Appalachian Community Histories – Arcadia, Sullivan County: From the Reedy Creek Settlement to the Fain Plantation
Along Bloomingdale Pike, just beyond the eastern edge of Kingsport, lies a Sullivan County community whose quiet appearance conceals more than two centuries of history. Arcadia was never incorporated as a town, and much of its older landscape has gradually blended into the expanding Kingsport region. Yet its roads, cemeteries, school grounds, church property, and surviving buildings preserve the outline of a community that once served travelers, farmers, merchants, worshippers, students, and families moving through the Reedy Creek Valley.
At the center of that history stands the property long known as Arcadia or the Fain Plantation. Its brick house, log buildings, spring house, family cemetery, and surrounding land formed one of the most recognizable plantation complexes in upper East Tennessee. The property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973, initially under the name Fain Plantation. Additional documentation accepted in 2004 emphasized that the historic name of the property was Arcadia. The federal listing applies to this particular property, however, and not to a historic district covering the entire Arcadia community.
The history of Arcadia is therefore larger than the story of one house. It begins with an old road through Cherokee country, continues through land grants and frontier settlement, and reaches its nineteenth-century height through farming, slavery, commerce, education, religion, and postal service. Later generations transformed the old school into a community center and worked to preserve the Arcadia name even as the surrounding landscape changed.
Before the Name Arcadia
Long before Thomas Fain arrived, the valleys around Reedy Creek formed part of a much older travel corridor through the Appalachian interior. Indigenous people used connected paths through the Great Valley and the mountain gaps for trade, hunting, diplomacy, and warfare. European settlers later followed many of the same natural passages, gradually converting portions of them into wagon roads.
The Treaty of Lochaber, negotiated between British officials and Cherokee leaders in October 1770, shifted the colonial boundary farther west. The agreement became part of the legal justification used by Virginia and North Carolina settlers who entered lands around the upper Holston and Reedy Creek. The treaty did not erase Cherokee claims, occupation, or resistance. Instead, it marked another stage in the colonial process through which Cherokee territory was pressured into cession and opened to increasingly permanent settlement. John Donelson, who represented Virginia at the negotiations, later testified that he had attended the congress and recorded its proceedings.
The road through the future Arcadia community became known by several names. Local histories called it the Reedy Creek Road, the Kentucky Road, and eventually Bloomingdale Pike. Oliver Taylor’s 1909 history of Sullivan County connected the route with the road cut by Daniel Boone and his company in 1775, describing the Wilderness Road as also being called the Kentucke or Caintuck Road. Travelers followed it toward Moccasin Gap, Cumberland Gap, and the lands of Kentucky. What later appeared to be an ordinary county road had once carried generations of migrants deeper into the Appalachian West.
The road also encouraged settlement. Farms, mills, churches, stores, and fortified places grew near its crossings and water sources. The nearby King’s Mill Fort site, remembered in Sullivan County histories as one of several early fortified locations, stood close to Reedy Creek and the old road. Leslie’s Mill later operated along the falls of the North Fork of Reedy Creek, sometimes called Boozy Creek, where falling water could power the machinery of a gristmill. These sites belonged to the same local landscape that eventually produced Arcadia.
The Brashears Land and an Uncertain Grant Date
One of the earliest documented landholders connected with the Arcadia property was Robert Samuel Brashears, whose surname appears in records under several spellings, including Brashear, Brashears, Brashers, and Brasher. The 2004 National Register documentation stated that he received the land in 1792 for service during the American Revolution and built a log homestead below the location of the later stone wall. The property then passed to his son Samuel.
The surviving North Carolina land-grant index introduces an important disagreement. It identifies a grant to Robert Samuel Brashears for 300 acres in Sullivan County in 1787, five years earlier than the date given in the National Register addendum. The difference may reflect the separate dates of an entry, survey, warrant, or final grant, but the original papers must be examined before the discrepancy can be settled. What can be stated with confidence is that the Brashears family held a substantial tract in the Reedy Creek area before the Fains acquired the property.
Local timelines place members of the Brashears family on the tract by the 1780s. The land stood near the old road and within reach of Reedy Creek, giving its owners access to transportation, water, farmland, and travelers moving between the Holston settlements and the routes leading westward. The Brashears period established the agricultural base upon which the later Arcadia property developed.
