Felix Grundy – Nashville Historical Newsletter

Women to the Rescue

by Carol Kaplan.

At the end of the 19^th century City Cemetery was in crisis. Once a burial place for all Nashvillians, it had been supplanted by the newer and more beautiful Mt. Olivet, Mt. Ararat, and Calvary cemeteries. The Union Civil War dead had been transported to National; the Confederates, to Mt. Olivet. Neglected and ignored, City was described by the Banner on June 21, 1868, as a ruin: “robbery, murder and lust have held their horrid orgies in it and even now nightly desecrated by being the rendezvous of lascivious love.” No wonder the cemetery was promptly declared a “public nuisance” and burials were suspended the following month. A plan quickly came together within city government to remove all the graves and make the land a public park.

*Sunset at Nashville City Cemetery* (*photo by Rebecca Sowell*)

“Not so fast! Absolutely not!” Nashville’s women spoke out forcefully against such an idea. This was “sacred ground and should never be called a park,” protested Felicia Steger, a granddaughter of Felix Grundy. Women had found a new freedom of expression with the advent of the 20^th century. In 1897 their Woman’s Building at the Tennessee Centennial had been a triumph. Now they found that, although not yet allowed to vote, they could nonetheless organize and engage in “civic housekeeping” with positive results. “We shall never have clean cities until the women undertake the job” was the credo of these busy ladies. Their noble efforts notwithstanding, a Banner reporter of 1900 expressed indignation that “women were boldly wearing ankle-length skirts on clear days because they were helpful in getting on and off streetcars.”

*· Woman’s building at Tennessee Centennial Exposition, 1897 (Image #27163; Calvert Brothers Photography Studio; courtesy of Tennessee State Library & Archives)*

Saving and caring for City Cemetery became the focus of several groups. In 1903 the Tennessee Women’s Historical Association was organized, its specific purpose to preserve the cemetery. Sumner A. Cunningham, editor of the Confederate Veteran, claimed credit for suggesting its formation. He was the only male member of an industrious group that included Louise Lindsley and Carnegie librarian Mary Hannah Johnson. Other civic and patriotic organizations were asked to join them “to assist in improving and preserving the old city cemetery, to dispel the spirit of vandalism and promote civic pride. The Ladies’ Hermitage Association, DAR, UDC, and Colonial Dames all cooperated under this umbrella. One of their successful projects was the construction of a Memorial Gate at the 5^th Avenue entrance. Dedicated in 1909, the gate exists only in pictures now, having been destroyed in an automobile accident during the 1930s. Wishing to do their part, Cumberland Chapter, DAR, erected a sundial to mark the path leading to the James Robertson family plot.

*Nashville City Cemetery* (*photo by Rebecca Sowell*)

The South Nashville Federation of Women was another group that worked to care for the City Cemetery grounds. The guidebook All About Nashville reported in 1912 that “with the cooperation of 400 members, they have cleared away the rubbish, pruned trees, graveled the walks, and planted a line of memorial elms and lastly, are in the process of erecting a handsome memorial gateway to the heroes of another day.” These gateposts, on 4^th Avenue, still stand. May Winston Caldwell, whose parents and siblings are buried at City, remembered the pre-Civil War days when her mother and Peter, the gardener, came to care for the family plot. Now May, as a member of the South Nashville Women, was proudly carrying on that tradition.

*Sign at City Cemetery entrance gate (NHN collection)*

These hard-working women began a program of stewardship and restoration that has resumed in recent years after a period of neglect. Today the Nashville City Cemetery Association (composed of both men and women!) is ten* years old, making it the longest-lived and most professional volunteer organization ever to protect and renovate the grounds and markers: an endowment established at the Community Foundation will support the continuing restoration of the City Cemetery in the years to come. Thanks to the $3 million allocated by the Metro Council, and with the cooperation of the Metro Historical Commission and such citizen organizations as Master Gardeners of Davidson County, the cemetery is once again prepared to maintain its status as a historically valuable resting place of our pioneer heritage. (2008)

*A volunteer from the Master Gardeners of Davidson County works in one of the family plots (NHN photo)*

Previously published in Monuments and Milestones, the Nashville City Cemetery Newsletter.

* Note: This article was written in 2008. The NCCA began its work in 1998. By this time (late 2021) the organization is more than 23 years old.

