History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013

USA > Tennessee > Davidson County > History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 11

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A law was passed in 1856 for the redistricting, but was not carried into effect till 1859, at which date the districts . as they now exist were formed by the commissioners, C. W. Nance and William H. Hogans, Esqs. The fourth section of the act erecting the county provides as follows :

"That the County Court of Davidson County shall ap- point an entry-taker, for the purpose of receiving entries of lands from those who are allowed pre-emptions by the law for laying off lands granted to the Continental Line of this State; and as it has been suggested that the inhabitants of said County have no specie certificates, they shall be at liberty to pay at the rate of ten pounds* specie or specie certificates per hundred acres for the aforesaid pre-emp- tions, and shall be allowed the term of eighteen months to pay the same ; and that the heirs of all such persons who have died, leaving rights of pre-emption as aforesaid, shall be allowed the term of one year after coming of lawful age to secure their pre-emptions. Provided, That no grants shall be made for said lands until the purchase money shall be paid into the proper office."t

The original act respecting these bounty-lands was passed in the form of a resolution by the Assembly of North Caro- lina in May, 1780. The State engaged to give to the offi- cers and soldiers in its line of the Continental army a bounty in lands in proportion to their respective grades. These lands were to be laid off upon the Cumberland, or in Mid- dle Tennessee, to all such as were then in the military service, and should continue till the end of the war, or such as from wounds or bodily infirmities had been, or should be, rendered unfit for the service, and to the heirs of such as had fallen or should fall in the defense of their country. " There never was a bounty more richly deserved or more ungrudgingly promised. It furnished to the war-worn sol- dier, or to his children, a home in the new and fertile lands of the West, where a competency at least, perhaps wealth, or even affluence, might follow after the storm of war was past, and where the serene evening of life might be spent in the contemplation of the eventful scenes of his carlier Jears, devoted to the service of his country and to the cause of freedom and independence." In pursuance of this provision of North Carolina, a land-office was established at Nashville ; the military lands were surveyed, and crowds of Revolutionary soldiers came from the mother State and set- tled in Middle Tennessee, so that nine tenths of the early population were North Carolinans.

Rights of pre-emption were first granted on the Cumber-

land by the act of 1792. Six hundred and forty acres were allowed to each family or head of a family. A simi- lar provision was made for each single man of the age of twenty-one years or upwards who had settled the lands be- fore the 1st of June, 1780. Such tracts were to include the improvements each settler had made. No right of pre- emption, however, was extended so as to include any salt- lick or salt-spring : these were reserved by the same act as public property, with six hundred and forty acres of adjoin- ing lands. The rest of the country was all declared open to pre-emption.

To a brigadier-general the State gave twelve thousand acres, and to all the intermediate ranks in that proportion. To Gen. Nathaniel Greene twenty-five thousand acres were given "as a mark of the high sense this State entertains of the extraordinary services of that brave and gallant officer." Absalom Tatum, Isaac Shelby, and Anthony Bledsoe were the appointed commissioners to lay off the lands thus allotted. The commissioners were accompanied by a guard of one hundred men. They came to the Cum- berland at the commencement of the year 1783. The Indians offered them no molestation while they were ex- ecuting the duties of their appointment. Proceeding to " Latitude Hill," on the Elk River, to ascertain the thirty- fifth degree of north latitude, at which they were to start, they made their observation, and laid off at this point the twenty-five thousand acres donated to Gen. Greene. It was a princely and a well-deserved estate, embracing the best lands on Duck River, and perhaps the best in Tennessee. The commissioners then, fifty-five miles from the southern boundary and parallel thereto, ran the Continental or old Military Line, which was the southern base-line of this county at the time it was formed. But the Assembly, at the request of the officers, during their session of 1783 directed it to be laid off from the northern boundary fifty- five miles to the south. The commissioners also issued the necessary pre-emption rights to those who had settled on the Cumberland previous to June 1, 1780.

Davidson County remained a part of North Carolina till the year 1790, when the territory now included in Ten- nessee having been ceded to Congress, was organized as the Territory of the United States southwest of the Ohio River. It was then included in Mero district under the Territorial government till that was superseded by the State of Tennessee in 1796.

STATE OF FRANKLIN.

