The Knoxville Frankenstein

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Hello.

How you doing? I'm doing well. Yes. Thank you.

Well, I'm not really doing well. I've been sick with whatever. Yeah. So still, you know, week 1238 battling this illness.

It just, it won't go away. No, it's the worst. The other night I cough so hard that I may have peed myself and my child. I let slip.

He's like, what's wrong? And I said, I peeked myself and he said, mama, you need to like use the potty. That's ridiculous. You're, you're grown up.

I was like, you're right. I was accurate. No bladder control anymore and I cough. We'll just send you right over the edge.

I'm gonna. So it's a thing. It is a thing. You don't know what's gonna come out when you start coughing really hard.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sneas. Oh, that's a close one out of the room.

Get careful. Oh, good times. So what's the story about? Well, um, so we are going to go to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Been there. I was looking for Tennessee stories this week because we went to Johnson City to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. Yes. To a seafood restaurant over there, which I know Tennessee and seafood doesn't sound like it would know it doesn't be a thing, but it's a really good place.

We've been a few times, um, if it's a discount furniture outlet over there that when we go visit there, we usually stop by this restaurant. Um, but so I looked up on the Google. It said Tuesday. Open.

Open. Not open Sunday or Monday, but open on Tuesday. Fantastic. So we load up in the car.

We take off. We are going me and my whole family get there. And I'm like, my mom, like halfway into our journey, she's like, we should call and make sure we don't need reservation. I'm like, how many times have we been there?

We used to walk into down until the reservation is fine. So we get there in the parking lot. No one's in the parking lot. I'm like, Oh my God, this place is closed.

Why is it like, but it's set on Tuesday? So I pull up and I look at the sign on the door and I figured it was going to be like a, you know, do a short staffing, like everywhere else is struggling. I'm like, well, it sucks. Okay.

Um, look at the sign on the door and it says due to the death of our mother, we are close to day. And I'm like, Oh, you can't even be mad. No. So I was like, Oh, no.

And mom's like, that's, yeah, I do not call. It's like one of the chances that that's on the voicemail. Like, it's just going to say like they didn't do that. She calls and puts it on speaker due to a death of the family.

We will be so much for calling. I was like, Oh my God, unfortunately, we were already halfway here. There's like literally nothing between where I live and Johnson City. So I was like, what were we going to do?

Like turn around and go back and then go to another town that's 45 minutes away from where we live. And I was like, no, I guess not. So we found another place. It was a little cage in place.

Um, all got some shrimp. I love kittret. It was excellent. Yeah.

So, you know, crisis averted things worked out in the end. Yeah. And you were inspired. It inspired me to go back to Tennessee to look around.

The mother dying wasn't part of your story, was it? No, no, she died up and stay on the little sheet on the door to say she was horrifically murdered because that just due to the death. But like, it was kind of a lot. So usually they'll say, Oh, we're going to death in the family or whatever to do the death of our mother.

Very precise. We'll be close today. I'm like, okay. So that's not good.

With that being said, we're going to go to Knoxville, which is near Johnson City on the other side. So we're going to go there and we're going to talk about the Frankenstein of Knoxville, Tennessee. My ex-husband? No, that's Leon.

Leon. He is my own, uh, Frank is threper. No, not Leon. This is uh, this is Dr.

Stephen Foster. Okay. So Dr. Stephen Foster was born in 1798.

So taken it way on back in Massachusetts. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1821 and became ordained, became and ordained Presbyterian Reverend in September of 1824. Did not see that coming. Okay.

He went on after he graduated from Andover theological seminary. He became this Presbyterian Reverend. Okay. So really the science.

But also God. But also the Lord. And the Lord. He had Jesus between him and his textbook.

He did. He did. So he uh, was decided that's the route for him. Um, 1825, Dr.

Foster taught Latin and Greek language classes for a year in Virginia. Then he moved to Greenville College, which is now a Tuscolon college. Okay. Yes, that's a college.

Um, in Tennessee. Um, he then became pretty good friends with his boss there at the college. Um, and when his boss moved to Knoxville, he went with him. He was like, you know, I'm going to just go here and teach somewhere else.

I'm also going to go there. So like working for you, this is great. And that's hard. Sometimes when you are trying to find work and you have a good boss and you're like, and they're leaving and you're like, Oh, take me with you.

Exactly. So that's kind of what this is. We have never followed any of our bosses to say. No, I have not done that.