Sarah “Sallie” McGavock Lindsley, 1830-1903

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Sarah Malvina Bass McGavock, usually called Sallie, was born July 17, 1830, in Nashville, Tennessee.¹ Her father was Jacob McGavock (1790-1878), a county, circuit, and U.S. circuit court clerk for fifty years.² Jacob had served as Andrew Jackson’s aide during the Creek War,³ and the two men remained close friends throughout their lives.⁴ Sallie’s mother, Louisa Grundy McGavock, was the daughter of noted jurist Felix Grundy,⁵ Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, U. S. Representative and Senator from Tennessee, and U. S. Attorney General under President Martin Van Buren.⁶

On February 9, 1857, Sallie married Dr. John Berrien Lindsley (1822-1897),⁷ one of Nashville’s most eligible bachelors. Lindsley’s journal reports, “At 4 & 10 minutes P.M. was married by the Rev. J. T. Edgar, D.D. to Miss Sallie McGavock . . . only the immediate family and a very few friends present. All very happy.”⁸

Sallie Lindsley gave birth to six children: Louise Grundy Lindsley (1858-1944); Jacob McGavock Lindsley (1860-1925), nicknamed “J. Mac,” who married Kittie Kline; Mary McGavock Lindsley (b 1861), wife of R. C. Kent; Margaret Elizabeth Lawrence Lindsley (1863-1936), who married Percy Warner, and whose descendants bore the names Frazer, White, Mallison, and Lea; Anne “Annie” Dickinson Lindsley (1864-1958), who married Dr. Carl Warner; and Randal McGavock Lindsley (1870-1871),⁹ named for Sallie’s brother, a former Nashville mayor (1824-1825), who had died in the Civil War.

The Lindsley family remained in Nashville during the War, moving to Sallie’s parents’ home after Union troops seized the Lindsleys’ property during the Battle of Nashville.¹⁰ Sallie later became active in various charities of the First Presbyterian Church. She was a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (founded in1894) and served as the group’s first corresponding secretary.¹¹ The work closest to Sallie Lindsley’s heart, however, was the creation of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association (LHA), organized to protect and preserve Andrew Jackson’s home, a state property scheduled to become a rest home for aged and needy Confederate soldiers.¹² When attorney A. S. Colyar determined that only unmarried women (femmes soles) were eligible to sign the LHA charter of incorporation,¹³ the committee members selected five unmarried women, including Sallie’s daughter, Louise Grundy Lindsley,¹⁴ to sign the document. Meanwhile, John Berrien Lindsley, then Executive Secretary of the State Board of Public Health, was attempting unsuccessfully to craft a compromise between the Confederate organization and the LHA. At his urging, Sallie met with Representative John H. Savage, a former Confederate officer and the chief opponent of the amendment that would cede the women’s group 25 acres that included the house, family graveyard, and tomb.¹⁵ Sallie persuaded Savage to change his vote, the amendment passed, and the Association opened the property to the public in July 1889.¹⁶The group’s first major undertaking, restoring Jackson’s original log home, “First Hermitage,” was Tennessee’s first historic preservation project. ¹⁷

*“First Hermitage,” Hermitage, Davidson County, Tennessee*

Sallie Lindsley was elected Second Vice Regent of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association (1891-1899), then served as Regent¹⁸ until her death by heart failure on July 5, 1903.¹⁹ (2014)

SOURCES:

¹ Her birth and death dates are inscribed on her tombstone in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

² Gray, Robert. The McGavock Family: A Genealogical History of James McGavock and His Descendants from 1760 to 1903. Richmond, VA: William Ellis Jones, Printer, 1903, 21.³ Gray, Robert, 20-21.

⁴ Gray, Robert, 14.

⁵ “Mrs. Lindsley Dead. Passes Away Quietly after Brief Illness.” The Nashville American, July 6, 1903, page 4.

⁶ “Felix Grundy.” United States Congress. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 2005.

⁷ Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives.

⁸ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 5, October 6, 1856 – January 1, 1866. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 23. Tennessee State Library and Archives. February 9, 1857.

⁹ Lindly, John M. The History of the Lindley-Lindsley-Linsley Families in America, 1639-1924, Vol. II. Winfield, Iowa: Self-published, 1924, 19.

¹⁰ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 5, December 1-24, 1864.

