The little town of Rugby was dedicated in 1880, the result of a plan envisioned by British author and socialist reformer Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays) and a group of Utopian intellectuals. Here, in a sparsely settled part of the East Tennessee Cumberland Plateau, they built a charming village, complete with a church, library, and schoolhouse.
The Rugby Colony
Hughes developed his idea for the colony from thinking about the inequities of the system of primogeniture in the British gentry, in which the oldest son inherited the land. Younger sons had to fend for themselves, and Hughes saw America as a place where they could build their own society based on agriculture. He chose the current site of Rugby partly because a new railroad line from Chattanooga had just opened up the area.
For a while colonists flooded in, creating a town of more than 300 and 70 Victorian houses and other buildings. Rugby was home to an inn, literary societies, sports clubs, a newspaper, and stores of all kinds. The library, furnished with volumes donated by publishers and patrons, was the pride of the town. Trains ran daily to Cincinnati, and many visitors came to see the model community.
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