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The Heiskell Family of Tennessee is descended from Christopher Heiskell, who
was a German, and who came to America in 1740 and settled in Maryland. From
that state his descendants have migrated until they have representatives in
ten states of the Union. They number among their members one United States Senator,
Henry H. Riddleberger, of Virginia; one member of a Virginia Constitutional
Convention, William Heiskell; one member of a California Constitutional Convention,
Tyler D. Heiskell, a brother of S. G. Heiskell; one member of a Tennessee Constitutional
Convention, Joseph B. Heiskell, of Memphis, who was also attorney general of
Tennessee and member of the Confederate Congress; one circuit judge in Tennessee,
Carrick W. Heiskell, of Memphis; one chancellor of Tennessee, Frederick H. Heiskell,
of Memphis; one soldier in the Revolutionary war, Adam Heiskell, who was in
Morgan's command at the siege of Quebec, and was wounded; one captain in the
regular army, John Heiskell, who served in the war of 1812; one surgeon in the
regular army, Henry Lee Heiskell, appointed by Andrew Jackson, who served in
the Seminole war.
In the Civil war the family divided and had a number of members in each army.
The first Heiskell who settled in East Tennessee was Frederick S. Heiskell, an uncle of S. G. Heiskell, who came to Knox county from Virginia, December, 1814, and on July 7, 1816, founded the Knoxville Register, of which he was editor until 1837, when he retired. The Register was published continuously to September, 1863, when it suspended. He never held but one public office, that of State Senator from Knox county, in 1847. He was a trusted friend of Andrew Jackson, whose battles he fought in Tennessee, and intimately acquainted with James K. Polk, Hugh Lawson White, John Bell and other leaders of that day. His correspondence with Jackson would fill a volume.
He was a trustee of the East Tennessee Female Institute and of the University of Tennessee and died at Rogersville, Tennessee, in 1882.
From December, 1814, 102 years ago, the date of the coming of Frederick Heiskell to this county, there has never been a time when members of the Heiskell family did not live in Knoxville or Knox county.
William Heiskell, the father of S. G. Heiskell, also came from Virginia in 1833, where he had been a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention and of the Legislature. After coming to East Tennessee, he was one of the original promoters and a director of the railroad from Knoxville to Chattanooga, then called the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, which was afterwards, in 1869, combined with the railroad from Knoxville to Bristol, called the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, and the name of the consolidated roads was East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad. On account of bad health, and a year before his death on September 9th, 1871, he resigned as a director in the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, and also in the Knoxville and Kentucky Railroad, which was that part of what is now the Southern Railway extending from Knoxville to Jellico.
By act of the Tennessee Legislature, passed January 26, 1838, he was appointed a member of a commission consisting of himself, John McGhee and Hugh B. Leeper to contract for and superintend the removal of obstructions to navigation in the Little Tennessee river.
William Heiskell was also an original charter trustee of Hiwassee College in Monroe county, which he promoted when a member of the Tennessee State Senate from Monroe county, in 1850; also a trustee of the University of Tennessee at the time of his death, and had been for several years; also, for a number of years, president of the board of trustees of Hampden-Sydney Academy, in Knoxville. He was speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1865, having been elected a representative from Knox county. He moved to Knoxville December 25, 1861.
S. G. Heiskell, son of William and Julia Gahagan Heiskell, is of German descent through his father, and of Irish descent through his mother, and was born in Monroe county, Tennessee, on a farm, and moved to Knoxville with his father and family in his childhood. He went to school at the Hampden-Sydney Academy when it was located at the corner of Church avenue and Locust street, Knoxville, and afterwards at the University of Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1877 with a B. A. degree. He studied law at the University of Virginia, and with Col. Feliz A. Reeve, then practicing law in Knoxville, but now in Washington, D. C., and was admitted to practice at Somerville, Alabama, when under twenty-one years of age, which that state permitted to any applicant who could stand the required examination.
S. G. Heiskell was an Alderman of Knoxville in 1882; president of the Knoxville Library Association in 1882, which was afterwards merged into the Lawson McGhee Library; city attorney in 1884; representative of Knox county in the Tennessee Legislature and chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House in 1895; mayor of Knoxville in 1896-98; 1900-02; 1906-08; 1910-12; 1912-15; elected member of the Knoxville Board of Education, September 29th, 1915, and elected president of the Board, November 14, 1915, which position he now holds, 1916. He was mayor of Knoxville longer than any other person that ever held that position in the history of the city.
Mr. Heiskell was employed by the city council in 1882, in conjunction with Lewis Tillman, Esq., to publish the first volume of the City Ordinances and Charter.
When a member of the Legislature, he secured an appropriation to erect the building for the colored insane at the state insane asylum at Lyon's View, in Knox county, and two years later he drafted a bill, and in conjunction with others, pushed it to passage, granting an appropriation for the Woodside building for white patients at Lyon's View.
He introduced in 1895, and succeeded in passing, a bill establishing the Court of Chancery Appeals in Tennessee, which a subsequent Legislature changed into the Court of Civil Appeals.
