First settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee. It is the home of the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee. Knoxville is also home to the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as the corporate headquarters of several national and regional companies. Knoxville has positioned itself in recent years as a repository of Appalachian culture, and is one of the gateways to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

LDS Population

LDS Members make up 0.93% of the population in Knoxville. In the state of Tennessee there are 43,179 members, 10 stakes, 68 wards and 24 branches, 2 missions, and 2 temples.

LDS History

David W. Patten and Warren Parish arrived in Tennessee shortly before 11 October 1834 and soon baptized 31 people: organizing a branch by the end of the year. On March 27, 1835, Wilford Woodruff, then a priest, came to assist Parrish. When Warren Parrish was called as a Seventy in July 1835, he ordained Woodruff as an elder and placed him in charge of the work in Tennessee. The worst massacre of Church members in the South, however, occurred on August 10, 1884 when a mob shot to death missionaries William S. Berry and John H. Gibbs and local members W. Martin Conder and John Riley Hutson during LDS Church services.