¹¹ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries: The Grundy Women and the Beginnings of Women’s Volunteer Associations in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol.LIV, No. 1, Spring 1995, 45.

¹²Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Ladies’ Hermitage Association.” Tennessee Encyclopedia Online. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002-2014.

¹³ Dorris, Mary C. Currey. Preservation of the Hermitage, 1889-1915: Annals, History, and Stories. Smith & Lamar, 1915, 35.

¹⁴ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 46.

¹⁵ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 46.

¹⁶ The Hermitage, Home of President Andrew Jackson website. Accessed 6-23-2014. http://www.thehermitage.com/mansion-grounds/mansion/hermitage

¹⁷ The Hermitage, Home of President Andrew Jackson website. Accessed 6-23-2014.

¹⁸ Dorris, Mary C. Currey. Preservation of the Hermitage, 1889-1915, 219-220.

¹⁹ Tennessee City Death Records, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis, 1848-1907. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Jacob McGavock Dickinson: Jurist and Statesman

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Jacob McGavock Dickinson was a distinguished attorney, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, and U. S. Secretary of War. A grandson of Jacob McGavock and great-grandson of Felix Grundy, Dickinson was born January 30, 1851, in Mississippi. He enlisted at fourteen in the Confederate cavalry,¹ just as the Civil War ended, and soon thereafter earned A.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of Nashville. He studied law at Columbia University and in Europe² before being admitted to the Tennessee Bar (1874).³He and his wife, née Martha Overton, reared three sons.⁴

Dickinson, an early law partner of Judge Claude Waller,⁵accepted four temporary appointments to the Tennessee Supreme Court (1891-1893)⁶ before becoming Assistant U.S. Attorney General (1895-1897), as well as General Attorney for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad⁷ and law professor at Vanderbilt University (1897-1899).⁸

He moved to Chicago to serve as Solicitor General (1899-1901) and General Counsel (1901-1909) for the Illinois Central Railroad.⁹ One of three attorneys representing the United States before the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal (1903),¹⁰ Dickinson delivered the successful closing argument in an emotionally charged case.¹¹ He helped organize the American Society of International Law (1906) and became president of the American Bar Association a year later.¹² Between 1905 and 1909 he received honorary doctorates from Columbia,¹³ Yale,¹⁴ and the University of Illinois.¹⁵

President William Howard Taft, seated left; Judge Howard H. Lurton, whom Taft appointed to the Supreme Court, standing center; and Jacob McGavock Dickinson, seated right. (photo courtesy of Peggy Dickinson Fleming)

In March 1909, President William H. Taft, a long-time friend,¹⁶ appointed him Secretary of War, a post he occupied until May 1911.¹⁷Secretary Dickinson proposed two pieces of legislation: providing an annuity retirement system for civil service employees and admitting foreign students to West Point.¹⁸

Much in demand as a dinner guest, Dickinson preferred the company of friends and family to the Washington social scene. Once, having refused a persistent hostess’s dinner invitations for each night from Monday through the weekend, he finally growled, “Dammit, madam, I’ll just come Monday!”¹⁹

Before 1890 Dickinson owned several large estates, including the Henry Hayes mansion, Ensworth, which he sold in 1898 to the Sisters of Charity as the future site of St. Thomas Hospital.²⁰ Around the same time, he infuriated Nashville residents with his decision to sell another historic property, Polk Place (the former residence of not only U.S. Congressman, Senator, and Attorney General Felix Grundy, but also President James K. Polk) to a developer, who razed the presidential home (1900) to build apartments.²¹ Dickinson bought Belle Meade in 1906 as a place to entertain guests²²; his son Overton lived there year-round with his family.²³ When Overton died of heart disease in 1910, a year after his wife’s death, Jacob Dickinson sold Belle Meade and never returned.²⁴

From 1913-1917 he served as Special Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the federal prosecution of the U.S. Steel Corporation, acting also as receiver for the Rock Island Line, which he restored to solvency.²⁵ In later years Dickinson was president of the Izaak Walton League, an early conservation group.²⁶

After his death on December 13, 1928, his body lay in state in the Tennessee Capitol²⁷ before being transported to Mt. Olivet Cemetery for burial.²⁸

The Dickinson papers at the Tennessee State Library and Archives include his correspondence with, among others, William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, George W. Goethals, and presidents Cleveland, Coolidge, Hoover, Taft, Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt.²⁹ (2015)

SOURCES:

¹ Nashville Families and Homes: Selected Paragraphs from Nashville History. Nashville: Nashville Room, Nashville Public Library, 1983, 33.

