Susan Harber, The Daily News Journal, April 10, 2016 Early settlers entangled with Indians in Rutherford County in an unending manner. No one envisaged the perils of daily living in a hostile territory more thoroughly than the Buchanan pioneers, who were immigrants from Northern Ireland. The first property in LaVergne…
Susan Harber, Daily News Journal, March 27, 2016 When I reflect on extraordinary Rutherford County icons Hardy Murfree, James Buchanan, Robert Weakley, Alfred Blackman and Sampson Keeble, I now add one more significant individual named Ernest King Johns to a list of superhuman personas. For more than 200 years, great…
Greg Tucker, The Murfreesboro Post, March 23, 2016 The government had to do something with all that cotton! In an effort to aid “cotton belt” farmers during the Great Depression, the U. S. Department of Agriculture purchased a vast quantity of surplus cotton. The raw cotton was ginned and stored…
Rhonda Kay, The Murfreesboro Post, March 15, 2016 Does Possum Trot exist in Rutherford County? Of course it does. We just had the “Possum Trot Community” sign erected. If you head toward Franklin, Tenn., on Highway 96, make a left on Rehobath Road and you’ll run slap dab into it.…
Susan Harber, The Daily News Journal, March 6, 2016 Ben McCulloch, a military maverick, was born in Jefferson in Rutherford County on Nov. 11, 1811. He gained fame in the Texas Revolution, Mexican War (as a Texas Ranger) and as a Confederate general in the Civil War. Ben’s parents were…
Susan Harber, Daily News Journal, February 21, 2016 Mary Elizabeth “Bettie” Ridley Blackmore is an intriguing historical figure. She is both a courageous and tragic character, who met an untimely death in 1864 at age 32. Bettie was born in 1832 in Rutherford County and was one of seven living…
Greg Tucker, Murfreesboro Post, February 18, 2016 President Abraham Lincoln‘s proclamation on Jan, 1, 1863, did not free slaves in Rutherford County, or anywhere else in Tennessee. Compared to other sections of the South, Rutherford County had few large plantations relying on slave labor in the years before the Civil…
Susan Harber, Daily News Journal, January 10, 2015 “Shall we gather at the river?” What fateful and prophetic words for a minister to proclaim each Sunday, as the adjoining Stones River would soon infringe the foundation of the church itself. The Old Jefferson Church of Christ was on the cusp…
Susan Harber, Daily News Journal, December 27, 2015 On a cold evening of Dec. 20, 1869, a man of integrity took the oath of office as Smyrna’s very first mayor. Maverick, trailblazer, pioneer, innovator and pacesetter all define the universal persona of one amazing individual Joseph Engles. He was an…
Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker, the Murfreesboro Post, December 22, 2015 “I’d kiss you but I just washed my hair.” Spoken with a heavy Hollywood-style southern drawl, this classic putdown spurred the career of a movie starlet who became a Hollywood icon. It was written by Harry Harrison Kroll, a…