By Clint Alley
10. We have a community named after a plow…only spelled backwards.
The community of Revilo is in southeastern Lawrence County. Around
the turn of the 20th century, the residents of the community had built a
new school, but were having trouble deciding what to name it. As the
story goes, some of the men were gathered at the country store eating
lunch one day, when one of them noticed an Oliver double-shovel turning
plow sitting nearby. According to Estha Cole’s book
Places in Lawrence County, Tennessee, Then and Now,
he realized that the name ‘Oliver’ spelled backwards was ‘Revilo,’ and
the name appealed to him. The other men at the store that day agreed,
and so it came to be that the new school–and, by extension, the
community–was named ‘Revilo.’[1]
9. The only F5 tornado in Tennessee history ripped through western Lawrence County.
Although this certainly wasn’t ‘cool’ to those who experienced it, it
is still a remarkable part of our county’s history. On April 16, 1998, a
large tornado touched down in Wayne County, Tennessee. It gained
strength as it traveled northeast, and the damage it caused by the time
it reached Deerfield in western Lawrence County was on such a massive
scale that the National Weather Service later declared it to be an F5 on
the original Fujita scale. This was the
only tornado in
Tennessee’s history to be considered an F5 using that particular means
of measurement (meteorologists swapped to the enhanced Fujita scale, or
EF scale, since 2007). However, because news coverage of smaller
tornados in downtown Nashville overshadowed coverage of the Lawrence
County event, meteorologists have dubbed it ‘The Forgotten F5.’[2]
8. We have one of the oldest Mexican War monuments in the United States.
The Mexican War Monument has stood at the north end of the Public Square for 165 years this year. Photo by Clint Alley.
The Mexican War was fought between 1846 and 1848. When it began, the
Secretary of War requested that Tennessee furnish 2,800 volunteers, and
the state answered by providing more than 30,000![3] Among those
volunteers was a local company known as the Lawrenceburg Blues, which
was mustered into the regular army as Company M of the 1
st
Tennessee Infantry Regiment. These men were among the first to assault
the ‘Black Fort’ at Monterrey, and suffered severe casualties, including
the company’s captain, a promising young state legislator named William
Bethel Allen.[4]
When news about the battle reached Lawrenceburg, a movement to
memorialize Allen and the men of the Lawrenceburg Blues began almost
immediately. The monument—a towering obelisk engraved with tributes to
the war’s causes as well as the names of those from Lawrenceburg who
died in the conflict—was erected in 1849 on the north side of the Public
Square in Lawrenceburg. It was paid for partially with funds raised by
the people of Lawrence County, and with $1,500 appropriated by the
Tennessee General Assembly.[5] Although commonly cited as either the
only Mexican War monument in the nation or one of two or three, there
are actually at least 15 other monuments commemorating the Mexican War
in the United States.[6] The Lawrenceburg monument, however, was one of
the first to be erected, predating most of the others by more than half a
century.
7. Legendary frontiersman David Crockett not only lived here, but
he won his first-ever election here—and he won it out of spite.
This
image of the King of the Wild Frontier by S.S. Osgood was personally
endorsed by Crockett to be the most accurate one of him ever drawn from
life. Source:
Wikimedia Commons.
David Crockett probably never intended to enter the world of politics
when he settled in Lawrence County. He came mainly because the hunting
was good. But he was popular in the county, and had many friends among
the early settlers. A man whom Crockett called Captain Matthews
approached Crockett one day and told him that he planned to run for
colonel of the county militia, and he wanted Crockett to run as major,
and be his second-in-command. Not long after, at a cornhusking given by
Matthews, Crockett found out that Matthews intended to run his son
against Crockett. As Crockett said in his autobiography, “it put my
dander up high enough,” and so he decided to run against Matthews for
colonel.[7] When he gave a speech to the crowd gathered at the frolic
that night, Crockett explained “as I had the whole family to run against
any way, I was determined to levy on the head of the mess.”[8] Not only
did Crockett win the election by a landslide, but Matthews’s son was
badly beaten, as well.
6. We have the only consecrated Catholic Church in the state of Tennessee.
The only consecrated Catholic church in the state of Tennessee looks good in any weather. Photo by
Ben Tate.
The St. Joseph Catholic Church in the town of St. Joseph was
completed in 1885. It is built of coursed ashlar stone quarried roughly a
mile from the site, and its walls are 28 inches thick. Its stained
glass windows were imported from Munich, Germany. Upon its completion,
the Bishop of the Diocese of Nashville traveled to St. Joseph by the
newly-completed railway and consecrated the structure, making it the
only consecrated Catholic church in Tennessee.[9] According to the the
parish’s website, only churches with “assured permanency, both of
construction and use, may be consecrated…they must be built of stone or
other permanent materials, and the land and building must be entirely
free from debt.”[10] The church was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places on October 10, 1984.