² Nashville, A Family Town: 1975-76 Paragraphs from Nashville History. Nashville: The Nashville Room, Nashville Public Library, 1978, 85.

³ Dickinson, Jacob McGavock (1851-1928) Family Papers, 1812-1946. Microfilm #836. Tennessee State Library and Archives (finding aid).

⁴ Sobel, Robert. Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch, 1774-1989. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group (ABC-CLIO), 1990.

⁵ Nashville, A Family Town, 85. Waller was the first judge appointed to the Second Circuit Court after its creation in 1895.

⁶ Nashville Families and Homes, 35.

⁷ Sobel.

⁸ Dickinson Family Papers (finding aid).

⁹ U.S. Army Center of Military History. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. http://www.history.army.mil/books/Sw-SA/Dickinson.htm (Accessed 3-23-2015)

¹⁰ Nashville, A Family Town, 87.

¹¹ Dickinson Family Papers (finding aid).

¹² U.S. Army Center of Military History.

¹³ Columbia University Quarterly, Volume 7. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905.

¹⁴ Office of the Secretary and Vice President for Student Life. New Haven: Yale University. http://secretary.yale.edu/programs-services/honorary-degrees/since-1702?field_degrees_value=All&field_year_value=All&keys=&page=13&order=title&sort=asc (Accessed 3-24-2015)

¹⁵ Commencement at Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Campus: Honorary Degrees 1891-Present. http://commencement.illinois.edu/ceremonies/honors_awards.html (Accessed 3-24-2015)

¹⁶ Nashville Families and Homes, 37.

¹⁷ Sobel.

¹⁸ U.S. Army Center of Military History.

¹⁹ Fleming, Peggy Dickinson. “Jacob McGavock Dickinson, Sr.” Nashville Historical Newsletter, https://nashvillehistoricalnewsletter.com/2021/10/17/jacob-mcgavock-dickinson-sr/ (Accessed 3-15-2015)

²⁰ Nashville, A Family Town, 90.

²¹ Nashville, A Family Town, 90.

²² Fleming, Peggy Dickinson.

²³ “Later Residents of Belle Meade.” Belle Meade Plantation website. http://bellemeadeplantation.com/later-residents/ (Accessed 3-24-2015)

²⁴ Fleming, Peggy Dickinson.

²⁵ Nashville Families and Homes, 35.

²⁶ U.S. Army Center of Military History.

²⁷ Nashville Families and Homes, 44.

²⁸ Find A Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8004817 (Accessed 3-24-2015)

²⁹ Dickinson Family Papers (finding aid).

John Berrien Lindsley, 1822-1897

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Born October 24, 1822, John Berrien Lindsley came to Nashville in 1824, when his father, Philip, became president of the University of Nashville. Young Lindsley was educated at home by his parents and a neighbor, Septima Sexta Rutledge.¹At 14 he entered the University of Nashville, earning a B.A. at 17 and an M.A. two years later.² In 1842 he entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, receiving his M.D. in March 1843.³Here Lindsley began a lifelong friendship with adventurer William Walker.⁴

Lindsley’s next pursuit was theology: in December 1843 the Nashville Presbytery accepted him as a candidate for the ministry.⁵ He was licensed to preach in April 1845,⁶ shortly before attending to Andrew Jackson at his deathbed.⁷ Lindsley ministered to churches at the Hermitage and in Smyrna and, beginning in 1847, preached to slaves and the poor.⁸ An 1849 cholera epidemic⁹ kindled his interest in public health.

When Philip Lindsley left the University of Nashville in 1850, his son John Berrien became Chancellor. He proposed to rescue the faltering university by merging with the Western Military Institute of Georgetown, Kentucky,¹⁰ and by establishing the long-awaited medical school. Though apprehensive, Board members permitted the merger. Lindsley spearheaded the development of the medical school in 1851, became its first dean, and taught there until 1873.¹¹ [Note: the following year the University of Nashville Medical School was incorporated into Vanderbilt University, which had been founded in 1873 by virtue of a grant from Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. From that point on, it would be known as the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.]

