Source:Know-knoxville
"Community to observe 'Know Knoxville Week.'" Pittsburgh Press, Apr. 15, 1934, p. 12. Newspapers.com 142935429.
Romantic persons from the pages of Pittsburgh's history will be recalled this week—"Know Knoxville Week," sponsored by the Women's Library of Knoxville and the Knoxville–Carrick Library.
Jeremiah Knox, the circuit riding pastor, who turned wine grower and made a fortune on the slopes south of the Monongahela River; his son, William, who turned the Knox farm into a center for lavish social functions, and William's daughter, Virginia, who married an Italian count, all will be recalled this week by the older residents.
Each figured in the story of Knoxville as it grew from a farm worked by skilled fruit growers from the Rhine to a modern residential section of a metropolitan city.
Although old landmarks are almost entirely gone, old-time residents readily point out the site of the Knox mansion, now used by the Knoxville High School.
They tell, too, of the packing house, located just below the Hilltop Y. M. C. A., where the products of the Knox farm were sorted and packed; where Jeremiah Knox gathered a flock Sunday mornings and again became the circuit riding preacher, and where in later years the belles and beaux of the horse and buggy era gathered from all parts of the district to dance.
Near the packing house was a wine cellar, dug from solid rick, where Gottleib Weber brewed the grapes of the Knox farm into a famed wine.
The names of Knoxville's streets recall the history of her past—Jucunda for the strawberries of the Knox farm, and Arabella, Zara and Rochelle for the grapes.
The story begins with Jeremiah Knox, a native of Brownsville, Pa., sent out by the American Bible Association of Baltimore to carry the gospel. Through Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio the young preacher carried his message. It was on one of these trips he met the girl who was to become his wife.
Auburn-haired Amanda Beltzhoover Bausman, a young widow, was the girl young Jeremiah married. And on the farm her father, Jacob Beltzhoover, son of Captain John Beltzhoover, first of the family in this district, gave as dower, they settled down to farm.
The Beltzhoover farm covered several thousand acres on the hilltops to the south of Pittsburgh, and was a purchase from the Ohio Land Company, George Washington's venture in real estate and colonization.
The tract young Rev. Knox took was at that time a tobacco plantation. He joined the little houses of the plantation workers into one large one, and covered the hillsides with grape, raspberry, blackberry and strawberry plants. Bumper crops made the family rich.
Resembling more his mother was William W. Knox, a dreamer and poet rather than farmer. He turned the farm into a country home, and Pittsburgh society flocked there to enjoy his hospitality.
The Panic of '77, old residents recall, "about finished" the Knox farm, and the following year the Knox heirs—the Knoxville Land Improvement Company—decided to dispose of it.
James F. Grimes, who had served as Jeremiah Knox's secretary during the latter years of the pioneer's life, was made president of the company, and it was under his guidance that streets were planned for the modern Knoxville.