This is the proper place to enter a brief record of this anomalous organization, inasmuch as an effort was made to draw Davidson County into it. In 1785 the three counties of Eastern Tennessee-Washington, Sullivan, and Greene -dismembered the State of North Carolina by forming within it a new State called the "State of Franklin." The Legislative Assembly of this new State convened for the first time in Jonesboro' on the 14th of November, 1785. The records of it have unfortunately perished, so that the representatives from each of the counties cannot be ascertained.

It is known that Landon Carter was speaker and Thomas Talbot clerk of the Senate, and William Cage speaker and

. At the time our government was formed the old Spanish milled dollar was in use, and $4.44 was fixed as the rate at which the pound Sterling must be computed at our custom-houses. It is fair to take this as the rate at the period referred to in the above act; hence the price of the original bounty-lands in Davidson County was forty-four erste and four mills per acre.

t Chap. lii., Acts of 1783.

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HISTORY OF DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

Thomas Chapman clerk of the House. Thus organized the Assembly procceded to the election of a Governor, when the choice fell upon John Sevier, afterwards the first Governor of Tennessee. A judiciary system was also established at this first session : David Campbell was elected judge of the Supreme Court, and Joshua Gist and John Anderson as- sociate judges.

The original plan included Davidson County in this new State, but no representative from this county appeared, either at any of the conventions at which its preliminarics were arranged, or in its list of civil or military appoint- ments. The great distance of Davidson from the other counties and the feeling of loyalty to the old mother State probably prevented it. It is likely also that there were heads wise enough on the Cumberland at that time to fore- see and wish to avoid the conflict which such a State, within the jurisdiction of another, must inevitably result in sooner or later. That conflict soon came; the counties held to- gether and made a desperate struggle to maintain their in- dependence for about a year ; Governor Sevier maintained his cause in a dauntless and heroic spirit, such as he had often displayed in the service of the old State and in the new settlement. Washington County seceded and sent her representatives to the Assembly of North Carolina in 1786 ; Governor Sevier was arrested for high treason, and hurried away to Morgantown, N. C., for trial; his friends gathered a force and rescued him from the hands of the authorities ; the anomalous State was broken up, and all returned to their allegiance to North Carolina. Governor Sevier, al- though he rendered himself obnoxious to the authorities of North Carolina, never lost his hold upon the affections of the people of Tennessee. They only waited an opportunity to vindicate him fully, and when the State was admitted into the Union he was chosen by their suffrages to be its first honored chief magistrate.

This portion of history, it is true, belongs more partic- ularly to East Tennessee, but we have introduced it here to show the anomalous position of Davidson County during the period of the existence of Franklin. It was the remote part of a dismembered State, lying in the heart of a wilder- ness, more than six hundred miles from the capital, and separated by an intervening government which sustained towards it no political relation.

CHAPTER XI.

PHYSICAL FEATURES.

Geographical Position of Davidson County-Topography-Geology. GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION.

THE county of Davidson is situated in Middle Tennes- see, nearly equidistant from the east and west lines of the State, and considerably north of the centre between the northern and southern boundaries. The centre of the county-or the United States signal station in the capitol grounds at Nashville-is in latitude 36° 10' 01.6" north, and in longitude 9º 44' 03" west of Washington.

The county is bounded on the north by Robertson and 1

Sumner Counties; on the east by Sumner, Wilson, and Rutherford; on the south by Williamson; and on the west by Cheatham. Its boundary-lines on all sides are more or less irregular, owing in part to the water-courses which form the divisional lines between it and adjoining counties, and partly to the arbitrary variations of course necessary to intersect points on these streams. The super- ficial arca of the county is about five hundred and fifty square miles, or three hundred and fifty-two thousand acres.

TOPOGRAPHY.

The general topographical features of the different sec- tions of the State are well shown by the cut accompanying this article, furnished by Dr. J. M. Safford.

In order to form a correct understanding of the topog- raphy of Davidson County it will be necessary, in the first place, to take a brief general view of Middle Tennessee.

This portion of the State has been classified under two divisions : first, the Highlands or Rim-lands (called also sometimes the Terrace-lands), which encircle a basin of rich lowlands in the centre of the State; and second, the Central Basin, inclosed by the Highlands. The first of these di- visions, extending from the Cumberland table-land to the Tennessee River, has an average elevation of one thousand feet above the sea, and is diversified in places by rolling hills and wide valleys. For the most part, however, it is a flat plain, furrowed by numerous ravines and traversed by frequent streams. The soil of this division is of varying fertility, but includes a number of sections of great agri- cultural importance. Its area is about nine thousand three hundred square miles.

