Genealogist Tim Fisher retiring at end of year

Fisher is retiring from the position at the end of this year, though he plans to continue studying genealogy and volunteering at the history center, located on the third floor of the King Family Library.

“When it comes to Sevier County history he has probably forgotten more than most of us will ever know,” said Sevier County Library System Director Rhonda Tippitt. “He was born here and grew up here. He’s rooted here so deeply, and he knows so many people. He knows all the stories, and you can’t bottle that or put that in someone else’s head.”

Fisher’s rapport with the people in the community and the families he has known for decades has made him an asset to those trying to trace their roots, and a comfortable person they can share their family stories with.

“He’s discreet and he’s so knowledgeable, and it’s all in his head, it’s every bit in his head. I wish we could plug him up somewhere and download it like a computer,” Tippett said.

The new genealogist at the Rel and Wilma Maples History Center is Lisa Christian, who is transitioning from another position at the library and has learned from Fisher what needs to be done to continue the work.

“He championed her from the beginning and he has worked with her for a couple of months getting ready to leave,” Tippett said. “He took his departure and how important it was to have her ready to do that job super seriously. Our history center is one of a few really significant history centers in the state in libraries for genealogy research and certainly for the Smoky Mountains because we have documents that other places don’t have.”

Fisher’s knowledge of the region and the records he has helped compile at the history center are a tool individuals use when searching for their own family histories and for those who research the history of those who lived in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

He started at the history center in 2004 and his last day will be Dec. 30, 2022. When he started, the genealogy department was in a separate building with records in multiple storage locations. In 2010 they moved to the new facility and were able to better serve the community and grow their collection of historical documents and family histories.

“It’s gone through a lot and it was hard to get people to understand that we were here to preserve the history of Sevier County,” Fisher said. “That was the main thing that my thoughts were, on what the genealogy center was supposed to be doing. We help people with their genealogy, but my thoughts were, we need to preserve the history of Sevier County.”

The center has a good collection of books on family and state history that were donated, traded for, or copied over the years and several files from families going back to the Civil War, Revolutionary War or the War of 1812. They also keep records from almost every other state, but their main focus is on Sevier County and the region, including the mountain areas of North Carolina where many families have ancestral connections.

“When I first started a lot of people would come in at lunchtime and want to do their family history, and think that you could do it during that lunch period,” Fisher said. “You’ve got to start with yourself and work your way back.”

The process takes people though census records and other files, and the increase in computer databases gets better every year, but some records are lost to history. In Sevier County, anything before 1856 when the Sevier County Courthouse burned is harder to locate.

Fisher said he is most proud of the relationships he’s been able to build with people in all areas of the county who have shared their family histories and other historical documents with the history center, including a first edition, first printing of the Laws and Regulations of the State of Tennessee, printed 200 years ago when Knoxville was the state capital.

“We have a great support system, not just in the libraries, but in the community. I always knew if I didn’t know something about a community or a family in a community, I knew who I could possibly call and maybe they could tell me who to get in contact with. That was to me, one of the best parts about this, making those connections with friends that could help me more understand the county,” he said. “I was born and raised in Pittman Center. I could tell you more about Pittman Center and that area than I could about Seymour or Wears Valley or any of these other areas, so making those connections with people helped me a whole lot.”

Fisher knows there are people out there who couldn’t say the name of their own grandfather, and who don’t really care about genealogy research, but said the older people get, the more they want to understand why their family came here, how did they get here, and what brought them here.

“You’ll find more about family members who were bad than those who were good. The good ones, there wasn’t a lot written on them. They just lived a life of working the farms or fields and taking care of their families,” he said.

Many family histories in Sevier County have already been researched at the center which helps people just getting started build on the work that’s already been completed. Fisher said he would like to have gotten more of their records onto their website during his tenure, but that’s a process that will continue as Christian takes over.

“You don’t want to put everything that you’ve got on a website, but you want to put enough information that people can see that they need to come here,” he said.

He also said he hasn’t finished a project cataloging old newspapers into a digital format, but he plans to continue that project as a volunteer moving forward.

“I’m going to come back and help some. I’d like to see the newspapers get done,” Fisher said.

After retirement he and his wife also plan to travel more to places they haven’t seen, like the Grand Canyon or Redwood Forests, and he has a trip planned with one of his children for early next year to Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida. There will also be more time for him to continue his own family genealogy research.

“Genealogy is in my blood. My mother started doing genealogy in 1949, and I’ve been around it all my life. I never thought that it would get to this point that I was living, breathing, sleeping genealogy. I’d leave here and go home and I was on the computer doing genealogy until I went to bed,” he said.

“I want to work on my own. People would think that I would sit here all day and work on my own, but I tried my best not to work on mine. Once in awhile something would pop up and I’d have to go investigate it, but I tried my best not to sit here and work on my own genealogy. There was too many other things, too many other families that hadn’t been done.”