Horace Maynard - Legacy

Legacy

Maynard was remembered among his peers for his powerful intellect and sense of persuasiveness. Knoxville Journal editor William Rule wrote that Maynard was the "best read man" of East Tennessee's lawyers, while abolitionist Frederick Douglass once remarked that Maynard had a "three story head." Knoxville mayor Peter Staub (a Democrat) said that even though he disliked Maynard, he was so impressed with Maynard's reasoning and rhetoric that he voted for him twice. Oliver Perry Temple wrote of Maynard: "Many were the persons he stung and wounded by his biting sarcasm or pungent wit." Humorist George Washington Harris mocked Maynard ("Stilyards") in his story, "The Widow McCloud's Mare."

During the 1850s, Knox County attempted to sue the newly-formed Union County, Tennessee, out of existence. Maynard successfully represented Union County, and in return, the county named its county seat, Maynardville, in his honor. Horace Maynard High School served the county from 1923 until 1997, when it became a middle school. During the Spanish-American War, the USS Nashville, commanded by Maynard's son, Washburn, fired the war's first American shot. Another son, James, was president of the Knoxville-based Brookside Mills in the early 1900s.