As published by the Daily News Journal, Sunday, December 13, 2009
By Greg Tucker, President Rutherford County Historical Society
Although left off the turnpike and soon to be abandoned by postal authorities, the local folk in the 1890s were strong on community spirit and could deliver a Gay Nineties rag, Versailles-style, good as anybody.
The Versailles Band is seen in the middle of the road on a snowy winter day in 1894. Pictured from left are Lem Lamb, John C. Jackson, Joe Ransom, Bob Jackson, Jim Nance, Frank Nance, Arthur Nance, Freeland Jackson, Clay Carlton and John H. “Cap” Nance. (photo submitted)
The Versailles (pronounced “ver-sales”) community in the southwest corner of Rutherford County is probably the oldest site of European activity still on the county map. Unlike the British colonists, the early French activity in North America focused on “doing business” with the native population. For this purpose, French traders early in the 18th century established trading posts in the Indian “hunting grounds,” which later became Middle Tennessee.
One such post was at the head of the Harpeth River drainage basin in what is now the Versailles community. The Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw and Shawnee tribes hunted in this area and “sold” or bartered furs to the French traders. Early historians suggest that this trading continued for 80 to 90 years until the Indian Territory (including Versailles) was taken into Tennessee through the Tellico Treaty of 1805.
Given its French origins, Versailles is contemporary with the French Lick post on the Cumberland River and the Black Fox Camp Springs post, which is now only a marker in mid-Rutherford County. This pre-dates the founding of the original community before the Revolutionary War and well before the founding of Tennessee or Rutherford County.
Today’s modest Rutherford community and former trading post was named for the capital of the Kingdom of France (1682-1789). First established and lavishly developed by the vain King Louis XIV, the city of Versailles (pronounced “ver-sigh”) under Louis XV became the seat of government for the most powerful and prosperous kingdom in Europe. (It is unclear whether the pronunciation change resulted from local ignorance as to French phonetics, or was a deliberate Anglicization following the French and Indian War.)
It is clear from early maps, however, that, before 1810, Versailles was a settlement on the old Columbia Road, which ran from Jefferson to Columbia, eventually connecting with the Natchez Trace. Predating other Rutherford communities, Versailles has a unique history as a community in three different counties — Davidson until 1799 (Indian Territory boundaries were disputed), Williamson until 1840, and Rutherford. It was the first Rutherford community that was not within the Stones River watershed.
The community became more isolated in the 1870s when a new turnpike from Salem to Eagleville was routed through Rockvale, by-passing Versailles. The Versailles post office was closed in 1906, further isolating the old trading post community. But the band played on, good times and sad times, barn dances and funerals.
Versailles native Pettus Read recalls stories about election day celebrations. “Election day was as big as the Fourth of July and the band always helped make the celebration,” according to stories handed down through the community. “I remember hearing how the band members would often gather at the Versailles store and just play for their own pleasure.”
Read is one of many band member descendants, and the brothers and cousins playing instruments in the 189’s bore the surnames of some of Versailles’ earliest permanent settlers — four Nances (fiddle, banjo, base and cornet), three Jacksons (fiddle, trumpet and clarinet), Lamb and Carlton (clarinets), and Ransom (band leader).
Frederick W. Nance and his wife, Rachel Leathers Nance from North Carolina, were the first Nances in Versailles. They settled with their eight children on 2000 acres granted to Rachel’s father by North Carolina in 1792. Frederick was said to be literally “a giant of a man,” standing “7 feet tall and 260 pounds.” Nance descendants married into the Carlton and Jackson families.
Francis M. Jackson and his wife, Elizabeth Childress Jackson, moved from Virginia to Versailles in 1811 with their 11 children. Jackson descendants married into the Nance, Ransom and Lamb families. Two of the Ransoms were leading investors and owners of the Salem to Eagleville turnpike, and the Ransom name was quite prominent in the Rutherford business community by the early 1900s.
Versailles, France, may also have had a band in the 1890s, but the entire town is now just another Paris suburb. As for old family names, we hear that the numbered Louis family is no longer a part of the community. Seems that some of them lost their heads.
Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].