French botanist André Michaux visited Knoxville in 1802, and reported the presence of approximately 100 houses and 10 "well-stocked" stores. While there was "brisk commerce" at the city's stores, Michaux noted, the only industries in the city were tanneries and blacksmiths.Andre Michaux, Travels to the Westward of the Allegany Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, In the Year 1802 (London: Barnard and Sultzer, 1805), p. 89. In February 1804, itinerant Methodist preacher Lorenzo Dow passed through Knoxville, and reported the widespread presence of a religious phenomenon in which worshippers would fall to the ground and go into seizure-like convulsions, or "jerks," at religious rallies.James Lee, Naphtali Luccock, and James Dixon, The Illustrious History of Methodism (New York: Methodist Magazine Publishing Company, 1900), p. 376. Illinois governor John Reynolds, who studied law in Knoxville, recalled a raucous, anti-British celebration held in the city on July 4, 1812, at the onset of the War of 1812.John Reynolds, Reynolds' History of Illinois (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1879), pp. 65-66.