In 1857 Lindsley married Felix Grundy’s granddaughter Sarah “Sallie” McGavock, with whom he had six children. He served on the Nashville Board of Education and was secretary of the State Board of Education, administering the Peabody Education Fund and overseeing the transition of the University of Nashville into Peabody College.¹² Having received a Doctorate of Sacred Theology from Princeton (1858), he lectured in the Cumberland University Theological Department in Lebanon.¹³

Following the capture of Fort Donelson (February 1862), Lindsley became post surgeon of Nashville hospitals. His valiant efforts to protect university property during federal occupation saved the library, laboratory equipment, and the valuable Troost mineral collection.¹⁴

After the war, Lindsley served on the Nashville Board of Education and was superintendent of Nashville public schools. He helped establish Montgomery Bell Academy (1867) and the Tennessee College of Pharmacy (1870),¹⁵ and in 1875 presided over the State Teachers Association. Having promoted the passage of an 1877 law establishing the State Board of Health, he served as its first executive secretary.¹⁶ As Nashville Public Health Officer from 1876-1880, he supervised all health efforts in Tennessee during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic.¹⁷ He taught Sanitary Science and Preventative Medicine at the University of Tennessee from 1880-1897.¹⁸

Dr. John Berrien Lindsley in later life.

Distressed by wartime divisions within the Presbyterian Church, Lindsley became a minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1874.¹⁹ He authored History of the Law School of Cumberland University at Lebanon, Confederate Military Annals of Tennessee, and many works on medicine and public health. He was an early member of the Tennessee Historical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Medicine.²⁰ His many talents led Alfred Leland Crabb to call him the “Benjamin Franklin of Nashville.”²¹

John Berrien Lindsley died December 7, 1897, in Nashville. He is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. (2014)

SOURCES:

¹ Windrow, John Edwin. John Berrien Lindsley, Educator, Physician, Social Philosopher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938, 8.

² Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 4, 1849-1856. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 21. Tennessee State Library and Archives.

³ Windrow, 11.

⁴ Lindsley, John Berrien. Letter to Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley, April 8, 1843. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953. Oversize folder (49). Tennessee State Library and Archives.

⁵ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 4, 1849-1856.

⁶ Windrow, 12.

⁷ Lindsley, Philip. Journal. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953, Box 2, Folder 33. Tennessee State Library and Archives.

⁸ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 4, 1849-1856.

⁹ Pyle, G. F. “The Diffusion of Cholera in the United States in the Nineteenth Century,” Wiley Online Library, accessed 1-4-2014. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1538-4632.1969.tb00605.x/pdf

¹⁰ Conkin, Paul K. Peabody College: From a Frontier Academy to the Frontiers of Teaching and Learning. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, 83.

¹¹ John Berrien Lindsley Papers, Collection No. 41. Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The Annette & Irwin Eskind Biomedical Library, Special Collections: Accessed 1-5-2014. http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/diglib/sc_diglib/biopages/jlindsley.html

¹² State Board of Education Records, 1815-1958. Record Group 91, Volume 55, 1875-1885. Tennessee State Library and Archives.

¹³ John Berrien Lindsley Papers, Vanderbilt University.

¹⁴ Crabb, Alfred Leland. The Historical Background of Peabody College. Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1941, 20-21.

¹⁵ John Berrien Lindsley Papers, Vanderbilt University.

¹⁶ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 5, October 6, 1856 – January 1, 1866. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 23. Tennessee State Library and Archives.

¹⁷ Windrow, 140-141.

¹⁸ Windrow, 159-160.

¹⁹ DeWitt, Rev. M. B. Letter, March 11, 1898, quoted in Windrow, 13-14.

²⁰ John Berrien Lindsley Papers, Vanderbilt University.

²¹ Crabb, Alfred Leland. Nashville: Personality of a City. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960, 95.

