South Nashville in Davidson County, Tennessee — The American South (East South Central)

From Frontier to Civilization

Photographed By Darren Jefferson Clay, September 21, 2022

1. From Frontier to Civilization Marker

Inscription.

From Frontier to Civilization. . From Frontier to Civilization. Nashville was established in 1780 as a Euro-American settlement of frontier blockhouses overlooking the Cumberland River. The town's raucous citizenry included frontiersmen, land speculators, militia, and veterans of the Revolutionary War; along with a small number of women of child-bearing age and a few persons of color. In 1800 the population numbered 295 whites, 151 slaves, and 3 free Negroes. By 1820 the town had grown to 3076, with over 1,000 counted as slaves and 77 as free blacks. Despite the persistent threat posed by Native Americans in these early years, the Nashville area's fertile soil for growing tobacco and cotton abundant natural resources, and access to the Cumberland River continued to draw migrants. Violence accompanied Nashville's growth. Inhabitants constantly engaged in dueling and brawling, especially in the area near the taverns and boarding houses along Market Street (present-day 2nd Avenue). The town was seemingly complacent to this open, raw individualism. , A new elite emerged in the late 1810s, determined to craft a more civil society. This elite was created out of Nashville's booming agriculture and trade. A small group of self-made wealthy planters, lawyers, and businessmen-many of whom are buried here in this cemetery-turned the town into a place where men were identified by their - occupations, women by their husbands, and slaves by their owners. As part of this effort they began to build a network of family alliances that defined and imposed particular values of civilization. These families, in turn, constructed churches and schools that enshrined the idea of polite, gentlemanly, and lady-like behavior. They also built orphanages, homes for destitute women, a school for the blind, and theaters; and formed lyceums, temperance societies, Sunday schools, and historical societies. Nashville's new civilization found advocates for progress in its churches and school buildings, whether preached from the pulpit or taught in its school curriculums. , In 1785, the Nashville area began to establish educational institutions. The first Davidson Academy, was founded in part by James Robertson and Thomas Craighead an itinerant Presbyterian minister trained at The College of New Jersey. The institution began holding classes at Spring Hill (near Madison), before being moved to Nashville in 1806 and renamed Cumberland College. This did not keep prosperous citizens from sending their children to schools back east, including Robertson himself. Cumberland's curriculum consisted of courses in geography, chemistry, and the "classics." The school closed in 1816. As the local newspaper noted, Cumberland College was nothing more than "a single dilapidated building without professors or scholars." The Nashville Female Academy, the town's first formal school for women, opened its doors the following year. William Hume, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a Presbyterian minister by trade who arrived in Nashville in 1802, was appointed president of the Academy in 1820. Before his appointment he was Professor of Languages and Mathematics at Cumberland College from 1808 to 1816. After helping formally found the town's first Presbyterian Church in 1814, he continued teaching and administering at the Academy until his death on May 22, 1833, in a cholera epidemic that swept through Nashville. Some of the Academy's most ardent supporters are buried in the City Cemetery, Hume rests in Section 28.2. , Thomas Crutcher was representative of the quest by the town's elite to establish institutions that promoted a refined and genteel society. Having migrated from Virginia to Nashville in the early 1780s, he watched the town grow from frontier settlement to trade center for middle Tennesse. A contemporary of Andrew Jackson, he was appointed state treasurer for West Tennessee in 1803. He was appointed again in 1833 and held the position until 1836. In the intervening period, Crutcher served as a trustee for the Nashville Female Academy. First selected in 1819, he served with other trustees who now rest in the City Cemetery, including Wilkins Tannehill, Thomas Claiborne, and Felix Robertson. That same year Crutcher was also elected Nashville's mayor. At the time of his death on March 8, 1844, he was recognized as one of the Nashville Female Academy's greatest friends. Reportedly, two hundred young ladies from the school followed the funeral from the Methodist Church to the City Cemetery. As Crutcher's obituary noted, "Under a somewhat rough exterior and blunt manners, was concealed a heart which beat responsive to the claims of charity and benevolence.” (Section 28.52) Thomas Claiborne was among the energetic wave of migrants who arrived in Nashville from the east around the turn of the 19th century. Born in Virginia in 1780 and a lawyer by trade, Claiborne quickly moved up the ladder in both local and state politics, especially following the War of 18 12. He was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1811 and again in 1831. In the prevailing years he became the first Grand Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Tennessee (1813), helped found the Nashville Female Academy (1817). was elected to Congress (1817) as a Jeffersonian-Republican, and served on Andrew Jackson's staff during the First Seminole War (1817-18). Following the war he was elected City Alderman (1819), and became a founding trustee for the University of Nashville (1825) when the school was revived after the failure of Cumberland College (1816). President, for the Nashville Bible Society. In Claiborne was appointed Secretary, then 1845, he served as a pallbearer for Andrew Jackson's funeral. He died January 9, 1856 and is buried in Section 7. , Nathaniel Cross was, in many ways, symbolic of the new and more educated arrivals Nashville attracted between 1820 and the outbreak of the Civil War. Recruited in 1825 to teach by Dr. Philip Lindsley, President of the new University of Nashville, he joined other distinguished scholars at the school, such as Gerard Troost and James Hamilton, both buried in the City Cemetery. Like Lindsley, Cross was a native of New Jersey and earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton University in the 1820s. Except for a single year, he taught in Nashville from 1825 until his death in 1866; first at the University - where he was Professor of Ancient Languages - and after 1850 at the Bandusia Seminary, his own classical school for boys. , Cross served as the first President (1849 - 1856) of the Tennessee Historical Society (THS). Like the University of Nashville and the Nashville Female Academy several individuals also served as charter members of the THS, including Francis B. Fogg, Wilkins Tannehill, and Felix Robertson. Cross died December 12, 1866. his funeral was held at the First Presbyterian Church and he is buried in Section 28.51. , Pamela Ann Kirk a native of Scotland, arrived in Nashville sometime after 1850. Unmarried, she quickly established a "Dames school for children" in her home of 7th Avenue. This school is believed to be Nashville's first female owned and operated institution of it's kind. Prints of tBible stories hung on the walls of the cottage where both boys and girls up to ten years of age were taught. As one former student remembered, she paddled the hands of those who misbehaved and made others sit facing the classroom wearing a dunce cap. Kirk died November 6, 1860, at the age of 80 and is buried in Section 18. , Collins D. Elliott served as Superintendent at the Nashville Female Academy from 1840 until 1862, when he was temporarily imprisoned by Military Governor Andrew Johnson for refusing to take a loyalty oath to the Union. It was reported that Johnson became so enraged he threatened to execute Collins. After six ministers were imprisoned for the same offense, he fled the city. The school was confiscated by Federal forces for use as a hospital.The Female Academy reopened after the war, but Elliott, who served as a chaplain in the Confederate army of Tennessee, was dismissed in 1866 following a dispute with trustees, some of whom were ardent Unionists during the war. He died on July 28, 1899, and is buried in Section 11.2 next to his wife, Elizabeth Porterfield Elliott, who passed away September 19, 1877 and his daughter, Lizzie Porterfield Elliott, a teacher and author who wrote "early Days in Nashville," who died May 13, 1932. , Jerry Porterfield, a slave owned by Elizabeth Porterfield who became the property of Collins Elliott when they married, is buried in Section 31.He was killed saving the life of Elliott in July 1859. , baptists, Presbyterian, Methodists, Catholics, and Episcopalians all established congregations in Nashville beginning in the 1790s. Over the next fifty years, these denominations built churches, supported education, created evangelical associations, formed the genesis of a sectarian publishing industry, and made the city the center of their statewide missionary efforts. In most instances, women were the church's earliest members and played a prominent role in organizing Nashville's first benevolence societies and Sunday schools, institutions that provided primary education and instruction in basic literary for the poor before the introduction of public schools. Their services were not limited to white parishioners; Christ Episcopal Church held the first special "weekly services" for the benefit of slaves in 1839. Ministers directed the spiritual life of the town, balancing religious affirmation with the need for education that emphasized the development of the citizenry's moral character. , Beside William Hume, other Presbyterian ministers who played a role in Nashville's religious life are also buried in the City Cemetery, Obediah Jennings arrived in 1828 from Pennsylvania and served at First Presbyterian until his death on January 12, 1832. During that time he was instrumental in attracting "gentlemen" of the town to the church and increased the overall size of the congregation to 116 members. He is buried in Section 28. , John Todd Edgar was born in Delaware and educated at the Princeton Theological Seminary. in 1833 he followed Obediah Jennings as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church and served until his death - November 5, 1860. Edgar befriended Andrew Jackson in the former President's later years and in 1845 presided over Jackson's funeral. That same year he helped establish the Protestant Orphan Society. Edgar was also instrumental in starting the Tennessee School for the Blind as a trustee in 1844 with other Protestant ministers in Nashville, including John T. Wheat (Episcopal) and R.B. Howell (Baptist). One of the school's first Superintendents, Jacob Berry, a twenty-nine year old teacher recruited from Philadelphia, died in the cholera epidemic 1849 along with the matron, steward, and several pupils. The same epidemic was instrumental in closing the University of Nashville in 1850 because of the high death rate. Edgar is buried in Section 7.

