A bicentennial project, this chronicle will provide readers an overview of the long and often colorful past of Tennessee’s oldest county. In addition to numerous photographs, this comprehensive county history includes information on dozens of communities, religious denominations, clubs and organizations, museums, visitor centers and recreational sites, and more than 100 notable people.
When John F. Baker Jr. was in the seventh grade, he saw a photograph of four former slaves in his social studies textbook—two of them were his grandmother's grandparents. He began the lifelong research project that would become The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation, the fruit of more than thirty years of archival and field research and DNA testing spanning 250 years. A descendant of Wessyngton slaves, Baker has written the most accessible and exciting work of African American history since Roots. He has not only written his own family's story but included the history of hundreds of slaves and their descendants now numbering in the thousands throughout the United States. More than one hundred rare photographs and portraits of African Americans who were slaves on the plantation bring this compelling American history to life. Founded in 1796 by Joseph Washington, a distant cousin of America's first president, Wessyngton Plantation covered 15,000 acres and held 274 slaves, whose labor made it the largest tobacco plantation in America. Atypically, the Washingtons sold only two slaves, so the slave families remained intact for generations. Many of their descendants still reside in the area surrounding the plantation. The Washington family owned the plantation until 1983; their family papers, housed at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, include birth registers from 1795 to 1860, letters, diaries, and more. Baker also conducted dozens of interviews—three of his subjects were more than one hundred years old—and discovered caches of historic photographs and paintings. A groundbreaking work of history and a deeply personal journey of discovery, The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation is an uplifting story of survival and family that gives fresh insight into the institution of slavery and its ongoing legacy today.
Elihu Embree and his family were Quakers who were committed to the cause of abolishing slavery in the American South. Over a few short years, he raised the public consciousness in East Tennessee and achieved wide recognition with the publication ofThe Emancipator, the first periodical in the United States devoted solely to the abolitionist cause. The seven issues of the monthly publication are reproduced here, together with a brief history of Elihu and the Embree family’s migration from France to Washington County, Tennessee.
Trousdale County has a history as fascinating as it is long. The region's early reputation stemmed from its well-known race track, a forum that attracted to town such notables as Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston. In the turbulent Civil War years, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan staged the most successful cavalry raid of the war in Hartsville, overwhelming a larger Union force and capturing over two thousand men. During Reconstruction, tobacco emerged as a major crop for the area and today Hartsville boasts one of the top tobacco markets in the state. The history of the county is not all famous names and dramatic events; in many ways the most interesting tales are about the ordinary folks and the way they lived their lives. From the time of the earliest settlers, who forged the Immigrant Trail through Trousdale County in the late eighteenth century, to the present, this area has been home to the humble and the great, the freeman and the slave, the patriot and the soldier, the laborer and the businessman. Combining rare images with a wealth of historical information, this delightful volume brings to life the past of a traditional, yet dynamic, region of Tennessee. This marvelous collection of more than two hundred rare images celebrates Trousdale County's rich history and highlights some of the major industries and events that shaped the area. Most assuredly, this book reaches deep into the area's soul, offering up a multitude of strong images and valuable insights for resident and visitor alike.
The earliest surviving federal enumerations of the Tennessee Country consist of the 1810 census of Rutherford County and an incomplete 1820 census. But since the first settlers arrived at the French Lick as early as 1779, the first forty years of settlement in the area we now call Tennessee are a blank, at least in the official enumerations. This work is an attempt to reconstruct a census of the Cumberland River settlements in Davidson, Sumner, and Tennessee counties, which today comprise all or part of forty Tennessee counties. To this end, Mr. Fulcher has abstracted from the public records all references to those living in the jurisdictions between 1770 and 1790. From wills, deeds, court minutes, marriage records, military records, and many related items, the author has put together a carefully documented list of inhabitants--virtually the "first" census of Tennessee.
