This week in Nashville history: Turning on the waterworks

This week in 1930, the Nashville Banner‘s resident sage Marmaduke Morton offered up another installment of his memoir about life in Nashville 50 years earlier.

The seventh column in his series “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville” starts off with a disquisition on the competitive military drilling craze of the 1870s and 1880s. It illustrates a sentiment among men too young to have fought in the Late Unpleasantness that roughly parallels recent popular reverence for the “Greatest Generation” of WWII vets — but in all honesty, it’s way more info than most readers will care to take in on the subject.

Don’t give up on the old man, though. Skip to the bottom of page three and check out what he has to say about the 1889 inauguration of the city reservoir that still provides our water from a hill above 8th Ave. South.

1 Nov. 1930: “Military Spirit and May Drills — Porter Rifles and Other Crack Companies — New Waterworks and Bursting Pipes — Hermitage Club Organized”

The pressure from the new reservoir was much greater than that from the old. There was one startling result. The old water pipes had not been constructed to stand this additional pressure, and besides, many were rusty and dilapidated. When the water was turned into them from the new reservoir many of them burst — not all at one time, but from day to day. Geysers spouted at various points over the city. One was especially notable. The main on Seventh Avenue in front of the First Christian Church burst, and the water spouted fifty or sixty feet high, carrying with it rocks, dirt and other wreckage. The church and an adjoining residence were badly damaged. Holes were knocked in the roofs by the falling stones, and the interior of the buildings drenched with water, destroying plastering and furnishings. It was said that a live catfish eighteen inches long was thrown out upon the street. This fish was supposed to have got into the main when a baby.

For a 2007 column dealing with this episode and others in the surprisingly lively history of Nashville’s public plumbing, I spoke with Ron Taylor, resident historian at Metro Water Services. I had to ask his opinion of Marmaduke’s fish story. Ron allowed as how a fish truly might have found its way into the then-uncovered reservoir. But an 18-incher in the water mains? “A bit implausible,” he opined.

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Here’s an entertaining little discovery I made over the weekend: a 1907 Nashville society directory that Google has made available through its book-digitization initiative. If you’re familiar with “old Nashville,” you will see a lot of familiar surnames in there.

This pair of ads in the directory particularly jumped out at me:

Lockeland Springs, now an East Nashville neighborhood, had just been incorporated into Nashville’s city limits in 1905, according to this writeup at the neighborhood association’s blog. In Nashville: Yesterday & Today (published earlier this year), my wife Nicki Pendleton Wood described the waters that gave the area its name:

The springs on the Lockeland property were full of dissolved lithium salts. Mineral waters were the wellness fad of the day, and when businessman James Richardson bought the old Lockeland mansion and eight of its acres in 1900, the estate became a business as well as a home. He bottled the lithium water and sold it as a remedy for bladder, kidney, stomach, dyspepsia and rheumatic afflictions, growing very rich as a result.

Stief Jewelry was a well-known presence locally for generations. I asked my friend David A. Fox (co-founder of NashvillePost.com and former chair of the Metro Nashville Board of Education) to provide the lowdown on his family’s involvement with the business:

B.H. Stief was a repairman of fine watches and retailer of jewelry who started his company in the late 1800s. My great-grandfather, George Fox in Cincinnati, was a supplier of diamonds to his store. When Stief fell far behind on his bills, George Fox bought out the company in 1916 or 1917 and sent his son, Gilbert Fox, to run the company. Since Gilbert didn’t know anything about the business, George took in James Cayce as a partner to run it. It was located then on Union Street, but later moved to the corner of Capitol Boulevard and Church, and then to 6th Avenue. (Mr. Cayce was very involved in city life, served on the State Fair Board, and is the namesake of the James Cayce Homes.) Mr. Cayce died in 1940. Gilbert Fox died in 1942. The wives of the two men briefly ran the company, but Natelle Fox sold her interest to Mrs. Cayce a few years later. In the 1960s, E. Jaccard Jewelry Co. of St. Louis bought the company, renamed it Stief-Jaccard’s and relocated to 100 Oaks. It ceased operating some years later.

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I’m going to start adding a list of online resources for Nashville h

istory to the blog in coming weeks. Part of my inspiration to do so comes from the discovery of a 1907 Nashville society directory that Google has made available through its book-digitization initiative. You’ll see a lot of familiar surnames in there!

