Library News

December 26, 1937, was among the happiest days of 23-year old Claudia Elizabeth Brooks’s life. Dressed in a brown tweed suit, draped in a fur coat, she walked down the aisle at Knoxville’s Second Presbyterian Church to marry her college sweetheart, James Woodruff Hayward.

“…I knew him [Jesse] well as he was great friends with my husband [James Greenway].  He said he had a wife and some children back in Carolina and he intended, if he ever could, to go back to them.  He wouldn’t pay attention to any other woman though he was a good-looking young fellow, a

With 500+ kids screaming at the top of their lungs, you’d think the Beatles were in the house—or Taylor Swift. The enthusiasm was real, but the star of the show was books and reading.

This year, recipe books and cards in the McClung Collection’s annual holiday cooking display feature Stella DeVault and Malinda Russell, local bakers who honed their culinary skills and business acumen during the days before the Civil War. 

Edward Joseph Boling was born to Samuel Riley Boling and Nerissa Clark Boling on February 19, 1922, in Sevier County. By 1930, his family moved to Knoxville, and as a high schooler, he worked as an usher at a local theater.

Evelyn Darst was born to Guy Darst and Blanche Allison Darst on April 22, 1919, in Knoxville. She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1940, where she was the first woman editor of the Tennessee Volunteer, the school’s yearbook.

Marvin Gerald Krieger was born to Abraham and Pauline Krieger on July 31, 1920, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Abraham moved the family to Knoxville when he joined the Tennessee Valley Authority as a civil engineer.

Aubrey Lee Totten was born to Riley Totten and Anna Scales Totten on December 5, 1906, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Aubrey moved to Knoxville sometime in the 1930s. On September 11, 1940, he married Knoxville-native Annetha Vineyard.

When the Clarence Brown Film Festival takes place this fall, audiences will have the rare chance to see one of Brown's most renowned silent films, which had ostensibly gone missing for over 50 years.

Theodore Baehr, Jr. retired from the Knox County Public Library’s Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection in the East Tennessee History Center on May 1^st.

     The Erskine-Williams photograph album of unidentified Black portraiture at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection contains more than 30 portraits, mostly cabinet cards of well-dressed men and women, as well as a few tintypes and cartes de-visite.