Historic Freels Bend Cabin: A marvelous setting for the Oct. 13, 2016, public and membership meeting of Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, in partnership with UT-Battelle. The meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. to be sure the program can be completed before dark. (Photo courtesy ORHPA)
Aaron Astor, an associate history professor at Maryville College, will discuss life along the Clinch River in Anderson and Roane counties before Oak Ridge was built in a special meeting at the historic Freels Bend Cabin on October 13.
It’s the monthly public and membership meeting of the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, a press release said. The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, October 13, at the Freels Bend Cabin.
“We will meet at the parking lot at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ South Campus at 5 p.m., and at 5:15 p.m., we will caravan to the Freels Bend Cabin,” the press release said.
Astor’s topic is “Before Oak Ridge: Life Along the Clinch River in Anderson and Roane Counties.”
The press release said Astor has written numerous articles, conference papers, and book chapters on the Civil War era, focusing especially on the Upper and Border South. He is the author of the book “Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri, 1860-1872,” published in 2012 by LSU Press for its “Conflicting Worlds: New Perspectives on the Civil War” series.
The History Press released his most recent book, “The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau,” in May 2015. He has also written eleven articles for the award winning New York Times Disunion series, addressing such topics as guerrilla warfare, battles and campaigns in the Western Theater, popular politics, emancipation and race, and regional identity in the Appalachian South, the press release said.
Astor teaches at Maryville College, a private liberal arts college in Maryville, Tennessee, where he covers a wide range of topics in American history from the Revolution to the present. He contributes to several Civil War preservation and public education organizations in Tennessee, and regularly speaks about the Civil War and regional identity in the Upper South, the press release said. During Knoxville’s 2015 Civil War Sesquicentennial event, he served as the president of the East Tennessee Civil War Alliance.
He is currently working on a book project that explores the 1860 Presidential election as a grassroots phenomenon from the perspective of four distinct American communities.
Astor graduated from Hamilton College in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Astor then entered Northwestern University, where he earned his master’s degree in 2001 and a doctorate in history in 2006. He has taught at Maryville College since 2007. He lives in Maryville with his wife, Samantha, and their children, the press release said.
The Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association is a nonprofit historical society founded in 1999 to preserve and educate the public about Oak Ridge’s unique and rich technical and cultural history, and to work to preserve selected historical buildings of the World War II city and nuclear installations.
Aaron Astor (Photo courtesy ORHPA)
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