927 East Terrace Was Home To The Arnolds For 7 Decades

The Arnold family lived for seven decades in a two-story brick house on the East Terrace of Cameron Hill, and it was still in excellent condition when Urban Renewal knocked it down.

James Townsend Arnold, a native of Ohio, had come to Chattanooga in 1885 to make a new start. He found a position with the lumber business of another Cameron Hill resident, J.F.

Loomis.

J.T. Arnold was born on the family farm near Greenville, Ohio, along with twin sister, Lydia. They were the youngest of 13 children. His father, William Arnold, was a native of South Carolina. His mother, Margaret Folberth, was from Maryland.

In 1866, J.T. Arnold left the family farm and moved to Indiana, where he entered the mercantile business. He was at Bluffton, Ind., until 1871, then he was in business at Montpelier until 1885. He was in the Indiana Legislature in 1879-80.

He married Elizabeth Johnston, and became the father of three sons. Tragedy struck the family, however, when J.T. Arnold’s wife died from pneumonia following what had been a successful surgery in September 1883.

One of his sons wrote in a book about the family that he “soon developed a restless dissatisfaction which rapidly crystallized into a determination to pull his life up by the roots, and start anew in some other locality. Particularly, he had his eye on the (then) territory of Washington. In fact he had his mind all made up to go there, when an old boyhood friend and college mate, John A. Hart, who had gone to Chattanooga at the close of the Civil War, wrote to him and suggested that, before he finally made up his mind, he ought to come to Chattanooga and look the situation over. Hart was still another of the Cameron Hill clan.

In February, 1885, J.T. Arnold liquidated his affairs. He had accumulated about $60,000 in cash in preparation for a new field of endeavor in the South, and he moved to the seemingly green pastures of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Late in the spring of 1885, the Arnolds all visited in Chattanooga. His son later wrote, "I was dazed by the size of Chattanooga – 21,000 population … and all the wonders of the big city.”

J.T. Arnold took a position as the secretary of Loomis & Hart as superintendent of the main office and the furniture department. His son said, “I recall that my father’s office was in an enormous unpainted frame building at Third and Market Streets, which, my father somewhat pridefully explained, had been built as a government warehouse during the civil war. Originally Loomis & Hart was a partnership of J. F. Loomis and John A. Hart, organized to operate a saw mill in Chattanooga, receiving their logs by enormous rafts floated down the Tennessee from away up in the mountains of East Tennessee and western tip of Virginia. They made money selling their first class lumber but had a terrible time finding a satisfactory market for their second class lumber, culls, etc. Eventually they conceived the brilliant idea of making it up into cheap – and I mean CHEAP – furniture …theirs was really the first of the Southern furniture factories, although a concern in North Carolina claims that honor, but the latter started considerably later than 1869, when Loomis & Hart began.”

J.T. Arnold was well-respected by his co-workers. His son noted, “When times of real stress came - the panic of 1893, the fire in 1912, and the reorganization that followed - his partners came to him with their hats in their hands and listened to his words of wisdom as a father.” He also observed that “Father’s sound sense and judgment kept the firm on an even keel throughout the panic of 1893, and, except for a few years about that time, they made considerable money – around 10 percent on their capital – paying out their profits as dividends and, owing to the high and increasing value of their real estate, able to get deeper and deeper into the local banks for expansion funds.”

J.T. Arnold remarried to Lettie Cleveland of Indiana in July 1886, and moved to a new home at 927 East Terrace. His son recalled the home: “It was built in 1886, on a lot 75 feet wide and around 150 deep. The front yard consisted of terraces, steps, and slope to such extent that the ground floor was on a level with the house-tops across the street. This gave an unobstructed view from the veranda, looking over the city of Chattanooga.

“Exclusive of the somewhat expansive halls on both floors, there were only eight rooms in the house as originally built. In 1889, an extension was constructed, adding two more halls and about four more rooms. The original part was solid brick and the new part, brick veneer.

”It wasn’t a mansion, in any sense of the word, but the first floor rooms of the older part had the most beautifully finished woodwork that I have ever seen. There were fire-places on this floor and the four mantles were cherry, with the most wonderful finish imaginable… How this wood-work and finish came into existence is worthy of being recorded.”

“In the first place, Father being in the lumber and building material business, was able to select the very cream of the available wood for the trim. About the time all was in place, the foreman of the finishing department of the furniture factory went on a drunk (spree in those days) and Mr. Loomis very unsympathetically fired him. Father got hold of the scamp, sobered him up and put him to work finishing the wood-work of the new house. The instructions were that nobody cared what it cost and no one was going to hurry him, but the wood work finish must be nearly perfect as it was humanly possible to get it.”

“Apparently the old drunk appreciated the treatment, for he went to work soberly and diligently and put into his job all of the gratitude and price of craft that he was able to muster. The finish that he put on that trimming lives on, a monument to his skill and appreciation and to my father’s tolerance of other people’s frailties.”