From Frontier to Civilization Nashville was established in 1780 as a Euro-American settlement of frontier blockhouses overlooking the Cumberland River. The town's raucous citizenry included frontiersmen, land speculators, militia, and veterans of the Revolutionary War; along with a small number of women of child-bearing age and a few persons of color. In 1800 the population numbered 295 whites, 151 slaves, and 3 free Negroes. By 1820 the town had grown to 3076, with over 1,000 counted as slaves and 77 as free blacks. Despite the persistent threat posed by Native Americans in these early years, the Nashville area's fertile soil for growing tobacco and cotton abundant natural resources, and access to the Cumberland River continued to draw migrants. Violence accompanied Nashville's growth. Inhabitants constantly engaged in dueling and brawling, especially in the area near the taverns and boarding houses along Market Street (present-day 2nd Avenue). The town was seemingly complacent to this open, raw individualism.

A new elite emerged in the late 1810s, determined to craft a more civil society. This elite was created out of Nashville's booming agriculture and trade. A small group of self-made wealthy planters, lawyers, and businessmen-many of whom are buried here in this cemetery-turned

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the town into a place where men were identified by their - occupations, women by their husbands, and slaves by their owners. As part of this effort they began to build a network of family alliances that defined and imposed particular values of civilization. These families, in turn, constructed churches and schools that enshrined the idea of polite, gentlemanly, and lady-like behavior. They also built orphanages, homes for destitute women, a school for the blind, and theaters; and formed lyceums, temperance societies, Sunday schools, and historical societies. Nashville's new civilization found advocates for progress in its churches and school buildings, whether preached from the pulpit or taught in its school curriculums.

In 1785, the Nashville area began to establish educational institutions. The first Davidson Academy, was founded in part by James Robertson and Thomas Craighead an itinerant Presbyterian minister trained at The College of New Jersey. The institution began holding classes at Spring Hill (near Madison), before being moved to Nashville in 1806 and renamed Cumberland College. This did not keep prosperous citizens from sending their children to schools back east, including Robertson himself. Cumberland's curriculum consisted of courses in geography, chemistry, and the "classics." The school closed in 1816. As the local newspaper noted,

Photographed By Darren Jefferson Clay, September 21, 2022

2. From Frontier to Civilization Marker

Cumberland College was nothing more than "a single dilapidated building without professors or scholars." The Nashville Female Academy, the town's first formal school for women, opened its doors the following year. William Hume, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a Presbyterian minister by trade who arrived in Nashville in 1802, was appointed president of the Academy in 1820. Before his appointment he was Professor of Languages and Mathematics at Cumberland College from 1808 to 1816. After helping formally found the town's first Presbyterian Church in 1814, he continued teaching and administering at the Academy until his death on May 22, 1833, in a cholera epidemic that swept through Nashville. Some of the Academy's most ardent supporters are buried in the City Cemetery, Hume rests in Section 28.2.

