Sevier County Judge Mac Trotter brought home the 1916 Ford when his son Amos was 11 and his younger son Andy was 4. This was the beginning of the brothers’ love affair with cars. Amos and Andy Trotter were born on the Trotter family’s ancestral farm in Sevier County, which was later flooded due to the construction of Douglas Dam.
As a teenager, Amos worked as a bellboy at the Mountain View Hotel in Gatlinburg. When he was old enough, Andy followed in his older brother’s footsteps and started working in a hotel. By this time, Amos was operating a gas station in Gatlinburg. Amos invited Andy to join his business, and his brothers went on to own their own gas stations in Gatlinburg and Maryville. They eventually sold the Gatlinburg service station and established an oil company in Maryville.
However, the brothers had other dreams. To run a car dealership. They obtained a franchise through the Buick Dealer of Knoxville to open a dealership in Maryville. So in 1940 they founded the Amos and Andy Buick Company there. It was a natural assumption that this dealer would be named after his famous syndicated radio sitcom that later became a television series in the early 1950s. But for years, the name had nothing to do with the show, even though some thought it did. It was simply the name of two brothers.
Amos Trotter was born on April 22, 1905. He attended the University of Tennessee and jumped on the football team under General Bob Neyland. He was listed as a half-back on the official team list from 1927 to 1929. He later married Sue Brakebill and they had two sons and a daughter.
Andrew “Andy” Trotter was born on September 4, 1912. He met 16-year-old Hazel Willis when he was working at a hotel on Mountain View. Hazel loved acting. She fondly recalled winning her junior high school’s recitation competition against Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal. It was during a play in Gatlinburg that Andy found her, and they married in 1939, just six weeks after they met. That marriage lasted him 65 years until Andy’s death in 2004. The couple had four children.
Amos and Andy decided to move to Chattanooga, where they saw an opportunity to increase sales and also recognized the great educational benefits of schools like GPS, Baylor, and McCallie for their growing family.
The decision to locate in Chattanooga was made after discussions with Chattanooga’s Buick dealer, VW McKinney. Amos saw McKinney at a meeting and told him he wanted to get out of the business. So they bought the McKinney dealership and moved there. Changed company name to Amos and Andy’s Buick. The dealership was located on South Broad Street in Chattanooga. The family business later expanded with his acquisition of the Adcox-Kirby Pontiac Company.
Andy ran a Pontiac dealership, later renamed Andy Trotter Pontiac. Amos and his son Mac run Amos and Andy Buick. Shortly after the purchase, dealers also began selling British-made Vauxhall cars and station wagons.
One of Andy’s regular customers at his Pontiac dealership was Coca-Cola bottler Carter Lupton. A fashion enthusiast, Lupton wanted a standard model Pontiac without air conditioning until Amos convinced him of the benefits of having a cool car in the summer.
In 1961, tragedy struck Andy and Hazel. The family was trying to moor their boat at their property on Lake Chickamauga when their 14-year-old son, Patrick, was struck and killed by lightning.
For several decades beginning in the 1950s, the Trotter family car dealership annually donated a vehicle to the United Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center to be used to transport children with disabilities. This center provided assessment and counseling services to children suffering from this disorder.
Amos and Andy Buick moved to Hwy in the 1980s. 153 and Jersey Pike, and the business became known as Amos Trotter Buick. His son, Mack, succeeded him as manager of the dealership, followed by his grandson, John.
Amos and Andy were the sons of William “Mac” Trotter and Eliza Brown Trotter. They were part of the last generation to live in their ancestral homes. The oldest brother, James, never married and lived his entire life in Sevierville. Their sister Martha married Paul Neal, manager of Draper & Darwin Dry Goods in Sevierville. She was a teller at Sevierville Bank for many years. Another brother, Ernest “Smoke” Trotter, operated Smoke Trotter’s Esso Station in Sevierville.
Amos and Andy were both prominent business leaders in Chattanooga. They were members of the Presbyterian Church and involved in many civic organizations. For years, Amos played golf every Sunday with manager Chester Holmes at the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club near his home.
The land they grew up on had been under water for decades, but Andy was reminded of it every day by a large Gordon Wetmore painting of the house that hung in his study.
Amos passed away on July 8, 1992 at the age of 87 and Andy passed away on January 21, 2004 at the age of 91.