KNOXVILLE — Janet Rudd, a reference archivist at the McClung Historical Collection, was working through a donated surveyor’s tube last month when she unrolled a 1933 plat of Loyston with one lot near the middle of town marked “Reserved, church supper.” The plat doesn’t say which church.
Rudd checked the deed files for each of the churches in town and none of them claim the lot. “I called the Union County register of deeds to see if they had a name for it,” Rudd said. “The woman looked, and she found the lot on her map with its number, and no owner listed. She tried a couple of other spellings for me. It has a frontage written down, forty-one feet, so somebody went out and measured it.”
The plat is signed by Vester Cogdill, a county surveyor whose other work in the collection is mostly farm boundaries and a bridge easement. Rudd compared the date against the TVA removal schedule for Loyston and found nothing in it that mentions the lot.
“I don’t know when they meant to hold it,” Rudd said. “There isn’t a date on the plat, and TVA’s schedule doesn’t have one either.”
The plat is in a flat file in the reading room. Rudd said she hasn’t touched the lot in the finding aid, which still lists it as reserved.