Thomas and Rachel Fain Come to Reedy Creek
Thomas Fain was born in Sullivan County on July 31, 1809. He married Rachel Ellen Anderson, and the couple eventually moved from the Blountville area to the Reedy Creek community. Sources disagree slightly about the timing of their arrival. The 1976 county history placed Thomas Fain on the property in 1836. A memorial in the family cemetery states that Thomas and Rachel came to the section in 1840. The National Register documentation records the purchase of approximately 306 acres from Samuel Brashears in 1841. These dates can be reconciled if the Fains occupied or began working in the area before the final land transfer was recorded.
Thomas Fain first built a log dwelling and store. From that beginning, he developed a large farming and commercial operation. Nineteenth-century accounts remembered him as a successful farmer and merchant who transported merchandise from as far away as Baltimore. His position along the old road made the location valuable. Farmers could trade there, travelers could receive news and supplies, and local families could conduct business without going to Blountville or another larger center.
The Fain household was also large. Census records place Thomas, Rachel, and their children in Sullivan County’s Tenth Civil District, with the 1860 post-office designation recorded as “Arkada,” an important spelling variation. The family cemetery records the lives of several children who died young, as well as sons and daughters who reached adulthood and became connected through marriage with other Sullivan County families. Thomas died on March 25, 1891, and Rachel had died on July 10, 1884. Their graves remain part of the physical record of the community they helped name.
How the Community Became Arcadia
According to the 2004 National Register documentation, Thomas Fain called his property “Arcadia.” The name was associated not only with the house but also with the store, post office, stable, cemetery, and surrounding farm. Because these places became familiar landmarks, the community around them gradually adopted the same name.
The choice carried a particular meaning. In literature and common speech, Arcadia suggested an idealized rural place where people lived close to the land. The name may have appeared fitting to a prosperous farmer looking across the Reedy Creek Valley, although the historical reality was more complicated than the peaceful image implied. Arcadia was a working plantation sustained by agriculture, commerce, family labor, and the coerced labor of enslaved people.
The cemetery memorial attributes the naming of Arcadia to both Thomas and Rachel Fain. That inscription, erected by descendants, states that the couple came to the area in 1840, gave it the Arcadia name, and reserved the hill as a family burial ground. Like many memorial inscriptions, it compresses years of settlement and development into a single statement, but it demonstrates how strongly later generations associated the community’s identity with the Fain family.
The Store and Arcadia Post Office
The Fain store stood along Reedy Creek Road in front of the house. In 1846, it also became the Arcadia Post Office, making the property one of the community’s principal points of contact with the outside world. Mail connected rural Sullivan County residents with distant relatives, merchants, newspapers, political information, and changing national events.
Thomas Fain served as Arcadia’s postmaster for approximately fifty years. Oliver Taylor considered this long tenure remarkable enough to include it among Sullivan County’s notable records of public service. The postal appointment also reflects the importance of Fain’s store. A rural post office was commonly placed inside a store or private business where residents already gathered, allowing one building to serve commercial, social, and governmental functions.
The Arcadia name appeared on nineteenth-century maps and postal documents, confirming that it was more than an informal neighborhood label. An 1888 railroad and county map of Tennessee identified post offices throughout the state, placing small communities such as Arcadia within a larger network of roads, railroads, towns, and mail routes. Even without municipal government, a post office gave Arcadia an official place in the national system.
A period gazetteer transcription described Arcadia as a post village on Reedy Creek with stores, mechanical trades, a mill, a Methodist congregation, and an educational institution. Although the original printed gazetteer should be consulted before its wording is quoted directly, the description suggests that mid-nineteenth-century Arcadia functioned as a recognizable rural center rather than a scattered collection of unrelated farms.
The Brick House and the Mystery of Its Date
The most visible survivor of Arcadia’s plantation era is the large brick house standing above the old road. The National Register nomination described it as a two-story, ten-room residence with a rectangular main section and a two-story rear ell. It featured a molded brick cornice, an imposing front entrance, shutters, and a long gallery extending across both levels of the wing. The bricks were reportedly fired locally and laid on a foundation of cut limestone.
