Editor,
La Follette Press:
As Campbell
County Historian I wanted to create a way to recognize those
who have made an exceptional and unique contribution to the
preservation of Campbell County history. I intend this award
this award to be the highest award that can be conferred by
the County Historian. The Ridenour Award will be presented no
more than once per calendar year.
I chose
to name this award in the honor of Dr. G. L. Ridenour (1889-1974)
who was a noted local historian and prolific author and the
first to receive the title of county historian. Dr. Ridenour
was a minister, educator, and author who was born in Campbell
County near the fork of Clinch and Powell Rivers. He received
a B. A. in 1914 and a M. A. in 1915 at Carson-Newman College.
He graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
earning the degree of Th.M in 1923 and Th.D in 1927 and the
Ph.D in 1932. Returning to Campbell County, the next 30 years
were spent by him and his wife in church work in many local
communities. During WWII he returned to teaching and earned
a M. A. in education from the University of Tennessee in 1950.
Dr. Ridenour wrote The Land of the Lake, an early history
of Campbell County, which was originally published in 1941.
This was the first comprehensive work on Campbell County history
by a local author. Dr. Ridenour also wrote Early Times in
Meade County, Kentucky and A Baptist Primer.
I am
pleased to announce that the 2002 recipient of the Ridenour
Award will be Mitzi Price Freeman. Mitzi was born in Michigan
and was raised in Cookeville, TN. While attending Tennessee
Technological University, she met and married Edwin Freeman,
son of Earl W. and Lucille Freeman of LaFollette. They have
three children: Christopher, age 14, Jeffrey, age 10, and Stephen,
age 8. They currently live in Soddy Daisy, TN. In 1991, Mitzi
earned a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Alabama
in Huntsville.
The TNGenWeb Project began in the summer of 1996 as part of
the larger USGenWeb Project, which began a few months earlier.
After the death of her last surviving grandparent in 1997, Mitzi
began researching her family and discovered the TNGenWeb Project
on the Internet. Having a strong computer background and an
avid interest in genealogy, she volunteered to host one of the
county pages: Loudon County TNGenWeb. In December 1997, she
volunteered to host the Campbell County TNGenWeb pages after
the previous host left the project. The first set of Campbell
County TNGenWeb pages went online in January 1998. Since then,
there have been over 100,000 visitors to the website.
The Campbell County TNGenWeb website currently has over 500
pages of historical records and family photographs. Some of
the records include census records, tax records, death records,
marriage records, indexes to court records, just to name a few.
Over the years, numerous people have generously donated their
time to transcribe records and donated their personal research
and family photos to go online at the website. Future plans
for the site include the addition of the remaining censuses
and of indexes to some of the county records.
In addition to hosting the Campbell County and Loudon County
TNGebWeb projects, she hosts the "Tennessee Tombstone Project"
and the "Tennessee and the Civil War Project".
