Early History

Early History. Sunnyside in Sevier Park. "Sunnyside" is the name given to the two-story antebellum house that serves as the home of the Metropolitan Historical Commission and Historic Zoning Commission., The property was part of a land grant to Thomas Hardeman. Thomas and his wife moved to the property in 1790. The property was sold in 1815 to Thomas Shackleford, a mason, who likely built at least a log house on the property which sat on the outskirts of Nashville. One of the log cabins on this farm has been dated to 1823 or 1824 by dendrochronology (tree-ring dating). The land changed hands a few more times before Mary Childress Benton, widow of Jesse Benton, purchased 38 acres, including one log cabin in 1852. Mary soon had the current house built. Two of these early nineteenth-century log buildings have been incorporated in the back wing of the main building and are still visible today., Indigenous Archaeology , Middle Tennessee has been home to Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence found at Sunnyside, in the form of stone tools and debitage (flakes of stone from making those tools), documents that Indigenous people were living on and utilizing the landscape between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago (Late Archaic Period). This was a period of increasing social complexity and the beginnings of cultivation., Populations continued to expand into the Mississippian Period, noted for dense settlements, mounds, and extensive trade networks. Europeans later encountered groups known today as the Cherokee, Shawnee, Chickasaw, as well as other Indigenous groups.