Rebuilding the Countryside

Rebuilding the Countryside. Thompson's Station, Tennessee. After the Civil War, the people of Thompson's Station rebuilt their community, reformed agricultural practice, and opened a new era of economic prosperity. Outside of the park is a symbol of the social and community rebuilding, the historic African American congregation of Connection Hill Primitive Baptist Church, which has its roots in 1878, when Samuel A. Pointer sold a lot for $5 for a "Colored Primitive Baptist Church" and the "future welfare and prosperity of the colored race in this section and the education of their children.” The present church building on The present church building on Thompson's Station Road dates to 1956., Rock terracing on the hillside behind you is a reminder of how farmers turned to new agricultural practices in wake of a twentieth-century disaster-the Great Depression of 1929 to 1938. The terracing dates to the mid-1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal called for land conservation and agricultural renewal as part of his New Deal for America. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, passed in 1933, addressed the national crisis of low farm prices and overproduction. The Soil Conservation Act of 1935 established local committees of farmers to decide what was best for their communities. Here, on the land of Preservation Park, the Soil Conservation Service worked with farmers to reduce soil erosion and preserve valuable topsoil by terracing their lands on slopes and discouraging the farming of steep hillsides. By March 1935 farmers in Williamson County had pledged 2,500 acres of farmland to terracing. Experts held terracing demonstrations throughout Williamson County, including at the Lee Ridley farm near Thompson's Station., Farmers in the mid-twentieth century also largely ended their prior dependence on cotton and turned to more mixed agriculture, where livestock production gained importance. Williamson County became one of the state's major livestock markets in those decades, a pattern seen in the still open pastures that make up Preservation Park., Bank Ad: , Business leaders, like the Williamson County Banking and Trust Company, had a vested interest in improved agriculture. The bank placed this ad in the Review-Appeal (February 14, 1935) encouraging the use of Lespedeza to make "Poor Land Good and Good Land Better." In a 1935 bulletin, the University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station recommended Lespedeza sericea, a perennial legume, for erosion control and could be grown "on soils too poor for a profitable corn crop." , Year Book caption: , The Home Demonstration Club at Thompson's Station was founded in 1926 with eighteen members, Elise Gary, president. Meeting in the basement of the Thompson's Station school, these women were committed to better family and rural community life. , Courtesy Elva M. Darby scrapbook