstreet left Bleak House, a place riddled with many bullet holes, as well as a shell scar in the main parlor.
The home known as Crescent Bend was also visited by UDC members, located on Kingston Pike in Knoxville. The house was once surrounded by a 600 acre working farm. The house consists of five fountains, nine terraces and manicured formal Italian gardens. It has three acres of botanical gardens. Today the home is also a very popular venue for weddings. Now it is best known as the house whose gardens are filled with tulips and brides.
The home is a traditional brick farmhouse, built in 1834, on Drury Paine Armstrong’s farm. The house is known as Crescent Bend because of its location on a bend of the Tennessee River. The house was purchased by William P. “Buck” Toms, and turned into a museum in 1977. The home consists of 18th century English and American furniture, decorative arts and silver.
During the Civil War, the house was Confederate General Joseph B. Kershaw’s headquarters during the siege of Knoxville. It was used by both Union and Confederate Armies as a command center and hospital. Thousands of soldiers encamped and fought skirmishes on Crescent Bend farmland.
It was possibly also used for a safe house on the Underground Railroad. A hidden trapdoor beneath the main staircase led to a room where runaway slaves were sheltered. On Nov. 18, 1863 Union Brigadier General William P. Sanders was mortally wounded on Crescent Bend farmland. He died the next day at the Lamar House in downtown Knoxville.
Anyone interested in the Daughters of the Confederacy can visit www.udcjeffersondavischapter900.com or facebook at www.facebook.com/udcjeffersondavischapter900
Crescent Bend