The exact construction date remains uncertain. The original National Register nomination, prepared in 1972, placed the house around 1850. A local historical timeline dated it to approximately 1860. A 1952 Kingsport Chamber of Commerce article claimed that the house had been completed on October 3, 1870. The 2004 National Register addendum proposed that it might have been completed in 1876 because that year was reportedly inscribed above an eastern fireplace before part of the fireplace collapsed during the late 1960s.
These dates may not be as contradictory as they first appear. Construction could have occurred in stages, especially on a large rural residence built with locally produced materials. An earlier portion might have been occupied while later rooms, porches, fireplaces, or decorative details were still being completed. It is also possible that the fireplace inscription commemorated a renovation rather than the original construction. Until deeds, tax assessments, family correspondence, or architectural evidence settle the matter, the safest conclusion is that the brick house developed during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
Several auxiliary buildings survived around it. Different surveys counted them in different ways, but the complex included barns, a smokehouse, a spring house, a corncrib, log cabins, and a small structure remembered as the Fain boys’ law study. A stone mounting block stood in the front yard, while old boxwoods and mature trees reflected generations of landscaping. The combination of residence, work buildings, cabins, water source, and cemetery made Arcadia unusual. Many similar East Tennessee agricultural complexes lost their outbuildings even when the main house survived.
Slavery at Arcadia
The beauty of the Arcadia house cannot be separated from the system of slavery that supported the plantation. National Register documents describe Thomas Fain as the owner of numerous enslaved people and identify at least one surviving cabin as the home of a woman remembered as Aunt Beck. Another county history counted two log slave cabins within the plantation complex.
The surviving records reveal only fragments of the lives of those held there. A cemetery transcription reports five people believed to have been enslaved by the Fain family: Uncle George, Ben, Lil, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Beck. No surnames or dates were preserved for them in that transcription. Their incomplete identification demonstrates one of the most serious limitations of plantation histories. The landowner’s name appears in deeds, postal appointments, biographies, census schedules, and architectural surveys, while the people whose labor sustained the farm are often reduced to first names or anonymous entries in slave schedules.
Aunt Beck is the best remembered because a cabin was associated with her. Local tradition described her as a respected or beloved figure who remained connected with the community before later moving to Blountville. Such descriptions must be handled cautiously. Affectionate language preserved by enslavers’ descendants cannot explain how she experienced bondage, what family ties she maintained, or whether remaining near the Fains after emancipation represented preference, necessity, or limited opportunity.
The 1850 and 1860 federal slave schedules, agricultural schedules, estate records, and account books remain essential for recovering more of this history. They may establish how many people were enslaved at Arcadia, their ages and sex, the plantation’s production, and the relationship between forced labor and the Fain family’s commercial success. The cemetery and cabins preserve evidence that these people lived and worked at Arcadia, but much of their individual history remains unwritten.
Civil War, Unionism, and Emancipation
East Tennessee entered the Civil War deeply divided. Sullivan County contained both Confederate and Union supporters, sometimes within neighboring households. Local historical accounts described Thomas Fain as a Union sympathizer, even though he was also an enslaver. A Kingsport historical timeline states that Confederate soldiers searched the Fain house repeatedly because of the family’s sympathies.
The National Register nomination and later county history preserve a tradition that Fain allowed formerly enslaved people to remain on the property after emancipation and provided either money or employment according to their preference. This account may reflect genuine assistance, but it has not been fully documented through surviving contracts, Freedmen’s Bureau material, census records, or personal testimony from the freed people themselves. It should therefore be understood as a claim preserved in local and family history rather than a complete account of emancipation at Arcadia.
The 1870 census offers a possible path toward identifying the Black families who lived near the plantation after slavery. For the first time, formerly enslaved residents appeared by name in the federal population schedule. Comparing those households with the 1860 slave schedule, labor contracts, marriages, cemetery evidence, and later census records could restore names and family relationships that plantation histories failed to preserve.
Reedy Creek Academy
Education became another important part of Arcadia’s identity. The original National Register nomination states that Thomas Fain and two other residents donated land for Reedy Creek Academy. A nineteenth-century gazetteer described an academy in Arcadia, while local accounts connected it with the region’s temperance movement and the Sons of Temperance.
