Historic Rugby

The Rugby colony opened amid great fanfare in 1880 on East Tennessee�s sparsely settled and rugged Cumberland Plateau. Famous British author and social reformer Thomas Hughes was the most involved and dedicated of Rugby�s Anglo-American founders. He intended Rugby to be a class-free, agrarian community based on cooperative enterprise, culture, and religious freedom. During its first decade, hundreds immigrated to Rugby from the British Isles; hundreds more came from other parts of America. Some