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| East Tennessee University, Knoxville, 1874. Scribner's (Wiki Commons) |
Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing a scan of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source.]
I did not return to Martha Washington College. Fate decreed otherwise. Mother had come back to the South, as Father was planning to leave the cold northwest which was so hard on her. Then news came of his sudden death. [after 1878, in Chicago? M.J.B.] [John Milton Binckley died on May 4, 1878, in Lake Michigan, near Milwaukee.] And everything changed.
It was necessary for Mother to make her living. One of my schoolmates who lived in Tennessee had told me she was not coming back, because her uncle was going to open a new college in her home town, Mossy Creek, the next year. He engaged Mother as his vocal teacher. And I was to earn my board and tuition by teaching a primary class of day pupils. He had engaged several well known professors for his faculty.
When we went there we found it a pleasant place. The table of the Institute was good enough, though we missed the rich food of Abingdon. And the frequency of rice pudding, which I never liked anyhow, gave me a rooted aversion for it which I have never overcome.
I was always a bookish soul, so I loved my studies. The piano teacher, Professor Casimir Falk of Stuttgart, Germany, wanted to teach me violin too, but Mother thought that would work me too hard. The Latin professor, Dr. Adkins, had one Hebrew pupil and I wanted to study that, but Mother put a stop to the Hebrew, too. So I never got beyond the alphabet. I was now reading Cicero.
I had always been making portrait sketches of people, so I made some of my schoolmates. They liked them, and to my surprise, offered to buy them. I set the modest price of fifty cents apiece. Thus began my career as a portrait painter.
When Commencement came, I won two of the three gold medals they gave: one for Music and one for Natural Sciences. The third was for Mathematics, hence utterly unattainable for me. I also won the silver cup they gave for best English essay. My subject was Myths. And the editor of the local paper asked permission to publish it therein.
That ended my sophomore year. And also ended my college days, for Mother needed my help and it was necessary for me to get a job. I was very young but I could teach. That was the only thing my family considered it proper for me to do. Girls were working in business offices by that time. But Grandmother thought that very advanced -- if not improper. certainly no occupation for a young -- a very young gentlewoman. I read in the papers of girls actually living in pairs in city rooms alone, no relatives with them. I could hardly imagine such daring.
So I became a governess. In the South governesses were invariably ladies of birth and breeding, and were treated as members of the family. Aunt Charlotte was just then making a little visit to Uncle Ned Dillon, up the James River in Rockbridge County [Virginia]. Some friends of his wanted a governess. So it was arranged for the Fall. Meantime, Grandmother and Aunt Sue, who had lost her husband, went to Knoxville, Tennessee that Spring and we joined them there.
Across the street lived Professor Knabe and his family. He was a musician -- the Knabe piano people -- and we found them very pleasant neighbors. One of the children got whooping cough and it spread through the family. [Even] the Professor got it, never having had it before. We used to laugh behind our curtains when we'd see them come through his gate and be seized with a fit of coughing before he got to the corner. It enraged him, and he'd hold on to the lamp post and whoop and swear and swear and whoop till the paroxysm had passed.
Then Grandmother took a house on top of the hill opposite the University. We could see across a sort of valley and look right down on the parade ground. We enjoyed watching the battalion drill. The President of the University, Dr. Hume, was from Abingdon so my family knew him.
Our closests friends were the McAdoos. Mrs. McAdoo and Mother were old friends. I think she was from Abingdon, too and related to Dr. Hume. Professor McAdoo was in charge of Belles Lettres at the University. He was a tall, very handsome man [with a] mass of gray hair and a gray beard. There were four lovely young daughters, Carrie, Rosalie, Nona and Laura. We were great friends. [There were] two sons, Floyd and Will. And a son of Mrs. McAdoo by an earlier marriage, Gillie McDonald.
Floyd was an extremely handsome fellow, very tall with a head like a Greek god. He was studying civil engineering, and on a surveying trip became separated from the rest of the party. Later he was found lying face down in a small stream, drowned. Will went on to a very distinguished future. He built the Hudson River tunnel at New York, and was married in the White House to President Wilson's daughter Eleanor.
One day I went down the hill into the town to do a little shopping. I met a fire engine dashing up. I wondered idly where the fire was. When I got home an hour or two later, I found it had been right across a side street from our house, which stood on a corner. I was awfully disappointed, for I love a fire. Of course I don't want anybody to lose their property [or] get burned, but if it's going to happen anyway I like to be there to see it.
Grandmother had been sick for several days, staying in bed. That day she was up, sitting by the dining room window looking across the street at the stable of a doctor's house. She saw a little boy come running down the outside steps from the hay loft. Then she saw the darkey maid fly up the steps and carry down his baby sister. Then she saw flames in the hay. A minute later she was across the street with a bucket of water in her hand, and her cook right behind her with a bucket of water in each hand. The little boy, it seemed, had got hold of some matches and while he and his tiny sister were playing in the hay, some demon prompted him to strike a match. Terrified by the flame flaring up, he had run away. The quick actin of the courageous maid had averted a tragedy.
[Ellen/Nellie/Nella Fontaine Binckley (September 1, 1860-April 27, 1951). Family names and dates were whimsically tweaked by their owners during their lifetime, adding mystery and sometimes causing confusion. For Binckley's "Artist's Life," I'm opting for the full artist's signature name, Nella Fontaine Binckley.
Grandmother = Jane Johnston Mitchell/Michel (1811-1892).
Mother = Mary Louisa/Louise Mitchell/Michel Binckley (1838-1930).
Mossy Creek, about thirty miles from Knoxville and on a rail line, is now Jefferson City (since 1901). The Branner Institute for Young Ladies opened in 1876 at Glenmore Mansion.
Aunt Charlotte = Charlotte Elizabeth Griffin Mitchell/Michel (1829-1921).
Uncle Ned Dillon = Colonel Edward Dillon (1835-1897), a son of Mary Morris Johnston Dillon Cunningham (1810-1884) and grandson of Charles Johnston (1769-1833) and Elizabeth "Eliza" Prentiss "Betsey" Steptoe Johnston (1783-1820).
Aunt Sue = Sue Henry Mitchell/Michel Taliaferro (1845-1940); "lost her husband" = William Meade Taliaferro (1840-1913), who had married Sue on October 16, 1867. He was apparently lost to "nostalgia," shell shock, post traumatic stress, war wounds, alcohol and other comorbidities, eventually committing suicide at the Camp Lee Soldier's Home in Richmond.
Dr. Hume - Thomas William Humes (1815-1819), president of the University of East Tennessee (renamed University of Tennessee in 1879) and later, a librarian.
Professor McAdoo = William Gibbs McAdoo, Sr. (1820-1894).
Will = William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. (1863-1941) married Eleanor Randolph Wilson (1889-1967) in 1914.]
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