One of the academy’s best documented teachers was Joseph H. Ketron. Oliver Taylor wrote that Ketron became principal of Reedy Creek Academy in August 1864 after returning from Civil War service and taught there for nine years. Ketron had been wounded during the war and later continued his own education at institutions in Tennessee and Illinois. His years at Arcadia connected the rural academy with a broader network of Methodist education and postwar school building.
The academy provided more than elementary instruction. Its presence showed that Arcadia’s farmers and merchants wanted an institution capable of preparing young people for professional and public life. One surviving log building at the plantation became known as the Fain boys’ study because two of Thomas Fain’s sons reportedly used it while preparing for legal careers. Whether every part of that tradition can be documented or not, education was clearly woven into the community’s nineteenth-century self-image.
Camp Meetings, Churches, and Reform
Religion also shaped the Reedy Creek community. The Reedy Creek Camp Ground, later associated with the Ketron name, developed as a Methodist gathering place. Local historical records state that Henry Ketron donated land for the campground, church, and burial ground during the 1830s. Camp meetings brought residents together for preaching, worship, meals, and extended periods of fellowship.
Oliver Taylor’s county history records that the Reverend George A. Caldwell dedicated a church at Arcadia in 1872. Religious life overlapped with education and reform. Temperance societies were active in Sullivan County during the nineteenth century, and Taylor recalled a temperance bandwagon traveling from Kingsport through Arcadia and Blountville. Such movements turned rural churches, academies, and crossroads into places where local people debated morality, alcohol, politics, and community responsibility.
Arcadia Methodist Church and its cemetery continued that tradition into later generations. Church registers, conference journals, burial records, and property deeds may yet reveal more about ministers, membership, revivals, baptisms, marriages, and the families who gathered there.
The Ramsey Family and the Preservation of Arcadia
Thomas Fain transferred the property to his son Hugh in 1886. After financial difficulties during the 1890s, the estate was sold at public auction in 1898 to Charles C. Ramsey. Although the Fain period gave the property its name, the Ramsey family became responsible for preserving it through much of the twentieth century.
Charles Ramsey passed the property to his son John D. Ramsey in 1924. John died without a will in 1958, and the estate remained unsettled until Joseph H. Ramsey obtained the house in 1974. By then, portions of the complex required serious repair. Joseph Ramsey completed structural work on the roofs, porches, and stone wall, efforts that the 2004 National Register documentation credited with saving the building from possible demolition.
After Joseph Ramsey died in 2000, Lynn and Patricia Turner purchased the property in 2004. Lynn Turner was a great-grandson of Charles C. Ramsey. The couple began another extensive renovation, continuing the pattern of family stewardship that had preserved the house despite periods of uncertainty and deterioration.
The National Register listing helped establish Arcadia as an important architectural site, but the property remained a private residence rather than a public museum. Its preservation depended not only on federal recognition but also on owners willing to repair roofs, stabilize walls, restore porches, and maintain buildings that had survived from the plantation era.
Arcadia School in the Twentieth Century
The educational tradition represented by Reedy Creek Academy continued through Arcadia School. Local histories date the construction of a larger school building to 1919, when the institution began operating under the Arcadia name. By the 1930s, buses carried older students to area high schools, while Arcadia continued serving younger grades.
A 2019 newspaper feature remembered the six members of Arcadia School’s eighth-grade class of 1947. Their small class reflected the school’s rural character, where students learned alongside neighbors and relatives and where teachers often remained part of community memory long after the students had grown.
Arcadia School closed in 1981, but the property did not immediately lose its public function. Sullivan County leased the old school to the Arcadia Ruritan Club in 1983 for use as a community center. When that organization disbanded, residents formed the Arcadia Community Club and requested a new lease. In 2001 the Sullivan County Commission authorized an agreement allowing the property to continue serving recreational and community purposes. The official resolution identified it as the Arcadia School property in the county’s Tenth Civil District.
That transition carried the school’s social role into a new era. The classrooms no longer held daily lessons, but the property remained a place for gatherings, civic activities, and neighborhood identity. It was a reminder that a community can preserve an institution’s meaning even after its original purpose has ended.