Within the compass of these Highlands, and surrounded by them, is " the great Central Basin, elliptical in shape, and resembling the bed of a drained lake. It may be com- pared to the bottom of an oval dish, of which the High- lands form the broad, flat brim. The soil of this basin is highly productive of all the erops suited to the latitude, and it has been well named the garden of Tennessee. It is of the first importance as an agricultural region. Its area is five thousand four hundred and fifty square miles, and it has an average depression of three hundred feet below the Highlands. This whole basin, with the surrounding High- lands, is slightly tilted towards the northwest, and has a less elevation on that side than on the other."*

The situation of Davidson County, mostly within this basin, with its extreme western portion resting upon the Rim or Highlands, determines in a great measure its topog- raphy. For this reason much of the western part of the county, along its western boundary, is at a higher elevation and much more hilly than the central and eastern part. Along the western and northwestern borders are many ridges or spurs which extend like fingers from the Rim or Highlands into the Basin. The western and northwestern lines of the county cross these ridges and their alternating deep valleys in many places, the latter being often rich and fertile and filled with well-cultivated farms. The broken character of this portion is due in good part to the fact that the Cumberland River, with its tributary the Harpeth,

* Dr. Safford's Geology of Tennessee.

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here begins to cut its valley through the western High- lands.

The central and eastern portions of the county are gently rolling, in places swelling into considerable heights, often forming lines of rounded hills, and occasionally rising into prominent ridges. Besides the Paradise Ridge, which is really the edge of the western Highlands, already referred to, there are two principal ridges, viz., Harpeth Ridge (which itself may be regarded as a spur of the Highlands running far into the Basin and dividing the waters of the Cumberland from those of the Harpeth) and the ridge dividing the Harpeth from Little Harpeth. In addition to these are a number of low dividing ridges between the streams, making the sections in which they occur more or less rolling and hilly.

To enter more minutely into the surface features of the county, we shall assume Nashville as the starting-point, and confine ourselves for the present to the south side of the

land is for the most part high, rolling, and thin, though there are some excellent bottoms on the river.

Taking the section east of Mill Creek and south of the Cumberland, we find the best soils for cotton, wheat, and clover in the county. The color of the soil, except in the alluvial bottoms, is mulatto, and the timber consists of poplar and white-oak, with a very small intermixture of maple and walnut. This section is drained by Mill Creek and Stone's River, with the exception of the fourth dis- trict, which is drained by Stoner's Creek mainly and Stone's River, and a considerable of it known as Jones' Bend is drained by the Cumberland.

Turning our attention to the lands on the north side of the Cumberland, and beginning on the western side of the county, we meet with the Marrowbone Hills, high, poor, gravelly, siliccous spurs jutting out from the Highlands, with minor spurs as numerous as the branches of a tree, and between thesc numerous streams with a hundred

KENTUCKY

VIRGINIA

im.

NASH VIL

Lessee

East

N. CAROLINA

MEMPHIS

CHAT.

MISSISSIPPI

Tenn R

ALABAMA

GEORGIA

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF TENNESSEE.

Cumberland River. South and southwest of the city is a series of rounded hills sweeping in almost a semicircle about the city. These hills are symmetrical in form, and rise very gently to the height of one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet. Between them and the city the soil, considerably mixed with rocky fragment, rests upon a bed of limestone that comes very near the surface in many places ; but the soil is generally quite fertile.

With a radius of nine miles, if the segment of a circle were described from the Cumberland River opposite Bell's Bend to Mill Creek, it would inclose a body of as fertile land as can be found in the State. With a slightly-rolling surface, just sufficient for drainage, it grows in large quan- tities all the crops cultivated in the Central Basin. This area is drained by Richland Creek, Little Harpeth, Brown's Creek, and Mill Creek. It embraces the seventh, eighth, ninth, and eleventh districts and parts of the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth. This section embraces the best blue-grass lands in the county. The native growth is poplar, walnut, maple, and several varieties of oak. Beyond this segment, on the west, is a dividing ridge, heretofore spoken of as Harpeth Ridge, running east and west. South of Harpeth River, and including most of the fourteenth district, the

