Thanks to Family Pride Corporation of Knoxville, a historic brick building in Loudon is getting a new lease on life. Dubbed the Orme/Wilson warehouse after its original owners, the building that was once an integral part of Loudon’s waterfront trade industry, will now be reborn as the Wharf Street Coffeehouse according to family pride general manager, Rick Dover.

 With a projected fall 2006 opening, the coffeehouse will boast fresh baked pastries, Starbuck’s specialty coffee drinks, indoor and outdoor seating and museum exhibits detailing the life of R. T. Wilson. Wilson, a Georgia native, married a Loudon girl, Melissa Clementine Johnston. After the Civil War, the couple found themselves among New York City’s fashionably elite thanks to Wilson’s shrewd business deals in both cotton and railroads.

 That’s what they called New York City’s rich upper-class during the Gilded Age (1878 to 1889). Ward McAllister, social arbiter and close friend of Caroline Webster Shermerhorn Astor, otherwise known as the “Mrs. Astor,” coined the term citing “Among the vastly wealthy families in New York, there were only four hundred people who could be counted as members of fashionable society.”

 Among that 400, was the family of Richard Thornton (R. T.) Wilson, whose son Marhsall Orme married Mrs. Astor’s daughter, Caroline.

 R. T. was born in Hall County, Georgia near Gainesville in 1829. In 1849, his father William died, leaving the 19-year-old free to pursue his “own proposals.” However, what he didn’t leave him was any money, property, physical goods or livestock.

 According to a story shared by Clarke Harrison of Farragut, a descendent of R.T.’s wife’s family, the young man became a drifter of sorts. He left home with a “mule and $40 in gold strapped around his waist” as his only possessions.

 He took the gold, purchased small items in Atlanta, and then made his way “upcountry” to exchange his trinkets for cotton – a sort of traveling salesman or professional barterer. Eventually, the charismatic Wilson found himself in Loudon, Tennessee, as he was enroute from Chattanooga to Knoxville. Here he made friends with an influential landowner named Ebenezer Johnston. It wasn’t long before this clever salesman talked Johnson into letting him marry the old man’s oldest daughter, Melissa.

 In about 1850, Wilson garnered the financial backing of William Orme, a businessman from Atlanta and erected a building in Loudon – the Orme/Wilson warehouse. He conducted a lucrative business from this location until about 1860 when the Wilson family moved to Nashville.

 During the Civil War, he was commissioned to sell cotton in Great Britain to raise money for Confederate forces. Through shrewd business dealings, he managed to make a little money himself and came out of the war with an estimated $500,000 personal profit.

 Wilson went on to make a fortune buying bankrupt railroads and setting up shop as an investment banker. He moved his family to the upscale address of 511 5th Avenue in New York City into a home formerly owned by Boss Tweed, a successful but corrupt New York City businessman and politician.

 Wilson’s wife, Melissa, then set about the task finding suitable spouses for her children. Mrs. Wilson’s mother had been the daughter of a genteel Virginia planter and the gentility made its way down through the family tree. Despite her rather modest upbringing in Loudon, Mrs. Wilson brokered some of the most influential marriages possible for her children. She earned the title “Queen of the Matchmakers” from the press.

 May, the oldest of the Wilson children, was betrothed to Ogden Goelet, who was then reported to be worth $50,000,000. Orme Marshall Wilson, the eldest son, married the granddaughter of the original John Jacob Astor. Daughter Leila Belle became Mrs. Michael Henry Herbert when she married the son of Lord Herbert of Lea, brother to the Earl of Pembroke. Richard Wilson Jr., was wed to Marion Mason, daughter of a prominent doctor.

 But probably the biggest marital coup in the Wilson household was when their youngest daughter, Grace, became the bride of Cornelius Vanderbilt III and went on to become the “Queen of the Gilded Age.”

 Although maybe not as well known as their contemporaries, the Wilson family made quite a mark on society in the late 1800s.  From $40 to $40,000,000 and barefoot schoolboy to father of American royalty, R. T. Wilson’s life is the stuff of legends.   Loudon can be proud to call him one of their own.