Arcadia in the Shadow of a Growing City
During the twentieth century, Kingsport’s industrial and residential growth changed the region surrounding Arcadia. Roads were improved, farms were divided, subdivisions appeared, and the boundary between rural community and urban fringe became less distinct. Places once described in relation to mills, plantations, creeks, and wagon roads were increasingly located by highways, city limits, and modern neighborhoods.
Arcadia nevertheless retained a recognizable identity. The name survived in the church, school property, community organizations, cemeteries, historic records, and the National Register listing. Bloomingdale Pike continued to follow the old valley corridor, carrying modern traffic across ground once traveled by migrants, merchants, postal riders, soldiers, farmers, and schoolchildren.
The survival of the Arcadia property is particularly important because it preserves more than the architecture of a wealthy family. Its buildings reveal how a rural plantation functioned. The brick house represents domestic wealth and status, while the barns, spring house, study, cabins, cemetery, road, and former store site reveal the labor and institutions that supported it.
Why Arcadia Matters
Arcadia tells the story of how an Appalachian community could grow without ever becoming an incorporated town. A road created movement. Land grants encouraged settlement. A plantation and store concentrated economic activity. A post office gave the place an official identity. A church and academy created community institutions, while cemeteries tied generations of families to the same landscape.
Its history also demonstrates why preservation must extend beyond attractive houses and prominent surnames. Thomas and Rachel Fain left extensive traces in deeds, biographies, census records, and gravestones. The people enslaved at Arcadia left fewer records, but the surviving cabins and the names Uncle George, Ben, Lil, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Beck insist that they remain part of the story. Their labor, families, survival, and experiences after emancipation deserve the same determined research devoted to the plantation owners.
Arcadia’s historical record is not free from disagreement. Sources differ about the Brashears grant date, the Fains’ arrival, the construction of the brick house, and some details of plantation life. Those inconsistencies do not weaken the community’s history. They reveal where additional research is needed and remind us that local history is assembled from imperfect documents, family memories, buildings, maps, graves, and fragments that must be compared carefully.
Today Arcadia may appear to be only a quiet section of Sullivan County beside a growing Kingsport. Yet the old road, brick house, log buildings, school grounds, church, and burial places tell another story. They preserve the history of a Reedy Creek settlement that became a postal village, educational center, plantation community, and enduring Appalachian place.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. “Arcadia,” formerly “Fain Plantation.” National Register of Historic Places Reference No. 73001834. Listed April 11, 1973, with additional documentation accepted in 2004. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/73001834.pdf
Tennessee Historical Commission. “Fain Plantation.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory and Nomination Form. November 10, 1972. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/73001834.pdf
National Park Service. “Arcadia: Additional Documentation.” National Register of Historic Places Reference No. 73001834. Approved October 1, 2004. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/73001834.pdf
State Archives of North Carolina. “Land Grant to Robert Samuel Brashears, Sullivan County, Tennessee, 300 Acres.” 1787. North Carolina Land Grants. https://www.nclandgrants.com/ixall/?botname=bradley%2C+j.+h.&next1=1&topname=bowlens+creek
Sullivan County Register of Deeds. “Deed Books and General Indexes, Sullivan County, Tennessee.” Blountville, Tennessee. Referenced through the Tennessee State Library and Archives county inventory. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-sullivan-county
Sullivan County Department of Archives and Tourism. “Sullivan County Historical Government Records.” Sullivan County, Tennessee. https://sullivancountytn.gov/archives-and-tourism/
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Genealogical Fact Sheet About Sullivan County.” Tennessee Secretary of State. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-sullivan-county
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Map of Sullivan County, Tennessee, Showing Civil Districts.” 1836. Tennessee Virtual Archive. https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll23/id/9821/
United States Census Bureau. “Seventh Census of the United States, 1850: Sullivan County, Tennessee, Population Schedule.” Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1850
United States Census Bureau. “Seventh Census of the United States, 1850: Sullivan County, Tennessee, Slave Schedule.” Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1850
United States Census Bureau. “Eighth Census of the United States, 1860: Sullivan County, Tennessee, Population and Slave Schedules.” Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1860