This week in Nashville history: Run out of town on a rail

Above: One of the mule-drawn streetcars in use between the 1860s and 1880s. This photo, from the 1926 newspaper story linked from this post, may be the only existing image of the mule cars. Below: Inauguration of electric streetcar service, 30 April 1889. These cars are at the corner of Broadway and 16th Street (Tennessee State Library and Archives).

Let’s wind up Marmaduke Morton once more and let him spin a yarn. Eighty years ago this week, the Nashville Banner‘s longtime managing editor published part six in his 12-part series on “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville,” recalling the city he had encountered as a young reporter a half-century earlier.

Much of this installment deals with the evolution of Nashville’s public transport system in the 1880s. Morton recalls the mule-drawn streetcars that gave way in 1889 to an electrified urban rail network.

26 October 1930: “Rapid Transit and Old Dummy Lines — New Buildings Spring Up — Places of Interest — A Balloon Ascension.”

In those days most of the street sprinkling was done privately by the property owners along the streets. The sprinkling was the task of the boys of the family. These were warned through the press not to squirt a stream of water on the trolley wire, as the electricity would run down the stream and strike them. It is safe to say all these young sprinklers tried the experiment at least once. Then everybody was told that the electricity in the cars would interfere with the time-keeping qualities of the watches, and that the only preventive was to be very careful and also to have a non-conductor plate put in the watches. The jewelers did a thriving business for a while.

This week in 1926, Nashville celebrated the delivery of new, state-of-the-art streetcar wagons by holding a parade that highlighted the system’s history. As the Tennessean reported on October 28, featured guests included about 25 former mule-car drivers from days of yore.

The story which Friday’s parade will not tell is, that from an humble start obtained in the mule car, the street railway industry here has grown to be such a public servant that it carries approximately 35,000,000 passengers every year [sic — is that possible?] in Nashville, and in 1925 was rated as the nation’s safest street railway system.

Together with passenger rail services from suburbs like Bellevue, the streetcar system provided Nashvillians from all walks of life with efficient transportation to and from downtown for more than a half-century. But internal combustion would win out. In February 1941, just as a dispute between the U.S. and Japan that had much to do with oil and rubber began to take on ominous proportions, gasoline-powered city buses took over the streetcars’ routes.

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New to the blogroll this week: The Posterity Project, Gordon Belt’s very active blog on issues involving Tennessee history and archives.

This week in Nashville history: Steamboats and spirituals

Eighty years ago this week, Nashville Banner Managing Editor Marmaduke Morton continued his 12-part series on “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville,” reflecting on the city he had encountered as a cub reporter a half-century earlier.

19 Oct. 1930: “Last Days of Real Steamboating on the Cumberland”

It was the custom for all the Negro hands to gather on the swinging gangplank as the boats backed out and started on their journey, and sing boat songs and spirituels, while a leader gestulated and led the singing. No one, who has stood on the Woodland Street Bridge as a steamboat passed down stream, and has witnessed the scene described and heard the wonderful chanting of these natural-born musicians, will ever forget the thrill of it.

The New York Times carried this profile of Capt. Tom Ryman, steamboat impresario and tabernacle builder, on 26 December 1892. Note that Morton disputes the tale retold here of a converted Ryman smashing the saloons on all of his vessels and pouring their whiskey into the Cumberland.

This week in Nashville history: Newshounds of the 1880s

Eighty years ago this week, the Nashville Banner‘s Marmaduke Morton continued his 12-part series on “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville,” reflecting on the city he had encountered as a cub reporter a half-century earlier.

12 Oct. 1930: “Revolution in Newspapers – Col. A.S. Colyar, Albert Roberts, E.W. Carmack and Other Editors”

An event of world-wide importance to newspapers occurred in Nashville in 1885. It was the successful use of the typewriter In taking telegraphic messages. John A. Payne, commonly known as “Johnny Payne,” was the pioneer. Addison C. Thomas, superintendent of the traffic department of the Associated Press, came to Nashville in May of that year, and found Payne, a Western Union operator, taking the press reports on a typewriter. He at once captured Payne and took him on a tour of the Associated Press papers through-out the country, and introduced his innovation everywhere.

Betsy Phillips has more on Payne’s sordid and profitable life after Nashville.