What they've been great. Nor have what they have wanted us to, to be honest. They didn't want us. No.

Um, in 1827, Greenville College President Charles Coffin became a Coughton. I love it. Yep. He became the first president at East Tennessee College, which is now the University of Tennessee.

Thank you. Um, and Coffin recruited Foster to teach ancient languages of the college. So he's like, yes, come with me. Do the thing.

Teach the ancient languages. Foster was also a local historian and wrote an essay on the 1793 Cavite station massacre, which was published in the Knoxville Register newspaper on February 8th of 1832. Sounds like we're going to have to talk about that as well. I know.

I don't have a whole lot of information on it right now, but I'm like, that's highlighted starred on the list now. Um, um, Foster and Coffin, they had a great deal in Common. They both were natives of Massachusetts. Oh, they worked as educators.

They were both Presbyterian. So there you go. The Knoxville Register newspaper archives show that both Coffin and Foster were also elected leaders in Knoxville's Presbyterian organizations. So they were moving up the chain.

Mm hmm. Wow. Um, when Coffin returned to Greenville College in 1834, Foster became president of East Tennessee College. So Coffin moves on.

He takes this place. Um, his stint as president in his life were cut short by a fatal illness in January of 1835. Oh dear. So he dies in 1835.

So let's talk about kind of what makes him the Frankenstein. Yeah, because now he's dead. Yeah. Would you want to give a little bit of history into his life?

Well, no, that's helpful. And all of that. Um, in life, Dr. Foster delivered many a sermon at the first Presbyterian Church in Knoxville.

Um, one sermon on April, April 12th of 1833 discussed the, I can't say that word, in temperance. Yep, in temperance. Uh, discussing in temperance and the evils of alcohol. Alcohol was bad in the 1800s.

Well, and it continued. I mean, there was a whole temperance movement. There was. There was.

Um, this sermon was so well received. It was published as a 15 page pamphlet and was widely circulated. A copy of the sermon can still be found in the rare books at the university of Tennessee is a special collections. So fun fact, people used to, particularly men would drink in excess.

There wasn't any kind of moderation. Nobody sat at the bar and was like, dude, I'm going to cut you off. You've had enough or just like a social, Hey, let's go grab one drink. Yeah, you grab a drink and you go on.

This was excessive drinking. And the type of alcohol, a lot of these individuals would be like wood grain and think of the could essentially kill you, but also really affect your behaviors. Yeah. And the big part of the temperance movement was trying to help individuals not drink as a form of coping because it made them violent.

And so many families were actually torn apart because of it, because there was abuse in the family, dads will become abusive towards his children, his wives. I mean, just a lot of stuff going on. So that's why the timbre's movement was formed. It sounds very prudish, but it was formed in that way and actually did make a lot of change.

So I can kind of see where he's coming from, creating this, because he's saying, listen, families are falling apart, essentially, and it's not biblical to drink to drunkenness. Yeah. Although I do think it's biblical to drink. Yeah.

Would you like water? I'll turn it into land. Just like that. Just like that.

Yeah. So he is given these sermons doing the Lord's work. He is. So Dr.

Foster's sermon on alcohol went beyond religion. It revealed his extensive knowledge of science, the human philosophy and physiology, physiology as well. Foster discussed the physical impacts of alcohol on the body in great detail. He explained how nutrients flow to the stomach and countergastric juices are converted in the intestines and then are transmitted in the forms as quote transmitted in the form of vermilion blood through the arteries to the veins.

Okay. So not sure that's accurate, but you know, that's 1800s. What you gonna do? Foster said that the drunkard demonstrates quote corrupted flesh, adulterated blood, agitated nerves, stiffened muscles, contracted arteries, distant veins, consolidated coats of stomach of more than an inch of thickness, a liver bloated to double its size or shriveled to the mere consistency of pimples, a brain integrated to a hard and bony toughness, as well as other quote physical horrors of intemperance.

This just goes beyond your wow. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. So he's clearly into science.

Definitely. Clearly into the human body. Clearly loves Jesus. This is this is interesting to me.

So at some point in his life, he decides, you know, what I want to do? Oh no. I want to revive a dead man using electricity. I mean, why not?

He just is like, I like the science. Just to see what would happen? Or is he gonna like, intoxicate him? No, just cause.

Okay. So we've taken kind of a wide step from, you know, the evils of alcohol, talking about the human body to, you know, let's race the dead. And how does that not step against his spiritual ideology? Now I will say this, this is all legend.