Thomas Crutcher was representative of the quest by the town's elite to establish institutions that promoted a refined and genteel society. Having migrated from Virginia to Nashville in the early 1780s, he watched the town grow from frontier settlement to trade center for middle Tennesse. A contemporary of Andrew Jackson, he was appointed state treasurer for West Tennessee in 1803. He was appointed again in 1833 and held the position until 1836. In the intervening period, Crutcher served as a trustee for the Nashville

Photographed By Darren Jefferson Clay, September 21, 2022

3. From Frontier to Civilization Marker

Female Academy. First selected in 1819, he served with other trustees who now rest in the City Cemetery, including Wilkins Tannehill, Thomas Claiborne, and Felix Robertson. That same year Crutcher was also elected Nashville's mayor. At the time of his death on March 8, 1844, he was recognized as one of the Nashville Female Academy's greatest friends. Reportedly, two hundred young ladies from the school followed the funeral from the Methodist Church to the City Cemetery. As Crutcher's obituary noted, "Under a somewhat rough exterior and blunt manners, was concealed a heart which beat responsive to the claims of charity and benevolence.” (Section 28.52) Thomas Claiborne was among the energetic wave of migrants who arrived in Nashville from the east around the turn of the 19th century. Born in Virginia in 1780 and a lawyer by trade, Claiborne quickly moved up the ladder in both local and state politics, especially following the War of 1812. He was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1811 and again in 1831. In the prevailing years he became the first Grand Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Tennessee (1813), helped found the Nashville Female Academy (1817). was elected to Congress (1817) as a Jeffersonian-Republican, and served on Andrew Jackson's staff during the First Seminole War (1817-18). Following the war he was

Photographed By Darren Jefferson Clay, September 21, 2022

4. From Frontier to Civilization Marker

elected City Alderman (1819), and became a founding trustee for the University of Nashville (1825) when the school was revived after the failure of Cumberland College (1816). President, for the Nashville Bible Society. In Claiborne was appointed Secretary, then 1845, he served as a pallbearer for Andrew Jackson's funeral. He died January 9, 1856 and is buried in Section 7.

Nathaniel Cross was, in many ways, symbolic of the new and more educated arrivals Nashville attracted between 1820 and the outbreak of the Civil War. Recruited in 1825 to teach by Dr. Philip Lindsley, President of the new University of Nashville, he joined other distinguished scholars at the school, such as Gerard Troost and James Hamilton, both buried in the City Cemetery. Like Lindsley, Cross was a native of New Jersey and earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton University in the 1820s. Except for a single year, he taught in Nashville from 1825 until his death in 1866; first at the University - where he was Professor of Ancient Languages - and after 1850 at the Bandusia Seminary, his own classical school for boys.

Cross served as the first President (1849 - 1856) of the Tennessee Historical Society (THS). Like the University of Nashville and the Nashville Female Academy several individuals also served as charter members of the THS, including

Photographed By Darren Jefferson Clay, September 21, 2022

5. From Frontier to Civilization Marker

Francis B. Fogg, Wilkins Tannehill, and Felix Robertson. Cross died December 12, 1866. his funeral was held at the First Presbyterian Church and he is buried in Section 28.51.

Pamela Ann Kirk a native of Scotland, arrived in Nashville sometime after 1850. Unmarried, she quickly established a "Dames school for children" in her home of 7th Avenue. This school is believed to be Nashville's first female owned and operated institution of it's kind. Prints of tBible stories hung on the walls of the cottage where both boys and girls up to ten years of age were taught. As one former student remembered, she paddled the hands of those who misbehaved and made others sit facing the classroom wearing a dunce cap. Kirk died November 6, 1860, at the age of 80 and is buried in Section 18.