“When we moved there in 1886, there were a lot of little saplings set out in the front yard. We used to joke with Father about them. Now the house stands back in a grove of magnificent elms – regular wine-glass type. Father grew inordinately proud of them and never allowed anyone except the Davy Tree Surgeon people to touch them.”

J.T. Arnold and his wife traveled to Europe. Unlike many Chattanoogans, he survived an attack of typhoid fever in the early 1890’s.

Though two of the Arnold sons left Chattanooga, Henry Craig Arnold took a job at the lumber business and remained on Cameron Hill. Shortly after he started to work at the plant that was just down the hill, Henry met a girl by the name of Orpheus "Orphia" Snodgrass, "the daughter of a pretty well-to-do competitor of Loomis and Hart in the lumber business, who ran a mill up the river at the northern edge of the city. Old Man Snodgrass (as everyone called him) had two sons and a whole houseful of daughters. Henry and Orphia were sort of kid sweethearts for years but hadn't attracted much attention. Finally, the old man died and one of the Loomis boys came into the office and said, 'Henry, I am afraid you are overlooking an opportunity. Old Man Snodgrass left a hell of a lot of money and has a lot of good-looking daughters. You better get busy and pick out one of them.' Henry replied, 'That sounds to me like a pretty good idea. Maybe I will do something about it.' In 1901, only a matter of months after that conversation, Henry and Orphia were married and I am inclined to think Young Loomis thought he had originated the idea. Orphia was far and away the best one of the Snodgrass girls and made Henry a fine wife. She was one of the best-hearted women I ever knew."

In 1910, tragedy again struck J.T. Arnold when his second wife died of pernicious anemia. After that, J.T. Arnold suggested that Henry and Orphia sell their home nearby and move back in the big house at East Terrace. H.C. Arnold had built a house at 625 Prospect St. for his new bride. Under the new arrangement, Orphia, "became the lady of the house and, in consideration of her doing so, J.T. Arnold made an arrangement by which Henry was able to reduce his living expenses to almost a nominal amount. This, combined with his natural thrift, enabled Henry to begin to build up what has become a modest fortune."

On one occasion, however, J.T. Arnold was not so happy with Orphia as lady of the house. At the time the family had a butler-coachman-gardener named Marcus and "a rather nice-looking cook and house maid Lena. Orphia awoke early one morning and, while going down the back stairs, heard a commotion in the cook's room at the foot of the stairs, culminating in a hastily opened window. Orphia stepped out on a little side porch to observe the hasty departure of a male visitor. The account goes: "Duly outraged, Orphia came back into the house and fired the cook instanter, chasing her right out of the house. Then she started in herself to do something about breakfast for Father and Henry. After some delay, she finally prepared the meal and, while they were eating, recited, in accents of indignation, the terrible reason for the delay and what she had done about it. Father listened sympathetically and then delivered the following. "Of course you understand that I don't want this to be a made a bawdy house, but looking after other people's morals is a poor business and Lena was a damned good cook."

In the summer of 1912, “the big blow fell in the form of the burning of the (Loomis & Hart) factory… Fortunately, it burned at night. It went like a pile of excelsior and I tremble to think what the result would have been – in the way of human life – if the fire had come in the day time when crowded with employees.” Both Mr. Loomis and Mr. Arnold were now in their seventies, and retired after getting the affairs of the business back in order. Mr. Arnold then set sail on an around-the-world cruise.

It was said that Orphia took such good care of Henry all through the 23 years of their married life that when she died suddenly in the fall of 1924 he was left temporarily helpless. "They never had any children - afraid of the experiment I always thought," his brother wrote. So again there were two bachelors in the big house.

Some time after Orphia's death, J.T. Arnold passed out a characteristic bit of advice, saying, "Henry, you are too young to live out the rest of your life as a widower. You ought to get married again. Now don't go and pick out any broken down old widow. Select a healthy young woman and raise a family." Henry agreed in almost the same words he had used years before when marrying one of the Snodgrass girls was suggested and, in a short time, married his secretary, Clarice. Betty is the family they were to raise.

J.T. Arnold passed away at his East Terrace home on March 26, 1934, just a few days short of his 90th birthday. His obituary said, “His life was given to his home and his business. He was generous and charitable to those who came to him for counsel and aid, instilling into the employees of his plant thrift and economy.”

One son, Capt. Robert J. Arnold, was in the U.S. Army. James S. Arnold moved up North. Henry Craig Arnold, who rose to treasurer of the Tennessee Furniture Corporation, lived at the family home until the early 1950s - not long before the end came.

The house that Henry Arnold built at 625 Prospect St. (Boynton Terrace) for his first bride was occupied by Mrs. Florence Connally for many years. Later, it was divided into four apartments.