Okay. This piece is this raising of the dead is all legend. Okay. So we're going to just take that with you as we go.

I got it in the backpack. Let's do this. So he says, I want to do this. Revive a dead man.

He's electricity. Sounds like something out of, you know, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which was written 11 years earlier. So maybe got some inspiration. Foster was apparently well thought of in the community.

He had cooperation from the local sheriff and use of the church. He built galvanized batteries to use to jolt the life back into the disease and the sheriff's like, absolutely, let's do this. How long has the person been dead? And like, where did he get this body?

We're going to get into that. Okay. We're going to go. We're going to go.

There's like in the middle of the night, digging somebody up. No, no, no. Okay. He gets his chance to do this because the sheriff's on board.

Sheriff's on board in 1829. Two murderers were hanged just afternoon on Knoxville's gallows, which is now some of Hill. That's a story way to happen. Yeah.

One man was Joshua Young, 67 of Knoxville, who confessed to killing a 64 year old wife. Sad. Very sad. The second man was named James White, who was not related to the Knoxville founding white family.

Okay. For your information. He was 23 years old and he was convicted of killing a man named George W. Brown in Amarian County.

On August 19th, 1829, the Knoxville register reported 3,000 to 5,000 people witnessed the quote solemn scene. They witnessed this hanging so they came out to watch. Of course they did. That's what she's doing.

They're public. Yeah. After white and young were brought in a wagon from the jail, hymns were sung and two prayers and a sermon were offered. White, the newspaper reported, quote, then took leave by shaking hands with some of the bystanders.

Before he was hanged. And thanks for coming out. Thanks guys. I'm so glad you're here.

I know you were really busy today. Thanks for coming out for my hangin. It's really nice to see you guys. Hey, hey, how are you?

I'm Chuck. Hey, it's weird. Yeah, it's super weird. The new circle demands next and quote about 20 minutes afternoon, both were launched into eternity.

Launched into eternity. That's what the newspaper says. Quote, they died without a struggle. After they were launched into eternity.

Swung into eternity. That sounded a little bit. That sounded so bad. I feel like they're in a rocket ship.

That's bad. That's bad. Young was buried on the hill at the foot of the callows. Workers grading a road in June of 1868 actually exhumed his skeleton.

Wonderful. Yeah. Former Knox County Sheriff George M. White, who was then an elderly man told the Knoxville Daily Herald that the skeleton was young.

He remembered how the two men were executed decades before and was like, yeah, that's where we put him. That's where he was. And he stood up and the corpse shook hands with everybody. Thanks so much for finding me.

How are you? I'm Chuck. Thanks to meet you. Thank you for coming today.

They then put him in a potter's field off of Betel Avenue. Wonderful. They're like, we'll put him over here now. Yeah.

Yeah. Ham Chuck. That's nice to meet you. That's nice to see you.

Nice to see you. Nice to see you. I've entered this potters field. Exactly.

Yeah. So neither of the newspapers that we've kind of talked about throughout this story mentioned what happened to White's body. It may have been carted a few blocks down to Foster's Church because he's like, I want one of those bodies. So he took White's, which was located near the current home of Federal Bank on Market Street.

So if you're in the area making a deposit, make him a deposit. Just knows that there are dead bodies around. Yeah. There perhaps in the basement or in the sanctuary with the pews pushed aside, Foster hooked wires from the galvanized batteries to the corpse.

As he turned to switch, powering the batteries, White's body apparently moved. His chest rose in Vel three times. So they're thinking maybe he drew a breath. He was being shocked.

I'm going to say no. I'm going to say that was an electric jolt. Yes. When somebody shocks a body, even if they're dead, they're going to go.

Yeah. The heat then stopped. The legend says that Foster cut the current and pronounced that what God has declared dead isn't for him to revive. As it shouldn't have been in the first place.

Actually, this was a terrible idea. I should not have done this. I get the idea around it because, I mean, how many times have your parents shocked someone who probably doesn't have any vital signs that they're trying to bring about? You know, so I get that.

But this is someone who you have that time to save versus someone who's just been dead. Right. Yeah. And you can't shock, like, that's the thing with television and seeing someone use a defibrillator to shock a person.

In fact, you have to put them in the places they need to be on the chest. But also, you can't shock someone that's flatlined. Yeah. Like the heart has to have a quote shockable rhythm.