Louise Grundy Lindsley, 1858-1944

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Louise Grundy Lindsley was born March 11, 1858, in Nashville, Tennessee.¹ She was the eldest child of Dr. John Berrien Lindsley (1822-1897) and Sarah “Sallie” McGavock Lindsley (1830-1903), and the great-granddaughter of U. S. Senator and jurist Felix Grundy (1777-1840).² Miss Lindsley, a debutante (1898)³ and a college graduate,⁴ remained unmarried, devoting her life to worthy causes. She was active in Nashville chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of 1812, and the Centennial Club.⁵ When the Tennessee Historical Society opened its membership to women in 1915, she was one of its first female members.⁶

*Postcard photo of The Hermitage from NHN collection*

Louise Lindsley was one of five women who signed the charter of incorporation of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association (LHA), later serving as director and regent for many years.⁷ In 1889 the LHA gained possession of the 25 acres that included the house and tomb.⁸ After the Confederate Soldiers’ Home closed in the 1930s, the State awarded the hard-working Association the remaining Hermitage land.⁹ A 1910 newspaper reporter observed Regent¹⁰ Louise Lindsley tending to the Hermitage hydrangeas “planted as tiny shrubs by her mother, the late Mrs. Berrien Lindsley, during her term of Regency.”¹¹

In 1912 Louise Lindsley described the work of the LHA to the Southern Commercial Congress,¹² a group of representatives from the Southern states who worked to promote regional economic growth. At the request of the group’s president, Miss Lindsley organized the Tennessee Women’s Auxiliary to the Congress, soon becoming the Auxiliary’s national president.¹³ The group took a great interest in the economic possibilities of the new Panama Canal, and Lindsley herself traveled to Panama.¹⁴The Auxiliary also worked to bring together women – particularly rural women – in an effort to encourage them to become involved in such local issues as roads, community health, and vocational education.¹⁵

John Berrien Lindsley’s handwritten will, dated July 19, 1892, left his interest in the Nashville Medical College to his daughters Louise G. and Annie D. Lindsley.¹⁶ When Sallie Lindsley died in 1898, she left a hand-written deed of gift, giving all her “furniture silver and pictures and other household effects” to Louise, “all of my other children being married and provided for.”¹⁷ After Annie’s marriage failed, she, her daughter Margaret, and Louise shared a residence for the remainder of their lives. In February 1922, although Annie was still living, Louise petitioned to adopt Margaret so her niece would become her legal heir.¹⁸

Louise Lindsley was an active participant in the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association for many years.¹⁹ When World War I broke out, she was appointed to chair the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense.²⁰ She became a Southern representative to the National Bureau of Speakers and was involved locally in efforts to encourage housewives to support the war effort through resourcefulness and efficiency.²¹

Louise G. Lindsley’s will, dated December 11, 1939, left half her estate to her niece, Margaret Lindsley Warden, and half to her sister Annie.²² Louise died of colon cancer on July 18, 1944, at the age of 86.²³ (2014)

SOURCES:

¹ Lindsley, John Berrien. Diary, Volume 5, October 6, 1856 – January 1, 1866. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1840-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 23. Tennessee State Library and Archives.

² Lindly, John M. The History of the Lindley-Lindsley-Linsley Families in America, 1639-1924, Vol. II. Winfield, Iowa: Self-published, 1924, 19.

³ Nashville American, October 27, 1898, 3.

⁴ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries: The Grundy Women and the Beginnings of Women’s Volunteer Associations in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol.LIV, No. 1, Spring 1995, 47.

⁵ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Louise Grundy Lindsley,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, Online edition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002-2014.

⁶ Toplovich, Ann. “The Tennessee Historical Society at 150: Tennessee History ‘Just and True.’” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Fall 1999, Vol. LVIII, Number 3, 205.

⁷ Dorris, Mary C. Currey. Preservation of the Hermitage, 1889-1915: Annals, History, and Stories. Smith & Lamar, 1915, 97.

⁸ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 46.

⁹ “Preservation,” The Hermitage website, accessed June 28, 2014. http://www.thehermitage.com/mansion-grounds/mansion/preservation

¹⁰ Dorris, 97.

¹¹ Nashville American, August 7, 1910, 14.

¹² Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 47-48.

¹³ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 48.

¹⁴ “Miss Lindsley’s Visit to Panama,” Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville American, November 21, 1913, p. 4.

¹⁵ Bucy, Carole Stanford. “Quiet Revolutionaries,” 49.

¹⁶ Handwritten will of John Berrien Lindsley, witnessed by Leon Trousdale Jr. and Jos. B. Babb. (original) July 19, 1893. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1812-1940] – 1953, Box 2, Folder 47, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

¹⁷ Handwritten Deed of Gift from Sallie McGavock Lindsley (original), July 5, 1898. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1812-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 20, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

¹⁸ Court Records-Petition for Adoption, February 1922. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1812-1940] – 1953, Box 1, Folder 19, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

¹⁹ The Tennessean, August 30, 1914.