Collins D. Elliott served as Superintendent at the Nashville Female Academy from 1840 until 1862, when he was temporarily imprisoned by Military Governor Andrew Johnson for refusing to take a loyalty oath to the Union. It was reported that Johnson became so enraged he threatened to execute Collins. After six ministers were imprisoned for the same offense, he fled the city. The school was confiscated by Federal forces for use as a hospital.The Female Academy reopened after the war, but Elliott, who served as a chaplain in the Confederate army of Tennessee, was

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dismissed in 1866 following a dispute with trustees, some of whom were ardent Unionists during the war. He died on July 28, 1899, and is buried in Section 11.2 next to his wife, Elizabeth Porterfield Elliott, who passed away September 19, 1877 and his daughter, Lizzie Porterfield Elliott, a teacher and author who wrote "early Days in Nashville," who died May 13, 1932.

Jerry Porterfield, a slave owned by Elizabeth Porterfield who became the property of Collins Elliott when they married, is buried in Section 31.He was killed saving the life of Elliott in July 1859.

baptists, Presbyterian, Methodists, Catholics, and Episcopalians all established congregations in Nashville beginning in the 1790s. Over the next fifty years, these denominations built churches, supported education, created evangelical associations, formed the genesis of a sectarian publishing industry, and made the city the center of their statewide missionary efforts. In most instances, women were the church's earliest members and played a prominent role in organizing Nashville's first benevolence societies and Sunday schools, institutions that provided primary education and instruction in basic literary for the poor before the introduction of public schools. Their services were not limited to white parishioners; Christ Episcopal Church held the first special "weekly services" for the benefit of slaves in 1839. Ministers directed the spiritual life of the town, balancing religious affirmation with the need for education that emphasized the development of the citizenry's moral character.

Beside William Hume, other Presbyterian ministers who played a role in Nashville's religious life are also buried in the City Cemetery, Obediah Jennings arrived in 1828 from Pennsylvania and served at First Presbyterian until his death on January 12, 1832. During that time he was instrumental in attracting "gentlemen" of the town to the church and increased the overall size of the congregation to 116 members. He is buried in Section 28.

John Todd Edgar was born in Delaware and educated at the Princeton Theological Seminary. in 1833 he followed Obediah Jennings as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church and served until his death - November 5, 1860. Edgar befriended Andrew Jackson in the former President's later years and in 1845 presided over Jackson's funeral. That same year he helped establish the Protestant Orphan Society. Edgar was also instrumental in starting the Tennessee School for the Blind as a trustee in 1844 with other Protestant ministers in Nashville, including John T. Wheat (Episcopal) and R.B. Howell (Baptist). One of the school's first Superintendents, Jacob Berry, a twenty-nine year old teacher recruited from Philadelphia, died in the cholera epidemic 1849 along with the matron, steward, and several pupils. The same epidemic was instrumental in closing the University of Nashville in 1850 because of the high death rate. Edgar is buried in Section 7.

Topics. This historical marker is listed in this topic list: Settlements & Settlers.

Location. 36° 8.842′ N, 86° 46.178′ W. Marker is in Nashville, Tennessee, in Davidson County. It is in South Nashville. Marker can be reached from 4th Avenue South. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 1001 4th Ave S, Nashville TN 37210, United States of America. Touch for directions.

Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Nashville City Cemetery (a few steps from this marker); A Community of Citizens and Soldiers (a few steps from this marker); Frontier Nashville / Athens of the West (within shouting distance of this marker); William Carroll (within shouting distance of this marker); Andrew Ewing (within shouting distance of this marker); The Civil War and Its Aftermath (within shouting distance of this marker); John E. Hagey (about 300 feet away, measured in a direct line); The Free and the Unfree (about 300 feet away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Nashville.

Credits. This page was last revised on February 7, 2023. It was originally submitted on October 4, 2022, by Darren Jefferson Clay of Duluth, Georgia. This page has been viewed 127 times since then and 25 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. submitted on October 4, 2022, by Darren Jefferson Clay of Duluth, Georgia. • Mark Hilton was the editor who published this page.