Mrs. John Vance is shown in Columbia Electric coupe as Fred Wallace stands by the door in front of the Vance home on Lookout Mountain
John C. Vance
Elizabeth Vance, daughter of John C. Vance
Joseph Colville Vance
John C. Vance, wife Edith and daughter Elizabeth when they lived on 3rd Street at corner of Houston. Other woman is not identified.
Businessman Joseph Colville Vance had a long tenure at 212 Prospect St. (later Boynton Terrace) on Cameron Hill. His equally successful younger brother, John Corwin Vance, chose a perch on Lookout Mountain instead after first living at Fourth and Houston streets.
The Vance brothers were born on a farm outside Urbana, Ohio. Their grandfather, Joseph Colville Vance, was the governor of Ohio in the 1830s.
Joseph C. Vance clerked in a hardware store prior to entering the Civil War fighting. He married Emily R. Patrick in 1869 and they moved to Chattanooga two years later. They were living at 212 S. Prospect by 1876.
Joseph Vance joined with John S. Kirby to establish the Vance & Kirby Hardware store. They were the first Chattanooga firm to employ traveling salesmen full-time. The Vance & Kirby Hardware at 729 Market St. also featured Chattanooga's first power elevator.
Joseph Vance was a leader in business, politics and church. He served as a city alderman, and he was one of the founders of Second Presbyterian Church. He was active in real estate, a rolling mill, a gas company, a chair company, a coffee company and a bank.
His son, Harris K. Vance, worked for Crisman Hardware.
John C. Vance came to Chattanooga when he was 19. He married Edith Price, who was from Chattanooga, in 1881.
He was first involved in the Vance & Kirby firm, then he struck out on his own and started Vance Iron & Steel, which became one of the South's leading manufacturing firms. He had first joined in a partnership with James B. Sharp with a wheelbarrow operation in 1897. John C. Vance also organized a concrete bar firm and a cement company.
The Kosmos Woman's Club was started at the suggestion of Edith Vance. She had invited a group of friends to her home on E. Fourth. She also suggested the name "Kosmos" - meaning "the world."
When Joseph C. Vance died in 1919 at age 81, his residence was still the same, though he seems to have lived away from there for some years. His widow stayed on for several years at what was now 612 Boynton Terrace. She occupied the second floor and R.E. McCracken was downstairs.
Woodall Wallace was the last resident of the old Vance home near the top of historic Cameron Hill before it was chopped down.