TOOLE FAMILY
AND COTTAGE HISTORY
212 East Harper Avenue
PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK BENNETT The George Toole Cottage.
BY MARK D. BENNETT | Maryville City Archivist
The story of the Toole cottage begins long before it was a barbershop, a pottery studio, or a quiet landmark tucked behind Broadway. It begins in the early days of Maryville’ s antebellum history, with a Revolutionary War soldier.
John Toole( 1756 – 1791), a veteran of the 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, settled on Toole’ s Bend in Knox County. With his wife, Ruth Rankin( 1758 – 1824), he raised a family whose roots would run deep in East Tennessee soil. After John’ s death, Ruth remarried, to Benjamin Pride, and together they shaped a lineage woven tightly into Maryville’ s early civic life. One of Ruth’ s sons from this second marriage, Samuel Pride( 1799 – 1863), even became Maryville’ s first mayor.
But it was Ruth’ s son William Toole( 1791 – 1860) who planted the family firmly in what is now downtown Maryville. He operated a tannery where the Blount County Health Department stands today and lived on the town lot now home to Roost. His son, James Marion Toole( 1819 – 1885), worked as a merchant until his Confederate sympathies drove him out of town and all the way to Dallas.
James’ story, however, also contains one of Maryville’ s most remarkable acts of courage. Polly Toole, an enslaved woman in his household, saved countless county records during the Civil War— documents that likely would have been lost to fire.
Her bravery preserved irreplaceable pieces of local history, and years later, the county awarded her a small pension for her heroic deed.
Another generation later, George Augustine Toole( 1848 – 1923) kept the family in the center of Maryville commerce. One of his grocery stores stood where Brooke Nix is located today, and in 1906 he added a brick storehouse beside the Kizer Black building. In 1887, George made the purchase that would ultimately give Maryville its well-loved cottage: he bought the residence of Mary S.( Towne) Wallace, widow of General William Wallace.
The home didn’ t stay put for long. When the U. S. government bought the property in 1911 to build a new post office on Main Street( now Broadway), the house was moved to the back of the lot in 1916. George then constructed a small cottage behind it in 1917 as a real estate investment.
In 1926, George’ s heirs sold both the residence and cottage to the Maryville Public Library. The library rented out the cottage to help pay off the debt, while the main Toole home became the library itself until 1931, when a growing collection demanded more space. With funding help from Dora( Reagan) Harper, the A. K. Harper Memorial Library rose on Church Street— today the home of Dandy Lions.
Once the library moved out, the City of Maryville acquired
24 | BLOUNT COUNTY QUARTERLY • WINTER 2025-26