United States Census Bureau. “Ninth Census of the United States, 1870: Sullivan County, Tennessee.” Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1870
National Archives and Records Administration. “Nonpopulation Schedules for Tennessee, 1850–1880.” National Archives Microfilm Publication T1135. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/census/nonpopulation/t1135.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Nonpopulation Census Records.” Agriculture, mortality, manufacturing, and social-statistics schedules, 1850–1880. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/nonpopulation
United States Post Office Department. “Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
United States Post Office Department. Post Route Map of the United States. Washington, D.C., 1888. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/97691144/
Rand McNally and Company. New Enlarged Scale Railroad and County Map of Tennessee Showing Every Railroad Station and Post Office in the State. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1888. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/98688560/
United States Geological Survey. “topoView: Historical Topographic Map Collection.” National Geospatial Program. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Sullivan County Commission. “Resolution Authorizing Lease Agreement with Arcadia Community Club.” Approved February 19, 2001. https://www.sullivancountyclerktn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/February-2001.pdf
Taylor, Oliver. Historic Sullivan: A History of Sullivan County, Tennessee, with Brief Biographies of the Makers of History. Bristol, TN: King Printing Company, 1909. https://archive.org/details/historicsullivan00tayl
Sullivan County Historical Commission and Associates. Historic Sites of Sullivan County. Compiled by Muriel C. Spoden. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1976. Excerpts concerning Arcadia are reproduced in the National Register documentation. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/73001834.pdf
Goodspeed Publishing Company. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: East Tennessee. Nashville and Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1887. https://archive.org/details/historyoftenness01good_1
Goodspeed Publishing Company. “Biographical Sketch of Thomas Fain.” In History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present. Nashville and Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1887. https://www.tngenweb.org/goodspeed/sullivan/bios-1.html
Speer, William S., ed. Sketches of Prominent Tennesseans: Containing Biographies and Records of Many of the Families Who Have Attained Prominence in Tennessee. Nashville: Albert B. Tavel, 1888. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp75096
Bradford, Augusta. Fain of Tennessee: Descendants of Nicholas Fain. Chattanooga, TN: Lookout Publishing Company, 1930. https://books.google.com/books/about/Fain_of_Tennessee.html?id=WM8_C6HYKfYC
Semmer, Blythe. “Sullivan County.” Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennessee Historical Society. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/sullivan-county/
Archives of the City of Kingsport. “History in Bloom(ingdale).” April 23, 2015. https://kingsportarchives.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/history-in-bloomingdale/
Kingsport Public Library and Archives. “Muriel C. Spoden Collection, 1800–2000.” Finding aid. https://www.kingsportlibrary.org/finding_aids/muriel-c-spoden-collection-1800-2000/
Kingsport Public Library and Archives. “Bloomingdale Road.” Archives of the City of Kingsport. https://www.kingsportlibrary.org/kpt_archives/bloomingdale-road/
City of Kingsport. Pioneer Pathways. Historic-site brochure. https://www.kingsporttn.gov/wp-content/uploads/default/Pioneer_Pathways_brochure.pdf
Sullivan County TNGenWeb. “Thomas Fain Cemetery.” Photographed and transcribed October 8, 2004. https://tngenweb.org/sullivan/thomas-fain-cemetery/
Sullivan County TNGenWeb. “Arcadia Church Cemetery.” April 10, 2012. https://tngenweb.org/sullivan/arcadia-church-cemetery/
Kingsport Times News. “Back in the Day: Arcadia School Graduates of 1947 Hold Reunion.” September 15, 2019. https://timesnews.net/news/127539/back-in-the-day-arcadia-school-graduates-of-1947-hold-reunion/
Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church. “History and Archives.” https://www.holston.org/history-archives
General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. “Holston Annual Conference Commission on Archives and History.” https://gcah.org/resources/directories/annual-conference-commissions-on-archives-and-history/
“Treaty of Lochaber.” October 18, 1770. Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/the-treaty-of-lochaber-october-18-1770/
Donelson, John. “Deposition Concerning the Treaty of Lochaber.” In “Depositions Concerning Claims to Lands under Purchases from the Indians.” Founders Online, National Archives. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0033-0003
FamilySearch Research Wiki. “Sullivan County, Tennessee Genealogy.” FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Sullivan_County%2C_Tennessee_Genealogy
Author Note: Arcadia’s history survives through a remarkable combination of buildings, cemeteries, maps, family accounts, and government records. I hope this article encourages additional research into the enslaved and formerly enslaved people whose lives remain only partially documented in the surviving sources.