branches ramify the whole country. A bold ridge runs north and south for a few miles and culminates in Paradise Hill, from which the waters flow in every direction. Almost the whole country embraced between White's Creek and the Cheatham County line is rugged and poor, with the exception of the river and creek bottoms and some of the uplands near the Cumberland. The lowlands on the upper part of White's Creek are very narrow. Nearer the mouth the bottoms become wider and the uplands more fertile. The soils on this creek are well adapted to the cereals, and grow blue-grass luxuriantly. East of White's Creek and embraced between that and the Cumberland River on the east and south, and comprising the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, and part of the twenty-second dis- tricts, the country is considerably diversified, though not so broken as the last section just described. In the por- tion of the county under consideration there are some good, warm valley lands, with occasional ridges or spurs too steep for cultivation. The soil is a mulatto, with a good many surface rocks, and, with the exception of a portion of Neeley's Bend, is well suited to the growth of wheat, corn, potatoes, and clover. The soil in a portion of Nceley's Bend is dark and well adapted to the grasses. This section

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Cumberland Table Land

JACKSON

Highly

Central Basin

Miss R

Plateau Slope of W. Tenny

and Ri

Highland Rim

S. CAROLINA

PHYSICAL FEATURES.

HISTORY OF DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

is well drained by White's Creek and its tributaries on the west, and by Mansker's Creek on the east, and Dry Creek through the centre. The northern part of this section abuts against the Highlands, and many finger-like projec- tions shoot out from these into the lowlands, between which nestle many beautiful coves, whose southern exposures shorten the number of the frost days and woo spring to their embrace some weeks earlier than the bleak level plateau overlooking them from the north. The soil and situation here are suitable for the growth of early vege- tables. The only serious objection to this area is the nearness of the underlying rocks to the surface, rendering it unable to resist drought. The corn crops are often materially injured with a few days of dry, hot weather in summer. In scasons of great humidity, however, the crops are unusually large, and many of the fields in this portion of the county will with suitable seasons yield from fifty to sixty bushels of corn per acre .*

THE CUMBERLAND RIVER.

The Cumberland River, in a course remarkable for its sinuosity, passes through the county from east to west, di- viding it into two nearly equal parts. This river takes its rise in the Cumberland table-land, very near its eastern margin, its branches spreading out like the fibrous roots of a tree, many of the head springs of which are within a mile or two of some of the tributaries of the Tennessee River. These various small streams, which have their sources upon the eastern margin of the table-land, unite and reunite, forming the main Cumberland. More than half of these take their rise in Kentucky and the remain- der in Tennessee, the latter making the Big South Fork, down which flat-boats occasionally descend. This stream unites with the Cumberland in Pulaski Co., Ky., just after leaving the limits of the table-land. A short distance from the point of union the river turns and flows to the south- west, entering the State of Tennessee in Clay County, passing through Jackson and Smith. In Smith it assumes a westerly direction, flowing through the rich lands of Trousdale, forms the boundary-line between Wilson and Sumner, turns again to the southwest, passes on through Davidson County, and at Nashville again resumes its north- westerly direction through Cheatham, Montgomery, and Stewart Counties, approaching within a few miles of the Tennessee River at the State line, and finally debouches into the Ohio River on nearly the same parallel of latitude in which some of its main branches take their rise. Its entire length is about six hundred and fifty miles, five hun- dred and ninety-five of which can be made navigable. Three hundred and four miles of this river are in the State of Tennessee.

At the Falls, in Whitley Co., Ky., the river is precipi- tated over conglomerate with a vertical fall of sixty-three feet. The range between high and low water at Point Burnside is 65.5 feet. At Nashville the high water of February, 1847, was 52.9; of March, 1867, 50.3 feet. An ordinary rise of 33.8 feet at Nashville is equivalent to 15

# Resources of Tennessee.

feet at the foot of Smith's Shoals and 5 feet at the head, which is called a coal-boat tide, the stage of water at which the coal-barges are just able to pass the rapids. At Gower's Island the range is 41.6 feet; at Harpeth Shoals, forty miles below Nashville, it is 39.3 feet ; below Davis' Rip- ple it is 55.8; at Clarksville, sixty-five miles below Nash- ville, it is 56.3; at the Tennessee Rolling-Mills, one hun- dred and forty-five miles from Nashville, the high water of March 14, 1863, was 53.8; of March 14, 1867, 55.2. At the mouth of the river, one hundred and ninety-two miles from Nashville, and five hundred and fifty-two miles from Point Burnside, the range is 51 feet. As the great floods occur in February and March, before the crops are planted, the destruction from high water is not as great as takes place upon the Arkansas, the Red River, and the Missis- sippi, where the bottoms are less elevated, and where the greatest floods often occur in June and July.t

