Hello Daniel
C.M. McClung was a Huge Hardware Company here in Knoxville. Here is what I have found on it I hope it helps, Hammerdown
Charles J. McClung
Copyright 2008* All rights reserved
J.C. (Jim) Tumblin, OD, DOS
3604 Kesterwood Drive, East
Knoxville, Tennessee 37918-2557
(865) 687-1948
Fountain Citians Who Made A Difference
Charles J. McClung
(1866-1932)
(Courtesy of the C.M. McClung Historical Collection)
Ridgefield
Charles J. McClung (1866-1932)
E.E. Patton, former Central High School principal, state senator and mayor of Knoxville, also wrote a regular column in the Knoxville Journal on local, state and national history. In a column entitled, “Knoxville’s McClung Family Played Important Roles in History of City” (Knoxville Journal, June 29, 1952), Patton wrote these words:
“There is perhaps not a family which has had more to do with the founding and promoting of the best interests of Knoxville and East Tennessee than the McClung family. Matthew McClung, a full blooded Scotchman, was born reared and educated in Ulster Province, Northern Ireland. He married Martha Cunningham who was from the same locale. In 1746 they settled in Lancaster County, Pa., which has furnished Tennessee and the South with so many outstanding officials, as well as business and professional men.
“His son, Charles McClung (1761-1835), was born on his father’s farm in Pennsylvania on May 13, 1761. He traveled through the valley of Virginia about 1788 and reached White’s Fort, now Knoxville, in the fall of 1790. He married Margaret White, daughter of Gen. James White, founder of Knoxville. Charles McClung was a surveyor, lawyer, merchant and county official. He laid off the town of Knoxville and supervised the sale of lots for his father-in-law. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Blount College, now the University of Tennessee, and his son and grandson, both named Hugh Lawson McClung, were members of the Board of Directors of the University of Tennessee, a record perhaps not equaled by any other family.
“He saw military service and reached the rank of Major in the territorial militia. But his most remarkable record was as a public official. He was a member of the constitutional convention which met in Knoxville in February, 1796; he and William Blount were appointed to draft the constitution and the work of the committee was mostly his. … In 1792 and in 1800 he was a candidate for presidential elector, but his most outstanding record as an official was as clerk of the Knox County Court from 1792 until 1834—forty-two years.”
There was also Calvin Morgan McClung (1855-1919), a grandson of Charles McClung, who contributed as much to the literary, educational and cultural life of Knoxville as any other person. Due to the generosity of his widow, Barbara Adair McClung, his collection of rare books and manuscripts, the product of many years of his intellectual life, now serve as the nucleus of the C.M. McClung Historical Collection. He was first a partner in the firm of Cowan, McClung and Co., but later purchased a controlling interest and became president of C.M. McClung and Co. in 1905 and held that office until his death in 1919. The wholesale hardware firm grew to occupy 4.5 acres of floor space in three buildings, making it one of the largest in the South with 500,000 items in stock from automotive and plumbing to sporting goods and farm equipment.
Fountain City too had its McClungs. We have written earlier about Ellen McClung Green, the wife of Judge John W. Green. Judge Hugh Lawson McClung (1858-1936) who built Belcaro is the subject of a future article.
Our subject for this biographical essay is Charles J. McClung (1866-1932). In 1924, he built Ridgefield, his white-columned summer home on Black Oak Ridge with its unforgettable view of Fountain City, Greenway Gap and even downtown Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains on a clear day. The Knoxville City Directory lists a Black Oak Ridge address for the McClung’s summer cottage as early as 1902, although they maintained a home at fashionable 1533 Laurel Avenue* near downtown until the late 1920s.
Charles J. McClung
(Courtesy of the C.M. McClung Historical Collection)
Charles James McClung, the seventh of the ten children of Franklin H. and Eliza Ann (Mills) McClung, was born in Knoxville on July 12, 1866. The previously mentioned Calvin M. McClung was his oldest brother. The ninth child was T. Lee McClung, an All-American football player at Yale and later Secretary of the Treasury (1909-1912) under President William H. Taft. The youngest of the children was Ellen Marshall Green.
