Northern-Hodge Cemetery

Northern-Hodge Cemetery. Established 1825. Within the stone walls of this family cemetery are buried some of Nashville's earliest settlers. As hostilities with Indian tribes subsided, James Hodge (1774-1817) ventured out in 1797 from Hodge's Station near today's Montgomery Bell Academy and purchased 735 acres of the surrounding countryside that had been a pre-emption grant to James Robertson from the state of North Carolina. In 1810, James' father, Francis Hodge (1750-1828), one of the original founders of Fort Nashborough, bought the eastern half of his son's tract. In 1820, James' daughter, Mary Becton Hodge (1805-circa 1879) married Samuel Northern (1795-1871), a silversmith from Columbia, Tennessee, and they eventually purchased all the original Hodge land. In 1825, Samuel Northern set aside the one acre tract where you are now standing as his family's cemetery. , In the valley east of here, Samuel Northern's former homesite of "Cedar Glen" was built on the old north-south trail circa 1811 by his wife's grandfather Francis Hodge. The house is no longer standing, but the home's old springhouse was rebuilt and can be seen at the Chickering Road entrance of Percy Warner Park. In addition, another ancestral home built by George Hodge (brother to James and son of Francis Hodge) was restored by Metro Parks and the Friends of Warner Parks in 2009. Following the matrilineal line, Hodges, Northerns, Saudeks, Blantons and Neels lived at Cedar Glen until 1927 when the homestead was purchased by the city of Nashville from the family of Willie Blanton Neel to be incorporated into Percy Warner Park. If only the ancient cedar trees still standing on these old homesites from an era past could tell the tales of the families who settled and lived in this area for seven generations! , This cemetery includes an estimated 45-50 graves with the earliest known grave dated 1817. Hodge and Northern descendants and their spouses, children and in-laws also buried in this cemetery include members of the Blanton, Burrow, Crawford, Matthews, Moore, Saudek, Vaughn, Walden and White families. Others also laying their loved ones to rest here include members of the Page and Wilson families. More of Samuel Northern's descendants are buried in a small family cemetery also located in the park at the entrance to the Harpeth Hills Golf Course. This plaque was erected in 2017 in loving memory of Sara Josephine Wallen White (1939-2015).