Remembering Rutherford, Daily News Journal, October 12, 2014, Gregg Tucker
The “large spring” was on land owned by Maj. Reading Blount. Early Davidson County settlers called it “Blount’s Lick.” Before the Civil War, the “large spring” was part of the Sulphur Spring farm owned by the former mayor of Murfreesboro.
Reading Blount, for his service as an officer in the Revolutionary War, was awarded a North Carolina grant of 4,800 acres in what later became Rutherford County.
He purchased several other grants and eventually owned almost 5,000 acres lying between the East and West forks of Stones
Major Reading Blount (1757–1807), American Revolutionary War officer and North Carolina merchant
River. On one tract (surveyed in 1788) was a “large spring” that became a landmark known as Blount’s Lick. See North Carolina Grant Nos. 14 and 953.
According to John Spence in his “Annals of Rutherford County,” first published in 1873, the area of the spring, which he identified as “Blont’s Lick Sulphur Spring,” was “a noted place for deer in times past. Four miles from Murfreesboro. That time a large pond, or basin, of water averaging 2 feet deep, covering two or three acres of land, thickly set around with large timber and undergrowth. The water filled with weeds or moss… As the country settled, cattle in numbers visited the spring, wading in the water to eat the moss. There were great numbers of leeches swimming in the water, sticking to the cow legs. This spring was also a great place for wild ducks in the winter season…Later years… the large pond round the spring has been drained off, now making but little shew of the original… This time a place only spoken of as the Sulphur Spring.” See Spence, “Annals…” (Vol. 1, p. 165).
At some time in or before 1861, Joseph Benjamin Palmer (1825-90) acquired the Sulphur Spring and several hundred acres of surrounding land.
Orphaned at an early age, Palmer was raised by his maternal grandparents (Joseph and Elizabeth Johns).
In 1854, he married Ophelia Maria Burrus. Within a year after the birth of their only child, Ophelia died. It is possible that Palmer inherited the property through the estate of his grandparents or his wife. (Missing Rutherford County land records, including Deed Books 6 and 12, are believed to have been lost or destroyed during the Civil War. A transaction log shows Palmer as the buyer on a “Bill of Sale” dated Sept. 24, 1861, without further explanation.)
Civil War correspondence strongly suggests, however, that the Sulphur Spring farm was purchased in or about 1861 possibly on a note secured with Alfred Miller. From 1856 through 1859 Palmer, a prominent and prosperous attorney, was mayor of Murfreesboro. In this same period Miller served as a city alderman. Miller, a wealthy man of many pursuits, was primarily a money lender and debt collector. Court records show that Palmer frequently served as attorney for Miller in collections litigation.
Commanding a Tennessee regiment at the battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862, Palmer was captured and sent to a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Boston, Massachusetts. On June 19, 1862, Palmer wrote from prison to V.D. Cowan. (Cowan was an older attorney who had served as guardian for Palmer after his mother’s death, and was a Sulphur Spring neighbor.)
In the letter to Cowan, Palmer states: “Your letter gratified me greatly in many respects, and gave me more information in relation to my little affairs at the Sulphur Spring than I had received from any source up to that time. I feel truly thankful for your exertions in aiding Johns in the best possible management of my business…
“I do not know what has been done with the proceeds of the sales made, but suppose that a sufficiency has been applied to the payment of expenses—which no doubt were somewhat heavy—being the first year. The balance I suppose has been paid out, or kept safely on deposit. I sent…$400 or $450 to be paid on the Miller note.” (At the time of this letter Miller was the Union Army-appointed mayor of Murfreesboro.)
Although Palmer’s law office was in Murfreesboro prior to the war, the 1860 census provides further evidence that Palmer was engaged in agriculture. Census data shows that the former Murfreesboro mayor was a landowner with nine slaves.
Released from Union captivity in a July 1862 prisoner swap, Palmer returned to Tennessee in time to lead a Confederate division in the Battle of Stones River in December 1862. Ironically, Palmer’s division was detailed to the eastern extreme of the Confederate line near the Sulphur Spring. In Palmer’s report of this engagement he refers to activity around the Cowan residence, the home of a neighbor. Conceivably, he could see his own home from the battlefield. See Spence, “A Diary of the Civil War,” (circa 1865), p. 60.
By war’s end, Palmer had survived six battle wounds and attained the rank of brigadier general.
After the surrender he led the Tennessee troops home. Back in Murfreesboro, he resumed his law practice and lived with his 10-year-old son on the Sulphur Spring farm. In 1869 Gen. Palmer remarried. As a wedding gift for his bride, he built an 18-room mansion on East Main Street in Murfreesboro.
Although Palmer lived on East Main until his death in 1890, he retained ownership of the Sulphur Spring farm. This is confirmed by the 1878 Beers map of Rutherford County. The Sulphur Spring is shown almost exactly four miles NNW of the county courthouse.
Just south of the spring is the country home of “Gen. J. Palmer.” The road to the spring runs northwest from the Lebanon Turnpike across Sinking Creek and then north to the Palmer farmhouse. On the west side of the road across from the farm house was the Sulphur Springs School (opened 1877).
Today what remains of the Sulphur Spring or Blount’s Lick is west of the Palmer Heights subdivision on the east side of Siegel Road, south of the Siegel High School campus and north of the Cherry Blossom Lane cul-de-sac.
A special thanks for research assistance to the late Robert O. Neff and Rutherford County Archivist John Lodl.