Charles received his elementary and preparatory education in local private schools and studied at the University of Tennessee for three years. He then entered Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. and graduated in 1887. He successfully passed entrance exams to Yale University; but for health reasons chose to return to Knoxville and associate with his brother, Calvin M. McClung, in the wholesale hardware business.
McClung Warehouses, 1937
(Courtesy of the C.M. McClung Historical Collection)
When the business was incorporated in 1905, he was made secretary and treasurer. He administered those offices with marked ability and advanced to vice-president. In January 1930 he was elected chairman of the board and held that position until his death. Considered to be one of the most progressive and efficient executives in East Tennessee, he chose private citizenship over public office. A Democrat with independent leanings, he supported the efforts of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce to the benefit of the business community. He was a member of the Cherokee Country Club, the Tennessee Historical Society and St. John’s Episcopal Church.
Anna M. Gay (1867-1956) and Charles J. McClung were married on Jan. 5, 1911. She was the daughter of Andrew H. and Mary Dickinson Gay of Plaquemine, Iberia Parish, La., where her father was a cotton planter. Interestingly, her maternal great-grandfather, Charles Dickinson, was killed in a duel with Andrew Jackson and her brother, Edward J. Gay, was a U.S. Senator from Louisiana.
Anna Gay attended Augusta Female Academy in Staunton, Va. where she met her future sister-in-law, Ellen McClung, who would marry Judge John W. Green, venerable Knoxville lawyer and community leader.
Although she and Charles had no children, several lively nieces and nephews visited them often and enjoyed the extensive woods and gardens at Ridgefield.
The McClungs spent the month of February in Florida, usually making the trip down by train. The family chauffeur brought their car down later, as Charles enjoyed motoring to various places of interest while there. It was in Miami Beach on Feb. 10, 1932 that he suddenly fell across his bed soon after arising and never regained consciousness. He was brought home for burial in Old Gray Cemetery after funeral services at Ridgefield.
The public-spirited Anna G. McClung chose to remain at her home, stayed active in the First Presbyterian Church and entertained her family and friends in her gracious Old South manner. She supervised those who tended the gardens and grounds and visited often with her sister-in-law, Ellen McClung Green, at nearby Ridgeview II.
She survived her husband by 24 years, but succumbed on Nov. 22, 1956, having suffered a stroke ten days earlier. Mrs. McClung had been president of the Women’s Auxiliary at her church and was a member of the Colonial Dames, Knoxville Garden Club and the Blount Mansion Association, where she was a board member. Her services were also held at her home and she was laid to rest in the family burial plot at Old Gray Cemetery.
The McClungs will be long remembered-- he for his kind, courtly manner, immaculate personal appearance and business acumen; she for her keen interest in her family, church, gardens and her love of history.
*Verify City Directory addresses on Main or Laurel.
(Author’s Note: Thanks to Sally Polhemus of the C.M. McClung Historical Collection for the archival photographs. One can view Ridgefield by proceeding up Gresham Road and Grove Drive to the Grove Park Addition. The house is on Walkup Drive and was later the home of William Walkup, president of Home Federal Bank. Betty Bean’s excellent article “Something’s burning” which appeared in the Feb. 4 Shopper is archived on
Shopper-News. The article describes the Feb. 19, 2007 fire that all but destroyed the McClung Warehouses.)
Ridgefield home to go for sale
Preservationist says residence built in 1924 'like a time capsule'
By Fred Brown
Knoxville News Sentinel
Posted March 24, 2010 at midnight
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Photo by J. Miles Cary // Buy this photo
Charles Rudder sits Monday outside his boyhood home, Ridgefield, on Monday. Rudder, of Lonoke, Ark., is putting the historic property on the market. He said he hopes whoever purchases the colonial-revival style home will preserve it and its grounds of about four acres. The home was built by Charles J. McClung and his wife, Anna Gay McClung, in 1924.
For sale: The Ridgefield house in Fountain City See all
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Photo by FRANK H. McCLUNG MUSEUM
Charles J. McClung built Ridgefield house in 1924 with his wife, Anna Gay McClung.
