(Picture of marker by Margot Kline of Knoxville, Tennessee, courtesy of HMDB.org.)
Jack Neely reports:
At the center of a years-long controversy concerning possible private development of the old Lowes Ferry site, also known as Stoney Point, off Northshore just east of Admiral Farragut Park, is a large stone monument denoting the birthplace of David Glasgow Farragut. It's been there for 111 years, until lately, that is. Sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the marker was installed in 1900 when a flotilla of riverboats bearing national press and dignitaries, chief among them naval hero Admiral George Dewey, steamed to the site from downtown Knoxville....
Since the 1970s, it's been behind a fence, on formally private property. John Fitzgerald owned it then; after his death a few years ago, his widow and heir Lylan proposed to develop the peninsula without necessarily insuring public access to the birthplace and monument, though local officials had been hopeful about working something out, if only a walking trail from the adjacent county park....
(Read the full story on the MetroPulse site)
We got word Tuesday that the marker itself is missing. The owner's attorney, who told a reporter last year that the owner had no plans to bother the marker, told us he had not been in touch with the owner lately, and had not heard that the marker was gone.
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