LIS 648: Week Three

This week, the main focus was the history of Knoxville and the courts of Knox County. Doris walked me around the city pointing out historic site such as the Blount Mansion, the different theaters, and the Howard Baker Building.

We also visited the old Knox County Court House where John Sevier and both of his wives are buried. The court house dates back all the way to the founding of Knox County when the area was still part of North Carolina!

We took a trip to the new Knox County Courthouse, or the City-County Building as it is widely referred to, where anything court-related in the county takes place. We sat in on both a criminal court case and a chancery court case. The criminal case was actually pretty vanilla, a man wanted to leave jail to attend a family member's funeral, but the chancery case was a sister suing her brother for damages after he allegedly smoked crack in her condo.

The whole point of that trip was to see where the records we archive are actually made. It was a very fun and educational trip!