So it has to either be like quivering. There has to be some sort of sound ever here and there. Yeah. Some sort of electrical activity has to be happening in the heart for you to jolt it back.

Yeah. So that's why you'll see people do CPR until they can get the heart to get into that. And how often is it? You're right on TV, you see, and they're just completely flatlined and they're like charging.

Right. And I think the statistic is like 70, 80% of people that you do CPR on, you never get back. I mean, I may not be that high, but it's a really significant number that you just don't get them. And if you get them back, like by, you know, shocking, whatever, there's another large number of people who just did never recover.

And wouldn't you also like add like epinephrine and like those kinds of things? Yeah, you're using drugs and they're using that to hopefully kickstart that electrical activity. Yeah. You know, you're doing CPR at the same time to get, you know, the drugs to flow because you're manually pumping the heart, which is an oxygen to your brain, which is getting whatever medication circulating, all of that sort of stuff.

So you're trying to get that electrical activity to happen in the heart again. You can't just like shock a dead person and it works. It took for the best. Yeah, it's not how that works.

Exactly. So this is your time of death whole corner. Second time of death, 1835. Yeah, it's hilarious.

Bad. Don't do that. Don't shock it, buddies. Mental note, DeSell.

Thank you. You're welcome. So the legend of Dr. Foster.

There goes next Thursday. That's the right. We're out. The legend of Dr.

Foster says he conducted the experiment at the Second Presbyterian Church. Of course he did. Where he served as Reverend. I know, because God's there.

A pastor is not mentioned in any of the published books on the history of the church, but it is possible that he filled in as a substitute reverend in 1829. Here's the truth. Fairbearers. Could be.

Could be. They're like, we don't need that on our history. The 1968 book called Her Walls Before the Stand, which is a history of the Second Presbyterian Church from 1818 to 1968. The best seller would recommend.

No, it's just history, which I'm sure it's right. I tried to buy it and it said it was sold out. So I'm like, great. There's a waiting list.

I'm sure it's a fantastic book, but not really. Hayley is really building it up. Yeah, it's great. But it describes the church as having no regular ministers from 1829 to 1831.

And it's quote, pull pit was seemingly occupied by a series of supply ministers. What are supply ministers? Think I'd like to substitute. Will you be one of our supply ministers?

And they just keep them in the supply room. They pull around. Yeah, like paper clips. Yeah, they just don't get that.

You'll do that. Johnny, you're it today. Come on, you ready? You got something good?

Psalms? Oh, we love Psalms. Come on. Yeah.

Second Corinthians. That's a good one. Next week. Next week.

We'll go back to that. And somebody pops up and says, revelations and they're like, we're not ready. Get back in the closet. Go ahead.

Never. Yeah. So that thing is just like substitute pastors. I think he might have been kind of part of that crew.

Okay. So interesting how much he makes himself so prolific and yet nobody wants anything to do with him. Right. Yeah.

I hear that. So a little bit more about his life. So he's done this thing and now it's like, live the rest of your life. It's kind of a blip on the radar for him.

But he's just kind of an interesting guy. Yeah. Like he's just we live the life. So Knox also is not only where he worked and preached and you know, tried to revive dead bodies.

It's also where he fell in love. Oh, how beautiful. Foster married Ann Allison Davis in 1831. Their love was a subject of a 1915 article and the Knoxville Sentinel titled, A Knoxville Romance about quote Reverend Stephen Foster and Ann A Davis wooed and won.

I mean, was she alive? Yes. Okay. She did live.

Good. Okay. So he didn't have to bring her back to life with his love. No, no, no, no.

She was alive. They had a son named John in February of 1833. Mrs. Foster also gave birth to a daughter named Sarah Jane in 1835.

However, Stephen Foster, Dr. Foster, he didn't live to see the birth of his daughter. He died, like we said, in January 1835 from a illness. She sucks.

Yeah. The hardships for Ann Foster mounted later that year when her two year old son John died on August 28, 1835. I don't devastating. I know it's pretty common though.

It was but I mean, that doesn't take away the pain. Someone would feel losing their husband and child in the same and giving birth. So you're a postpartum. You're a woman in the 1800s.

Like, how am I going to support myself? Wow. Wow. So both Dr.

Foster and his toddler son are buried at the first Presbyterian church cemetery. Stephen Foster's mother also placed a tombstone in Massachusetts to honor the lives of her husband, her son Stephen Foster and her grandson John Foster. So he's actually buried in Tennessee, but there is a tombstone for him in Massachusetts as well. Nice.