At the request of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Nashville, through a committee, he took charge of the passage of a bill which became a law as Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1895, providing for the teaching of the effects of alcohol and narcotic drugs in the public schools of Tennessee.
In 1896, Mr. Heiskell was appointed by Gov. Peter Turney as a trustee of the State Insane Asylum at Lyon's View to fill out the unexpired term of two years of Col. Robert H. Armstrong, deceased, and he was elected treasurer by the board of trustees. Upon the expiration of his term as trustee he was re-appointed by Gov. Benton McMillan for a term of six years and was elected by the board president for the term. He was appointed by Gov. John P. Buchanan, a member of the board of registration commissioners of Knox County and was elected chairman of the board, and served the term of two years.
In politics, Mr. Heiskell has been a life-long Democrat. He was chairman of the Democratic City Executive Committee of Knoxville for four years; chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Knox county for six years; chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of the Second Congressional District six years; a member of the Democratic State Executive Committee for six years, and filled out the unexpired term of Hon. T. M. McConnell as chairman. He was a Cleveland and Hendricks District Presidential Elector in 1884; a delegate from the Second Congressional District to the National Democratic Convention at Chicago in 1892, which nominated Cleveland and Stevenson. He was a defeated Democratic nominee for Congress from the Second Congressional District in 1886, and again in 1888.
Mr. Heiskell was reared in the Episcopal church, of which his mother was a life-long member. The Gahagans, his mother's family, dated their connection with the Episcopal church from the first half of the last century, Rev. Wesley P. Gahagan, an uncle of S. G. Heiskell, having been ordained an Episcopal minister in that period.
Among clubs and fraternal orders, Mr. Heiskell is a member of the Country Club, Elks, Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows and Eagles.
Resolutions of the Board of Education
As a member of the Board of Education of Knoxville, Mr. Heiskell introduced, and the Board passed, resolutions as follows:
1. Advocating the more thorough and successful carrying out in the city schools of the Act of 1895, Chapter 180 above referred to, which authorizes the teaching in all the public schools of Tennessee, the effect of alcohol and narcotic drugs upon the human system.
2. Advocating the extension of the city school term to eleven months, the month of August to be a vacation.
3. Advocating the extension of the course of study in the Knoxville city schools along vocational lines, and to make the course more practical, and in closer touch with actual life.
4. Setting apart the fourth Friday in October of each year as "Frances E. Willard Day," to be devoted by the Knoxville city schools to memorializing the life and services of Frances E. Willard in the cause of personal temperance.
Lawson McGhee Library
On April 23rd, 1914, when Mayor Mr. Heiskell moved at a meeting of the board of City Commissioners, which motion unanimously carried, that he, as Mayor, be authorized to sign a contract with the trustees of the Lawson McGhee Library, binding the city to devote $5,000.00 a year for current expenses of the Library, if all the real and personal property in the hands of the trustees be turned over to the city for library purposes, and that a library building, since erected at the corner of Commerce avenue and Market street, be built.
Carnegie Library
On March 16, 1916, Mr. Heiskell initiated by letter, correspondence with Andrew Carnegie, of New York, through the Carnegie Corporation, requesting that corporation to donate to the city of Knoxville a sum sufficient to build a library for the negroes of Knoxville, and on May 17, 1916, the Carnegie Corporation donated $10,000.00 for the purpose, which donation was accepted by the Board of City Commissioners of Knoxville on May 24, 1916.
From the Colored Race
On April 5, 1916, a communication was presented to the Board of Education of Knoxville from sixty-eight colored citizens of Knoxville, the Austin City School Mothers' Association and two hundred colored pupils of the Austin School, asking the Board to accept from them an oil portrait of Mr. Heiskell, painted by Lloyd Branson, the Knoxville artist, to be hung in the auditorium of the new colored high school, this in token of the gratitude of the colored race to Mr. Heiskell for forwarding the construction of school houses and a building for the colored insane and other helpful movements for the race.
The communication, among other things, said:
"Mr. Heiskell stands out conspicuously as a representative of the slave-holding element in the South, who have been consistent friends of the negro race and who have striven to improve its condition that it may make such progress as it is able, unhampered and unfettered. While he and others of his type have not indulged in any maudlin sentiment or sympathy about the negro and his condition, they have worked in a practical way to give him an opportunity to do for himself that he may prove to the world what there is in him. Men of such type, the best of the Southern whites, aided in their efforts by the best of the Southern blacks, must in time, settle for all time to come, the vexed negro problem."
The Board of Education accepted the portrait and directed that it be hung in the auditorium of the new colored high school, as requested.
An engraving of the portrait appears at the beginning of this sketch, and the inscription on it is in these words:
"1916. Portrait of Hon. S. G. Heiskell, president of the Board of Education and former Mayor, presented to the Board by colored citizens of Knoxville, 1916."
The text and HTML code of this page is copyright ©2003 to Billie R. McNamara. All rights reserved. Please direct all questions and comments to Ms. McNamara. Background graphic image was borrowed from Fred Smoot. Used by permission.