Ferdinand E. Kuhn
Ferdinand Emery Kuhn (September 3, 1861 – March 17, 1930) was a shoe merchant known as the "Father of the Knights of Columbus in the South." He was also president of the 1908 Southern Association champion Nashville Vols baseball team. Early years Kuhn was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 3, 1861, to German immigrants from the Kingdom of Württemberg, Ferdinand and Barbara (Müller) Kuhn. He was the youngest of eight children. His father was a brewer who ran the Rock City Brewery shortly after the end of the Civil War. Studies Kuhn attended the local parochial and public high schools, graduating from Hume High School, then went to the University of Notre Dame, where he was a member of the University Baseball Association and the "Lemonnier Boat Club", a boat and rowing club on Saint Joseph's Lake. He graduated in 1883 with a BSc, a classmate of aeronautical expert Albert Francis Zahm. Kuhn received his Masters in 1885, and while pursuing that degree would present the gold medal given to the best science undergraduate at Notre Dame. Personal Kuhn was married to Katherine "Kate" Wall on April 15, 1885, in her hometown of Springfield, Kentucky. The marriage was performed by Joseph A. Hogarty, whose father sculpted the Henry Clay monument in Lexington. Kate Wall had attended Saint Mary's Academy, and was born in Wall, Pennsylvania, named for her father Frank Wall, a wealthy farmer and steamboat engineer from Ireland. They had nine children; six boys and three girls. Kuhn was the father of prominent Vanderbilt quarterback Doc Kuhn and, through another son, violinist Casper, the grandfather of NBC radio and television announcer Dick Dudley. He named one son Richard Dudley after Richard Houston Dudley. Kuhn's house from 1898 until his death is now called Frassati House, and is the building on Vanderbilt's campus that houses the University's Catholic campus ministry. Kuhn was an active member of the Cathedral of the Incarnation. His mother had also attended the Church of the Assumption. Board of Public Works Kuhn's first job out of college was as the private secretary to Mayor Claiborne Hooper Phillips. His brother Casper was city auditor. Ferdinand Kuhn was then a secretary and city recorder for the Board of Public Works and Affairs from 1884 until 1903. Upon his resignation he was dubbed "beyond question the most capable man that (sic) ever served the Board". Knights of Columbus Initiation Kuhn was initiated into the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 1, 1899. He was one of the first five from south of Louisville to be initiated on that day. The other four were: Messrs. H. J. Grimes, Will J. Varley, William Smith, and Michael M. McCormack. Southern expansion Ferdinand Kuhn was one of the Nashville Catholics who had advocated expansion into Tennessee. The 1900 compromise allowed for the formation of Nashville Council No. 544. Kuhn, who became Tennessee's first State Deputy, succeeded Daniel J. Callahan as the master ceremonialist, presiding at