As we continue to move toward our nation’s semiquincentennial, I’m still focusing on elements of the Revolutionary War effort of attaining independence and the related contributions and connections of families of the Fork, the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers.
If you’re familiar with the Tuckahoe area of the Fork, then you know the Coker name. Marlin Coker’s block building with “Coker’s Used Cars” painted on it on Midway Road has been there all my life, and the newly opened River Islands Country Store and Grill in the old Midway School is another Coker establishment. If you haven’t eaten at the grill or perused their shelves of Amish goods, then you’re missing out. But I digress.
Records verified by the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) tell us that William Coker was born in 1742 in Virginia. Once the war ended, he and a couple of his brothers came here to Knox County. A 1792 survey shows that William Coker had 400 acres shaped like a horseshoe on the south bank of what is now known as Fort Loudon Lake (the Tennessee River, formerly known as the Holston). Alcoa Highway now crosses it. After having several children, William’s first wife died, and he remarried and had several more children. He died in Knox County in 1816…