Confederate Position

You are in the former schoolyard of the Masonic Female Institute, where Confederate troops stood as they defended Blountville on September 22, 1863. Col. James E. Carter’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry withdrew that morning from the Watauga River to positions such as the one here that had already been prepared to block Union Col. John W. Foster's cavalry brigade after it crossed the river. Foster took up a position on Cemetery Hill to your left on the western end of town early in the afternoon, and a destructive artillery duel ensued.