From the Falls to Point Burnside the river flows in a narrow gorge which it has excavated out of the sub-carbon- iferous sandstone, conglomerate, and cavernous limestone at a depth of three hundred to four hundred feet below the highland plateau. The river in this distance varies from one hundred to six hundred and fifty feet in width, but the gorge is more uniform, increasing gradually from five hun- dred to seven hundred feet. In this part of its course the river is approachable by roads, which are exceedingly rough, resembling irregular flights of stone steps, hardly practicable on horseback, but exhibiting at every turn, as they descend the sides of the bluffs, wild and picturesque clefts of rock. At Point Burnside the gorge widens, and bottoms appear of sufficient extent to be cultivated. The river continues to flow through a rocky bed with bluffs of limestone, and with a valley varying from one-half to one mile wide, as far as Carthage, where the valley extends upon the south side into the Central Basin. The river follows the northern edge of the Highland Rim until it leaves the Basin and re-enters the Highlands, about fourteen miles below Nashville. It continues to flow through the intersecting ridges and valleys of the Highland Rim, with bottoms about a mile wide and gradually increasing in length and encroaching on the bluffs of siliceous limestone, until it enters the upheaved sandstone and coal of Living- ston County at its mouth. In the latter part of its course its width varies from six hundred to seven hundred feet, and its banks, where composed of alluvium, begin to exhibit evidences of change, which shows itself in the bars.

GEOLOGY.

In this chapter on geology we have thought it best, at the outset, to introduce an outline of the general American geological system, in connection with a column showing the local formations in the State of Tennessee. This will en- able the reader to understand better the relation of the local geology of Tennessee to the general system, of which it is an interesting part. The table has been carefully com- piled from Dr. J. M. Safford's latest researches, and is presumed to be accurate.

t Col. S. T. Abert in Resources of Tennessee.

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PHYSICAL FEATURES.

CLASSIFICATION OF FORMATIONS.

TINM

AGEL

AMERICAN PERIODS.

TENNESSEE DIVISION.

Age of Man,

nary Ago.

Recent.

Champlain.

(b) Bluff Loam.

Glacial.

(a) Orange Sand.

Mammalian Ago,

or Age of Mam- mais.

Pliocene.

Miocene.

(b) La Grange Sand.

Alabama.

Lignitic.

Cretaccous.

(b) Rotten Limestone.

(a) Coffee Sand.

Reptiles.

Jurassic.

Triassic.

15 Permian.

14 Carboniferous, or Coal Mesures.

(a) Lower Coal Measure.

Coal Plants.

13 Subcarboniferous.

(e) Mount. Limestone. (b) Coral or St. Louis Limestone.

(a) Barren Group.

Devonian Age, or Age of

12 Catskill.

11 Chemung.

Fishes.

10 Hamilton.

Black Shale.

PALEOZOIC TIME.

9 Corniferous.

8 Oriskany.

7 Helderberg.

Linden.

Upper.

6 Salina.

Silurian Age, or Age of Invortobraten.

5 Nisgara.

(e) Clifton. (b) Dyestone Group. (a) Clinch Sandstone.

4 Trenton.

(b) Nashville. (a) Lebanon.

Lower.

3 Canadian.

(b) Lenoir. (a) Knox Group.

2 Primordial.

(b) Chilhowee S. (a) Ocoee Group.

Archæaa Time. :

1 Archæan.

It will be seen by the preceding table, and also by the map accompanying Dr. Safford's Geology, that the State of Tennessee is far from exhibiting a complete geolog- ical series, such as is shown in New York and Pennsylvania. The completeness of the formations in these latter States has been referred to as a standard by American geologists ; but several of the number, though very thick in New York and Pennsylvania, grow thinner when traced southward and disappear before reaching Tennessee. "Others, ex- tending farther south or southwest, have their feuther edges in Tennessee, as, for instance, the Lower Helder- berg and, to a certain extent, the Black Shale, as well as the sub-group of the Niagara,- the Clinch Mountain Sand- stone. The Tennessee series is therefore less complete than the northern. Not only are some of the formations wholly absent, but others are reduced to very thin beds." The same is true of the sub-groups of the Cretaceous farther south, which are heavy in the States of Alabama and Mis- sissippi, but in Tennessee thin out and disappear.

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History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1013

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013