When James Napier was three, his family was manumitted by the terms of their Tennessee slave-owner’s will. They moved to Ohio briefly but returned to Nashville in 1849. During the Civil War Napier attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin College in Ohio. He resigned a Freedmen’s Bureau position in 1870 in order to attend Howard University Law School. After graduation Napier opened a Nashville real estate business and served three terms on the city council (1878-1885). Active in Republican Party affairs, he sat 35 years on the state executive committee. He was a founder of the One-Cent Savings Bank (now Citizens Bank) and the TN Agricultural & Industrial School (now TSU) and served on the board of the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation. In 1911 he was named Register of the U.S. Treasury under President W.H. Taft, the highest federal post then available to an African American. In his final years he served on the Nashville Housing Authority and Board of Trade.
From An Era of Progress and Promise, 1863-1910, W. N. Hartshorn & George W. Penniman, eds., p. 415; image is in the public domain.
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The Greenwood Project is a series of 160-word biographies of individuals who lie at rest in Mt. Ararat and Greenwood cemeteries, two historic African American burial grounds in Nashville, Tennessee. The project, which began in September 2014 (and is still available on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064806156276), shares the stories of more than 300 consequential individuals, primarily African American, who changed the course of city, state, and national history through their words and deeds. (All biographies were written by Kathy Lauder unless otherwise noted.)
One of Nashville’s most popular events is the annual Living History Tour each fall at City Cemetery. Visitors see the past come alive as costumed characters step forward from the gravestones to tell their stories. Although a few beloved personalities from Nashville’s history do reappear from time to time, the Nashville City Cemetery Association (NCCA) selects many new characters each year. The individuals named below were featured in the 2013 Tour. The photos of reenactors were taken during NCCA Living History Tours between 2008 and 2012.
Lipscomb Norvell, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, served under General George Washington at Brandywine, Trenton, and Monmouth. An early pioneer, he raised a large family in Kentucky before joining family members in Nashville, where he died at age 87.
Frank Parrish, a free man of color, was a Nashville entrepreneur, operating a Bathing House and Barber Shop on Deaderick Street. He died in 1867 and was buried in a family plot at City Cemetery.
Ann Robertson Cockrill, James Robertson’s sister, was a young widow with three little girls when she arrived in Nashville with the Donelson party in 1780. She later married John Cockrill, and they settled near today’s Centennial Park to raise their large family. She was the only woman among the early Cumberland settlers to receive a land grant in her own name, earned largely for her courage in defending Fort Caswell (later Fort Watauga) against Indian attack.
William Carroll Napierowned a Nashville livery stable. His son James carried Mayor Cheatham to surrender Nashville to Union forces in 1862. Later the two Napiers helped John Berrien Lindsley set up military hospitals around the city by transporting food equipment and supplies. During the Occupation, the Union Army employed Carroll as a spy, tasked with reporting Confederate troop movements in Murfreesboro and along the Harpeth River. Son James C. Napier would later become Nashville’s African American city councilor, as well as Register of the U.S. Treasury under President Taft.
George W. Campbell, one of Nashville’s most distinguished citizens, was an attorney, a U.S. Representative and Senator, one of the first two Tennessee Supreme Court Justices, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia. His wife Harriet Stoddert was the daughter of the secretary of the Navy in Thomas Jefferson’s cabinet. In 1843 Campbell sold a property known as “Campbell’s Hill” to the city of Nashville, later transferred to the state as the site of the Tennessee state capitol.
Mabel Lewis Imes was raised in New England, where she received an excellent education, learned to speak French, and took voice lessons. When she auditioned for the Fisk Jubilee Singers during their Eastern tour, they immediately invited her to sing contralto with the group . . . at the age of 13!
A former Fisk Jubilee Singer portrayed Mabel Imes in the 2008 Living History event, regaling delighted visitors with beautiful music.
Thomas Crutcherserved as the State Treasurer of Tennessee for 25 years. An activist in promoting education for women, he was a founder and active trustee of the Nashville Female Academy, where the students called him “Uncle Crutcher.”
Lizzie Porterfield Elliottwas the daughter of Collins D. Elliott, president of the Nashville Female Academy, and she was perhaps the most compelling example of his belief in educating women. She taught in both public and private schools for more than 30 years and was active in educational and civic organizations. An authority on Tennessee history, she served as an officer in the Tennessee Historical Society. A bright and interesting woman, she authored the Early History of Nashville, still admired for its historical accuracy.
Before the section of the city north of the Cumberland River was known as Edgefield (and then East Nashville), it was referred to as Wetmore’s Addition. Moses Wetmore, the first person to subdivide the area into lots for homes and businesses, also donated the land for Holy Trinity Church and gave his name to two city streets.
State Representative Ben West portrayed his father, Ben West (Mayor of Nashville 1951-1963), during the 2010 Living History event.
Mayor John Patton Erwin served two terms as mayor of Nashville. He worked as a bank cashier (in those days, the equivalent of a bank manager), was editor of the Nashville Whig, and served as Postmaster, Justice of the Peace, and clerk of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
PowhatanMaxey served as a justice of the peace, an alderman for seven terms, and mayor of Nashville from 1843-1845. He negotiated the purchase of Capitol Hill from William Nichol and George W. Campbell, and then donated the land to the Tennessee General Assembly, provided they would locate the State Capitol on that site. (2013)
Ghosts in Nashville City Cemetery (photo by Lynn McDonald, 2011)
Previously published in Monuments & Milestones, the Nashville City Cemetery Newsletter.
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).3 He and his wife, née Martha Overton, reared three sons.4
Dickinson, an early law partner of Judge Claude Waller,5 accepted 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 1911.17 Secretary 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.
2Nashville, 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.
5Nashville, A Family Town, 85. Waller was the first judge appointed to the Second Circuit Court after its creation in 1895.
Nashville Historical Newsletter 