University of Tennessee's Henson Hall is going away. Meet the woman who got it built.

Just as Greve Hall namesake Harriet Greve was a pioneering dean of women at the University of Tennessee, so also did Henson Hall's namesake distinguish herself.

Martha Henson was considered a forerunner of women benefactors at UT, as she had set aside in her will a gift for UT to build a women’s dorm.

Sequoyah Hills resident Susan Brackney remembers her simply as the great-great-aunt her older relatives and others talked about positively.

“Betsey Creekmore (UT associate vice chancellor emerita) told me that she believed ‘Aunt Matt’ (as Martha Henson was called) was possibly the first benefactor to the university,” she said, adding that her mother was named for Henson. “Her husband (Alex) was a partner in the Haynes-Henson ‘Million Dollar Shoe House.’ Uncle Alex gave the land for St. John's Lutheran Church on Broadway, as they lived up the street, and she had the church built in his memory.”

Brackney, now 84, also benefited from her Henson ancestor, as she attended UT and even stayed in Henson Hall. She also still follows enthusiastically UT’s various endeavors, including the Lady Vols basketball team, but is admittedly saddened to hear Henson will be torn down possibly as soon as next year along with Greve and Dunford halls.

“I really am” (disappointed), she said. “I was hoping they could save the building and incorporate it in the new building. I think they should at least place plaques somewhere in honor of them.”

UT officials this year announced plans to tear down the three buildings near the southwest corner of Cumberland Avenue and Volunteer Boulevard and replace them with a new Haslam College of Business building. However, the school still plans to continue to honor the three namesakes in some way, they have announced.

As the Shopper News continues to look at the three people for whom the soon-to-be-razed UT buildings are named, a look at Martha Badgett Henson shows she had an altruistic heart after outliving her husband by nearly 20 years and dispensing some of his wealth.

Her husband, J.A. Henson, had started the Haynes-Henson Shoe Company in 1870 along with J.P. Haynes. With an army of salesmen, the firm became quite successful in the wholesale business at a time when Knoxville was known as a hub for various wholesale firms, Brackney said. The offices were at 312 and 314 S. Gay St., while the warehouse was on Jackson Avenue.

After Mr. Henson’s death in 1909, the St. John’s Lutheran Church was part of his wishes to have an English-speaking Lutheran church constructed in Knoxville. The still-standing church opened in the early 1910s and was designed by R.F. Graf.

Brackney said a Henson relative by marriage, Elbert Williams, lived on Old Maryville Pike, and at his death, his home became the Williams-Henson Home for Boys.

Martha Henson, who did not have any children, died in 1927, and she had left $200,000 in stocks and property for the erection of a fireproof dorm for women students at UT. Due to the Depression, the value of the money dropped, but through an alumni association gift and a loan, Henson Hall was constructed and opened in 1931.

Brackney said when she attended UT beginning in the mid-1950s and pledged Chi Omega sorority, she lived her freshman year in West Hall, which was renamed Greve, and then lived in Henson her sophomore year before moving on to Strong Hall, as was tradition. She admittedly did not cherish the family connection as much as she should have.

“At that point in time, I’m not sure it made any difference to me,” she said with a laugh. “I knew it was named for Martha Henson, but you don’t appreciate things then as much as you do now.”

Brackney said that Henson had been buried after her death in a nice mausoleum with her husband in Old Gray Cemetery in North Knoxville, but in 1986 it was vandalized and her corpse was defaced in a story that made the local news. As a result, the mausoleum had to be secured much better, she added.

Brackney, who has some old scrapbooks and other materials regarding Martha and Alex Henson, said she has been proud of the family connection to UT. And she has somewhat reluctantly accepted that the Charles Barber-designed Collegiate Gothic Henson Hall off Cumberland Avenue will soon be no more.

“It’s very attractive,” she said of the building, which has been used by the College of Social Work in recent years. “But it’s progress, and space is needed, and the university is so locked in. It’s hard for them to expand.”