Yeah. You must have still been pretty young. Yeah. So the kind of words that are engraved on his epitaph, the epitaph, sure, that are engraved on his tombstone in Knoxville, say he was a professor of ancient languages, an able instructor of youth, a faithful and devoted minister of the gospel, and a kind and affectionate friend.

It concludes with a quote though, which I think is really interesting and kind of just wraps this up really nicely. The quote says, mysterious are the ways of Lord. That's true. Here's a question.

I know you're not going to have a tombstone, but if you were, what would you want to be written on it? Spicy ginger. I mean, I don't know. That's a lot of pressure for words.

I think that I don't know feels a lot of pressure for words. Yeah. It's a lot of haly. Haly 1997 to 2023.

Yeah. Very fast. She was so young. I'll get on that suffering.

It's just she imploded. So bad. It's terrible. Oh, well, that's the first.

So like I said before, this story may just be that it could be. I mean, because there have been people who have dug through microfilm, newspapers, other historical records, all the docs, county, public library, and they've uncovered no 1829 accounts of Knoxville's Dr. Frankenstein. So there's nothing that they've seen, but they said that doesn't mean the story isn't there, infated or hard to read print, or that the experiment didn't happen.

Because this legend is told in books, it's told on ghost tours of the area. I mean, so something happened. Yeah. But what it was, or if it was this, who knows?

Or version of it. Yeah. But this is kind of the legend of I like that. I like that.

I like that. So Dr. Stephen Basser, the Knoxville Frankenstein Knoxville Frankenstein, you find the most interesting story you guys wear. Yeah.

Well, that seems about right. So that's it. That was magical. Thanks.

I just don't know what to even say or do. I'm just, I'm in shock. Get it? Don't shock the body.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Oh my God. Sign us for them.

More epi. Keep pushing it. You just keep doing manual until it's time. Yeah.

Everybody stand back. Clear. Charging. Yeah.

Those ADs that they make, they have little robotic voices on them are really creepy. They're just like, no, shockable rhythm detected. Yep. Continue.

Confessions. Place paddles. And you play some underneath like, you know, the left breast and then up kind of more towards the shoulder on the right side. Yep.

I just went through my research in CPR. Oh, yeah. I got to be mine. I still, I saved many a dummy.

Nice. Yeah. I did stop the bleed recently. Nice.

Talk about that. I learned how to do the strength. My CPR is expired. I do need to get that renewed.

So I think we're going to do that on future work days when I go back to school. Mine comes up every odd year. So it has come up again. I didn't have my renewed for a long time when I was working in hospice.

I didn't have it. Well, I mean, that does make sense. But that was just very, you know, passing legal stuff. Yeah.

About what hospice. So I just never really say when we worked together, we had to have it. I had it then. But yeah, I have it.

I have to have it now just in case a client were to pass out in front of me and you know, something were to happen. I could tend to them. Yeah. I would never want that.

You know, you wouldn't want me to like drop my laptop and come running to you and try and save your life. Like maybe a mental health crisis. Sure. Yeah.

We got you covered. Yeah. But the medical ones will try the best. Yeah.

Yeah. That's all I can do. Good luck. I'm so sorry.

All right. Well, this was fun. Hailey, why don't you let them know how to get in touch with us if they want to? If you want to.

If you want to. And Hailey is the one who reads all these emails and I read the social media lens. So say mean things to her and nice things to me, please. Oh, yeah, I like it.

I, oh, I've heard that. All right. You can send us an email at mountainistories.appleatchin.gmail.com. Find us on our Facebook page.

Mountainistories Tales from Appalachia. Find us on Instagram, mountainistories.appleatcha. Or go check us out on our Patreon for some additional content at patreon.com slash mountainistories. We do have a lot of cool content.

We do. Every once in a while, we get one out of the Patreon vault for our main channel. We're going to say we did that this week, actually last, no, two weeks ago, two weeks ago, I can't keep up. Our schedules in the summer sometimes be a little crazy.

So it's nice to have those there as backups as needed. We try not to do it too often. But when illness happens or summer, summer vacation plans and things like that, we just can't get it together to record. It just happens that way.

Well, I want to give a huge shout out to Martensburg, West Virginia. Thank you for listening. Thanks. Well, until next week, Haley.

Until next week. Bye.