Photo by FRANK H. McCLUNG MUSEUM
Anna Gay McClung and her husband, Clarence J. McClung, built Ridgefield house in 1924.
Ridgefield, an 86-year-old two-story home built by one of Knoxville's bedrock families atop Black Oak Ridge in Fountain City, is being prepared for sale.
One historic preservationist says the house is unique and "like a time capsule."
Charles Rudder, grandson of one of the home's former owners, the late William Walkup, president of Home Federal Bank for 30 years, is the present owner.
Rudder, of Lonoke, Ark., said during a recent walk-through of the home that he hopes whoever purchases the colonial-revival style residence will preserve the home and grounds of about four acres.
Charles J. McClung and Anna Maria Gay, scions of wealthy Southern families, built the home in 1924 to be near the former Belcaro, constructed by Hugh Lawson McClung, great-grandson of James White, founder of Knoxville.
Hugh McClung, a cousin of Charles J. McClung, spared no cost on Belcaro, spending $175,000 in 1922 - worth roughly $2.2 million today.
Belcaro was a one-of-a-kind Georgian-style home with pilastered facades facing north and south and curving arcades to either side. A developer demolished it in 1996.
Charles Barber of Barber & McMurry, a Knoxville architectural firm that designed landmark residential, civic and commercial buildings in Knoxville and across the Southeast during the mid-1900s, designed Ridgefield, at 2910 Walkup Drive in Grove Park.
Charles J. McClung and Gay married in 1911 in a story that could have waltzed straight from a Golden Age romance novel, set a half-century after the Civil War.
McClung was a major partner in his brother C.M. McClung's wholesale hardware business, and described as one of the "merchant princes" of the South; Gay, of Plaquemine, La., was a member of one of the prominent plantation families of Louisiana, who had made a fortune in sugar cane production before and after the Civil War.
After their marriage, the McClungs built one of Knoxville's showplace homes in 1924 on the peak of Black Oak Ridge. They called it Ridgefield. The beautiful, six-columned home was a stunner in a time when wealthy Knoxville families constructed summer cottages on Black Oak Ridge to escape the oppressive heat in the city.
This was no cottage. The nearly 5,000-square-foot home had the latest amenities, including buzzers in most rooms to notify staff personnel with an "annunciator" that lit up to show a number corresponding to a room needing service. It also rang a bell.
A dining room and living room branch off the main foyer. The living room has a beautiful side sunroom. A large mural of a South Carolina plantation dominates a dining room wall.
Also, the first floor includes a library with floor to ceiling shelves, and what is now a small bathroom, but was built as a powder room.
The downstairs kitchen area had a butler's pantry (now the kitchen), two walk-in pantries and a kitchen area for cooking.
Upstairs are four bedrooms, with the two main rooms having "sleeping porches" to allow for cooler sleeping quarters in the summer.
The house also has a large basement with two coal bins providing steam heat, and washing, ironing and folding areas for clothes. The attic runs the length of the home, and comes with an original rope ladder that could be attached to latches inside upper rooms in case of fire.
An outside original iron hand water pump, supplied by a cistern, is operational and works flawlessly.
The front porch of the home features a spectacular, ever-widening view of Fountain City out across Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains in the distance.
After Anna Gay's death, Walkup purchased the sprawling home and beautiful grounds. And after Walkup and his wife, Ann Crowell, died, Rudder, who spent his summers at the house in the 1950s and 1960s, inherited the place.
Rudder also has shown the home to Kim Trent, executive director of Knox Heritage, a preservation organization.
Trent said Rudder is considering a preservation easement - or a historic zoning overlay.
"A preservation easement would allow Rudder to sell the property, but it would also make sure the house is never demolished. Not ever," Trent said. "The historic overlay would put it under the (Knox County) Historic Zoning Commission and any changes to the exterior would have to be approved by the commission.
"The house is like a time capsule. It is completely intact."
http://www.fountaincitytnhistory.info/People41-McClungCharles.htm
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Knoxville-TN/Frank-H-McClung-Museum/326164799143
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/mar/24/ridgefield-to-go-for-sale/