5. Thurgood Marshall tried an historic civil rights case here, before he was famous.
This image of Thurgood Marshall as a young man captures how he would have looked when he was in Lawrenceburg. Source:
Primary Source Nexus.
In 1946, in Columbia, a fistfight between a black Navy veteran and a
white store clerk escalated into a pitched urban street battle between
the black community, a mob of angry whites, and white police officers.
After the violence ended, twenty-five black men were charged with the
wounding of four white police officers. The incident and the trial made
national headlines. One of the attorneys for the defense was none other
than a young Thurgood Marshall, who would later go on to become the
first black Supreme Court Justice in American history. The trial was
held in Lawrenceburg.
Marshall and the other black defense attorneys were inconvenienced by
the small number of ‘colored’ hotel rooms and restaurants in Lawrence
County. To compensate, they had to commute each day from Columbia, and
they relied heavily on the charity of black churches in Maury County for
their meals. Although the national media lampooned Judge Joe Ingram as a
backwoods buffoon and painted Lawrenceburg as a run-of-the-mill
stronghold of southern racism, many were shocked when the all-white
local jury found 23 of the defendants not guilty. [11] Two others were
found guilty, but were never retried due to lack of evidence, and a
third would be the only guilty party to serve time in jail.[12]
4. A man from Lawrence County patented a pneumatic flying machine
thirty years before the Wright Brothers made their maiden flight.
The lone schematic accompanying Pennington’s patent application. Source:
Google Patents.
Henryville native James J. Pennington—for whom the Lawrenceburg
Municipal Airport is named—invented a device which he called an ‘aerial
bird’ while the Wright Brothers were still in elementary school. Local
tradition says that Pennington conducted a manned flight in his aerial
bird from atop a shed in Henryville in 1872, before a large crowd of
onlookers. While the success of this flight is still hotly debated, it
is fact that he patented the air-powered device in the summer of 1877,
and he took it to the Southern Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky in
1883, shortly before his death. This image is the lone schematic
accompanying his patent application, which is registered as patent
number 194841 in the United States patent office.[13]
3. Lawrenceburg gave women the vote more than a year before the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Docia
Spann Richardson, the second woman in the history of Lawrence County to
cast her vote–a full year before the passage of the 19th amendment.
Source:
Ancestry.com.
Lawrenceburg first allowed women to vote in city elections in May
1919, more than a year before the ratification of the 19th Amendment
ensured women’s suffrage nationwide. According to
Our Hometown by
Carpenter and Carter, the first woman to exercise this right in
Lawrenceburg was Mrs. Etta Stockard Crawford, of whom we could
unfortunately not find a picture at this time. Pictured here is Miss
Docia Spann, who was the second woman in Lawrence County’s history to
cast her ballot as a registered voter in 1919.[14] At the time of the
election, Miss Spann was 27 years old. Some locals may remember her by
her married name, Mrs. Docia Richardson. She died in 1986, at the age of
94.[15]
2. We had one of the first radio stations in the state of Tennessee.
On November 21, 1922, James D. Vaughan—the father of Southern Gospel
music, and mayor of Lawrenceburg—obtained an FCC license to broadcast a
radio signal, marking the birth of WOAN Lawrenceburg. WOAN featured a
variety of music, but the spotlight of the station’s programming was on
the Vaughan Quartet and advertising for Vaughan’s school of music.
According to Carpenter and Carter, WOAN was the third radio station in
the state of Tennessee to obtain an FCC license, and it predated
Nashville’s famous WSM station by three years.[16]
1. Lawrence County is the birthplace of an entire genre of music.
James D. Vaughan, the father of Southern Gospel music. Source:
AL.com.
But Vaughan’s radio station was only part of the story. By pioneering
the concept of “four male voices singing Gospel songs written for mixed
voices,” Vaughan became the undisputed father of Southern Gospel music,
and the Public Square of Lawrenceburg became its birthplace.[17] In
1902, Vaughan moved to Lawrenceburg and began printing and selling
hymnals. As his publishing business steadily grew, he diversified. In
1910, he assembled the first-ever Southern Gospel quartet, leading to
the creation of the Vaughan School of Music in 1911.
His quartets traveled the country, selling hymnals and drawing
talented young voices to the school of music wherever they went. In
1921, he founded Vaughan Phonograph Records—one of the first record
labels to be owned and operated completely in the South—followed by the
previously-mentioned WOAN radio station in 1922.[18] Vaughan’s
commitment to sacred music lives on today in the James D. Vaughan
Museum, which is in the Suntrust building on the south end of the Public
Square, and in the Quartet Festival that bears his name.
Sources
Alford, Bobby.
History of Lawrence County: Book Two. Lawrenceburg, TN: Bobby Alford.
