Tag Archives: J. Fred Johnson

First National Bank

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fnb

Grubby, but unbowed.  It’s kind of difficult to date this money bag.  The downtown drive-in branch closed sometime in the 60s, maybe early 70s.  It was on the corner of Clay and New Streets, across from where Chef’s Pizza is now.  You can still see the traffic direction arrows for the drive-in lanes sunk into the concrete (they were originally filled with yellow concrete, but it’s mostly eroded away).
Storied history of this bank: established in 1916, as you can see.  J. Fred Johnson was a VP in ’23 and President by 1931.  In 1963, First NB of Kingsport and First NB of Bristol merged and sometime later the group became First NB of Sullivan County.  In 1981,  it became First Eastern NB; in 1982, it was First American Bank-Eastern and on and on  It might be Regions Bank now.

The bag is 10.5″ x 6″.  It really could do with a good washing, but that’s not going to happen.  HIstoric integrity and all that.

Canal Street

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canalstreet

Before the likes of George Carter and J. Fred Johnson strode the land, the area now hosting downtown Kingsport was a wetland, a marsh, a swamp.  A good place for hunting rabbits, it’s said.
Not a particularly good place to site a new town, so, two ditches were dug, one to the west and one to the east, to escort the water out of the downtown basin and off to somewhere else.
So here is Canal Street.  It’s actually a cut-and-cover culvert: the western ditch.  It comes out here:
itcomesouthere
This is on Reedy Creek, next to the old Irpco (sounds kind of like a burp, no?), which, in memory, is the old Coca-Cola bottling company on West Sullivan Street.