Near this spot in 1869 was the early Knoxville home of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the English-born author of The Secret Garden, Sarah Crewe, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, who moved to Knoxville with her family when she was 15. When Frances was 20, her widowed mother died here, leaving her children alone in the riverside house where they established an informal community of musicians and artists they called "Vagabond Castle."
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Her Son Vivian later described it: "a rather roomy but dilapidated house with a backyard running down to the Tennessee River." As Vagabond Castle, it became the very center of an enthusiastic group of youngsters who were glad to think of themselves as Bohemians..... Burnette's first novel, Vagabondia, drew its spiritual setting from her experiences here. Some of Burnett's later stories featured East Tennesse settings.
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