Carpenter, Viola, and Mary M. Carter.
Our Hometown: Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, The Crossroads of Dixie. Lawrenceburg, TN: Bobby Alford, 1986.
Crockett, David.
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee. Philadelphia: E.L. Cary and A. Hart, 1834.
Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War in Organizations from the State of Tennessee. Micropublication M638, RG 94. Washington: National Archives. Digital image,
Fold3.com (
http://www.fold3.com/image/245/271906815/ : accessed 2 Mar 2014).
Descendants of Mexican War Veterans, “Honoring Our Ancestors:
U.S.-Mexican War Monuments and Memorials.” Last modified June 24, 2013.
Accessed February 28, 2014.
http://www.dmwv.org/honoring/monmem.htm.
Evers, Mary Sofia. “St. Joseph Catholic Church, St. Joseph, TN.”
The Heritage of Lawrence County, Tennessee. Waynesville, NC: County Heritage, Inc., 2008.
Find A Grave, “Memorial page for Docia Spann Richardson (8 Jan 1892-2
Dec 1986).” Last modified 15 May 2012. Accessed 2 March 2014.
Findagrave Memorial #90190901.
Gordon, John D., Bobby Boyd, Mark A. Rose, and Jason B. Wright.
National Weather Service Forecast Office, “The Forgotten F5: The
Lawrence County Supercell during the Middle Tennessee Tornado Outbreak
of April 16, 1998.” Last modified November 24, 2009. Accessed February
28, 2014.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/?n=forgottenf5.
Gordon, Susan L. Tennessee State Library and Archives, “The Volunteer
State Goes to War: A Salute to Tennessee Veterans.” Accessed February
27, 2014.
http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/exhibits/veterans/mexicanamerican.htm.
Ikard, Robert W.
No More Social Lynchings. Franklin, TN: Hillsboro Press, 1997.
Niedergeses, Kathy. “The Mexican War and the Lawrenceburg Blues.”
The Heritage of Lawrence County, Tennessee. Waynesville, NC: County Heritage, Inc., 2008.
Sacred Heart Church, Loretto, Tennessee, “Saint Joseph Catholic Church History.” Accessed March 2, 2014.
http://www.rc.net/nashville/loretto.sh/
Van West, Carroll. American Association for State and Local History,
“The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.” Last modified
January 1, 2010. Accessed March 2, 2014.
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=296.
[1] Estha Cole, Places in Lawrence County, Tennessee, Then and Now.
[2] John D. Gordon, Bobby Boyd, Mark A. Rose, and Jason B. Wright.
National Weather Service Forecast Office, “The Forgotten F5: The
Lawrence County Supercell during the Middle Tennessee Tornado Outbreak
of April 16, 1998.” Last modified November 24, 2009. Accessed February
28, 2014.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/?n=forgottenf5.
[4] W.B. Allen, compiled military record (captain, Company M, 1
st Tennessee Infantry Regiment),
Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War in Organizations from Tennessee, M638 (Washington: National Archives), RG 94. Digital image,
Fold3.com (
http://www.fold3.com/image/245/271906815/ : accessed 2 Mar 2014).
[5] Kathy Niedergeses. “The Mexican War and the Lawrenceburg Blues.” The Heritage of Lawrence County, Tennessee (2008): 38.
[6] Descendants of Mexican War Veterans, “Honoring Our Ancestors:
U.S.-Mexican War Monuments and Memorials.” Last modified 24 June 2013.
Accessed 28 Feb 2014.
http://www.dmwv.org/honoring/monmem.htm.
[7] David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, (Philadelphia: E.L. Cary and A. Hart, 1834). 71.
[8] Ibid., 72.
[9] Mary Sofia Evers. “St. Joseph Catholic Church, St. Joseph, TN.” The Heritage of Lawrence County, Tennessee. Waynesville, NC: County Heritage, Inc., 2008. 36-37.
[11] Robert W. Ikard, No More Social Lynchings, (Franklin, TN: Hillsboro Press, 1997): 79-104.
[13] Bobby Alford, History of Lawrence County: Book Two, (Lawrenceburg, TN: Bobby Alford), 15.
[14] Viola Carpenter, and Mary M. Carter, Our Hometown: Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, The Crossroads of Dixie, (Lawrenceburg, TN: Bobby Alford, 1986), 124.
[15] Find A Grave, “Memorial page for Docia Spann Richardson (8 Jan
1892-2 Dec 1986).” Last modified 15 May 2012. Accessed 2 March 2014.
Findagrave Memorial #90190901.
[16] Viola Carpenter, and Mary M. Carter, Our Hometown: Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, The Crossroads of Dixie, (Lawrenceburg, TN: Bobby Alford, 1986), 135-136.
[17] Ibid., 82.
[18] Ibid.
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