Friendsville was settled in the 1790s by Quaker families who came west from New Garden, North Carolina, and the town still carries their name, taken from the Friends Church. The Newberry Meeting was formally recognized here in 1808, the first Friends organization in Blount County and the only one still gathering today. That same conviction put Friendsville on the Underground Railroad: Quaker families sheltered people escaping slavery in a cave near the Meetinghouse, and when a delegation of British Quaker elders came through in 1854 to press the abolitionist cause, their leader William Forster died during the visit and was buried here.
The city itself did not incorporate until 1953, and it is still small, roughly 896 residents at the 2020 census spread across under three square miles at the western end of the county. State Route 333, which everyone here calls Miser Station Road, runs the length of it, from Fort Loudoun Lake and the boat ramps at Gallahar Creek and Whispering Cove in the north down to US-321 in the south. The Friendsville Institute opened in the 1850s, took the name Friendsville Academy in 1881, and taught local children until it closed in 1975; the elementary school still sits in town, and Pellissippi State keeps a campus out on Lamar Alexander Parkway.
That is the Friendsville our caregivers drive out to: houses set well back on a few acres, families who have held the same road for generations, and parents with no intention of leaving. Home care services here mean help with bathing and dressing, a hot meal on the table, the pill box sorted, a ride to the pharmacy in Maryville or a specialist in Knoxville, and company through the long afternoons. Your parent stayed in Friendsville for the quiet. We make sure the quiet never turns into being alone.
