Historic Union County

Spreading the good news of Union County

Literally hundreds of people visit the Union County Museum each year. Some come to see the artifacts. Others view those same artifacts and displays with the nostalgia of their childhood and are inspired to research their family tree.

I am thrilled to announce that as of December 2022, Biblical instruction is offered to students of all five elementary schools in Union County. This is provided through an interdenominational program similar to the Bible Lady that many of you grew up with. It is called Bible Release Time and is provided by the Elgin Children’s Foundation.
What is Bible Release Time (BRT)?

At its December 20, 2022, the Union County Board of Education elected to negotiate a director's contract with Washburn Principal Gregory Clay. Clay had been employed as a teacher and a principal at Horace Maynard Middle School. The announcement brought a round of applause from the audience.

The FY23 Union County Budget has a new pay scale for county employees. The pay scale was developed by looking at all current salaries for county employees. Any employee who currently made less than $15 per hour was raised to at least that amount and placed on the schedule without regard to the number of years worked.
So, if employee A makes $8 per hour as a new hire and employee B makes $10 per hour with five years experience, both employees will now make the same $15 per hour.

At the December meeting of the Plainview Board of Aldermen, Mayor Gary Chandler presented a plaque to be hung on the community building wall that honors the founders of the City of Plainview. The plaque pays tribute to Albert Thomas, Billy Sexton, Janie Frazier, Jeff Collins, John Seltzer, Judy Brantley, Ruth Collins, Terry Hill, Thomas Keaton, Walter (Junior) Wolfe, Sr., and Wayne Roach for their leadership given to the founding of Plainview. Plainview became a city on September 11, 1992.

There’s a new stylist in town and she has set up shop at New You Hair Salon in Maynardville. Tonia Harrison is the newest stylist to join owner Vickie Burkhart’s crew. She has come all the way from Florida, where she was a stylist for 16 years, part of the time as a shop owner.
Earlier this year, Tonia and her husband made the decision to move to Tennessee to be closer to family. The couple has family residing in Union County and Polk County, so they had the tough choice of choosing a new hometown. The wonderful tight-knit community of Union County won their hearts, so they packed up and left Florida. Tonia, however, left behind her salon, Pretty Bird Hair.

Glasses. That is what most people think of when they hear ‘Lions Club’. Glasses. Donate your used glasses in a container at Walmart. Get help with glasses when you cannot afford them. Lions Club.
Unknown to many, the Lions Club is an international volunteer service club with over 1.4 million caring men, women and youth members in 200-plus countries benefiting an average of 96 million people a year.
LIONS: Liberty, Intelligence, Our Nation’s Safety

Announced on TN Farm Bureau website
The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture plans to host 19 in-person field days in 2023. Most of the events will take place on UT AgResearch campuses across the state. One event, Turf Tuesdays, will be held weekly and online.

Chiropractic is a licensed health care profession that emphasizes the body’s ability to heal itself. Treatment typically involves manual therapy, often including spinal manipulation. Other forms of treatment, such as exercise and nutritional counseling, may be used as well.

What Chiropractors Do

One day while scrolling Facebook an item caught my eye. It promised to reveal the two words that would be key in my life in the new year, based on my birth month.
“Why not check it out?” I thought. Though I am not a believer in astrology, curiosity caused me to discover what my two crucial words were for the future.
The first word was “change.” What a no-brainer! Every zodiac sign could legitimately have that word as a guiding star. Every life changes, not just from year to year, but from day to day. The mystery is in the nature of the change.

This casserole goes together quickly, since we are using frozen breaded chicken patties diced into bite sized pieces. Just toss it together and bake until bubbly, about 45 minutes.
When you need a great casserole in a hurry, this is it.

It was during the late 1700s that European settlers started to widely inhabit this area. As they started to move into the area along the Clinch and Powell rivers, one of the most important tools that the settlers would bring with them was the rifle.

Did you always like the lunch your mother packed for you during those long-ago school years? Did your classmates’ lunches look better than the same old boring stuff you pulled from your lunch sack?
If so, you were not alone. But there was a solution. Let me tell you what my son Tom thought up.
If Tom had paid as much attention to his schoolwork as he did in goofing off, he might have been a rocket scientist or at least the vice president. Not so. Goofing off was his specialty.

Nandinas have been planted for decades. They are chosen for their beautiful bright red berries or their equally attractive foliage. Often referred to as heavenly bamboo, sacred bamboo, or sacred shrub, these beautifully cloaked shrubs have been used extensively in landscape design. And why not? They are colorful, easy to grow, tough as nails, readily available and very inexpensive.

Country Connections y James and Ellen Perry
As I sit here on my front porch in the late evening afterglow on a cool December day, I see a robin in my front yard.
Immediately my memory goes back to a beautiful soul-searching song by Hank Williams from 1949. This line was in that song: “Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves began to die, that means he’s lost the will to live.”

he meaning of ‘The Last Days’
What does the KJV Bible mean by the term “The Last Days”?
Digging into the “last days” term we find a few other similar terms the KJV uses: like “Latter Days” and “end of the days;” “time of the end;” or “day of the Lord,” all of which indicate a promise to come after a length of time. The Old and New Testament authors are very particular in how these “last days” terms are used, so as to make a clear distinction between a longer period of time, as opposed to a single last day.

Unlike most kids, my favorite Christmas song wasn’t “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” or “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.” Nope. It was “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.”
Does that sound strange? Being the imaginative kid that I was, I created my own version of a winter wonderland in my head.
Every time I heard that song, it transported me there. In it were snow, talking snowmen (of course), and Christmas trees full of colorful sparkling lights and shiny ornaments.
In other words, it was a perfect place full of adventure.

The recent bitter cold spell we just lived through may have converted a lot of people to become thermophiles (those who like heat), and don’t want to read about cold right now. But stay with me on this one and perhaps you won’t be so down on our own winter weather.

Soon, people working sedentary jobs will be able to take advantage of an innovation created to prevent troublesome back pain — researchers have created a prototype of an office chair that activates deep muscles and improves trunk stabilization.

Research shows that many people spend almost 80 per cent of their working day sitting and at least half of that time in the same body position. The prolonged and invariable sitting posture is associated with lower back pain due to impaired musculoskeletal control.

Have you ever loved a TV show so much that you planned your schedule around it?
My mother loves the classic Christmas TV shows from the 1960s and 1970s: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “The Little Drummer Boy,” and (my favorite) “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” When these shows came out on VCR, she bought them in a pack. When they came out on DVD, she bought them again.