²⁰ “Louise Grundy Lindsley,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture.

²¹ “Louise Grundy Lindsley,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture.

²² Hand-written will of Louise G. Lindsley, December 11, 1939. Lindsley Family Papers, ca. 1812 – [1812-1940] – 1953, Box 2, Folder 48, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

²³ Death certificate: Lindsley, Louise G. Tennessee Death Records, 1908-1958. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives.

How Nashville Dishonored a President and Altered American History

Musings by Mike Slate.

The maintenance of our metropolitan humility requires us occasionally to confess and recount our sins against historic preservation. The current Nashville building spree may lull us into forgetting that during the twentieth century we destroyed probably the finest of Tennessee’s public squares (along with Francis Strickland’s courthouse), countless other downtown buildings (flirting, even, with razing Union Station and Ryman Auditorium), and several historic mansions (including two gubernatorial residences). Topping any catalog of questionable annihilations should be Polk Place, erased from our national heritage in 1901.

*Postcard image of President James K. Polk from NHN collection.*

Having expanded the nation’s borders to the Pacific Ocean, James K. Polk retired to Nashville a very weary man. A workaholic, he had served as a Tennessee state legislator and governor, U.S. Representative and Speaker of the House, and president of the United States from 1845-1849. In 1847 he had purchased the home of one of his mentors, the distinguished Felix Grundy, and refurbished it to his and First Lady Sarah Polk‘s desires. He lived there, however, for less than two months, dying on June 15, 1849. Sarah Polk lived on at Polk Place as the grande dame of Nashville for more than four decades, passing away in 1891.

President Polk’s will (which itself has had an incredible lost-found-lost again-found-again existence) expressed his wish that Polk Place be tendered to the State of Tennessee after Sarah’s death. Polk’s heirs wrangled and the State balked. The upshot of the imbroglio was that Polk Place was sold in a Chancery Court sale to another of Nashville’s preeminent citizens, Jacob McGavock Dickinson, Grundy’s great-grandson. In turn, Dickinson sold the columned mansion and its hallowed grounds – which until 1893 had included President and Mrs. Polk’s tomb, classically designed by William Strickland – to J.C. McLanahan, a Philadelphian. McClanahan proceeded to tear down Polk Place and build an apartment complex, the Polk Flats.

Polk Place was situated near the heart of Nashville between 7th and 8th avenues. Today’s Polk Avenue was once the lane that led from Church Street to the mansion on the rise at Union Street. The house certainly had a fortuitous location, leading us to wonder how the city fathers could have been so shortsighted as not to have seen the patriotic and economic benefits of a president’s residence in downtown Nashville. And just as the Ladies’ Hermitage Association rose up in 1889 to save Andrew Jackson’s estate, why did no such organization successfully lobby for the salvation of Polk Place? I suppose that the truism of the real estate business – that value is determined by “location, location, location” – ironically facilitated the home’s demise.

The Polk tomb (on the right above) once graced the lawn of the former president’s mansion. It was later moved to the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol. (Photograph of the Polk home by Calvert Brothers Studio. Used by permission of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.)

What if the Polks’ retirement house were here today, surrounded by beautiful, well-kept grounds of even modest size? Literally millions of visitors would by now have toured the home, and James Knox Polk, rather than being relatively obscure in the presidential pantheon, would be far better known and interpreted. However, instead of enjoying a national landmark, we must confess to having spilled the milk of American history.

In a detailed article about Polk Place written for The Tennessean (“Learn Nashville,” 7-10-02), columnist George Zepp mentioned Mayor Richard Fulton‘s 1979 plan to acquire the original site and replicate the mansion. Evidently this magnanimous idea was not feasible at the time, but it seems worth revisiting today. At the least, an enterprising builder could duplicate the house – perhaps in an upscale development such as the Governors Club – using the elevations and floor plans published in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly in 1966 (pages 280-286). Perhaps such a replica already exists at some location.

Blessed with geographic significance, Nashville has expanded impressively over the years. We are justifiably proud of the landmark structures we have built and are building, yet we must be vigilant in remembering that the counterbalance of growth is destruction – and we have been excellent at that, too. In the twenty-first century a healthy respect for history will save us from more hard-to-swallow humble pie.