This week in Nashville history: More of Morton, plus Nixon in ’60

Eighty years ago this week, venerable Nashville Banner scribe Marmaduke Morton continued his 12-part series on “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville,” reflecting on the city he had encountered as a cub reporter a half-century earlier.

5 Oct. 1930: “President Cleveland, Former President Hayes and Other Visitors — Old Theaters and Actors — Bathing Beauties.”

When [women] went to the seashore they were allowed to go into the surf in bathing suits. These suits were of flannel, red or blue, with baggy legs drawn together at the ankle with a puckering string. In one of these bathing suits a girl looked like the devil. A boy was allowed to put his hand under her body after they were in the water, and hold her up while she learned to swim. It generally took her a long time to learn.

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6 October 1960: Nixon in Nashville.

My father shot this footage, and it includes my late mother handing a bouquet of yellow roses to Pat Nixon. She and Dad were always highly committed, free-market Republicans, and I recall them as being stalwart defenders of Nixon during Watergate until the bitter end.

Also visible in the film are Mom’s sister, Connie Forehand, shown as part of the welcoming party at the airport, and the late Jimmy Bradford of brokerage house J.C. Bradford & Co., seen near the aircraft. [Addendum, 24 Oct 2010: Aunt Connie IDs other "Nixon Girls" who attended the event with her as Sheila (Mrs. Sydney) Keeble, Dede (Mrs. Jake) Wallace and Carlene Hunt Thym.]

This week in Nashville, 1930 (and 50 years earlier)

The first installments of Old News will feature a series that ran 80 years ago in the Nashville Banner, from late September through early December 1930. “The Colorful Eighties in Nashville” offered up the reminiscences of Marmaduke B. Morton (1859-1943), longtime managing editor of the paper, who reflected back on the city he encountered as a cub reporter a half-century earlier.

I compiled this material in 2005 as a text for an evening class on local history at Montgomery Bell Academy. (Compilation copyright 2005.)

If you’re not accustomed to reading newspapers from the 1930s and earlier, or even if you are, you may be dismayed by some of the stereotypes and terminology that turn up in the old gentleman’s prose, especially as regards racial matters. I have made no attempt to sanitize his writing of jarring, offensive and occasionally just badly written passages. You will see footnotes, however, to explain some of the more obscure references made in his text.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr. Morton:

21 Sept. 1930: ”South’s Reawakening — Confederate Brigadiers in Saddle —The Old Maxwell House — Noted Orators”

The dining room was a specimen of architectural beauty, and there viands fit for the gods were served by a small army of Negro waiters. Men loafed in easy chairs and talked politics, and discussed other subjects, while the impact of billiard balls and the clinking of ice in cut glass tumblers, as the spotless bartender stood behind the speckless counter and poured amber mixtures from decanters, could be heard. Upstairs on what would now be called the mezzanine floor the curly heads and bustled bodies of women, with all the witchery of the Old South, could be seen peeping over the railing into the rotunda to see what their husbands and sweethearts were doing.

28 Sept. 1930: ”Horse Racing and Sportsmen — Scenes During Race Meetings — Old Saloons and Livery Stables”

The livery stable keeper, like the man who dispensed drinks in white collar and immaculate shirt, with hand-painted necktie, was noted for his wisdom. The loafers around the stables referred all disputed points to him. He delivered his dictum with becoming gravity. He looked horsey, and had an unutterable contempt for anyone who did not “know” a horse. He had sleek, blood bays, sorrels, grays, blacks — a dappled black was a star beauty — rich chestnut sorrels and occasionally a star, milk white.

Who wants yesterday’s papers?

I do. As a journalist working through an era that may see the end of the newspaper as we once knew it, I find myself even more intensely interested in old newspapers. It’s an enthusiasm I have had since childhood, when I was scrounging in my grandfather’s attic and found a Nashville Banner extra with the headline, in type four inches high: “FDR DIES.” I have spent many happy afternoons browsing microfilm of old Nashville papers at the library, and I own a couple of dozen bound volumes of local papers dating from 1884 to the 1930s.

I’m creating this site as a single access point for the many copies, scans and transcriptions of old Nashville news that I have put online in the course of historical reporting for NashvillePost.com and the Nashville Scene, as well as lots of other images derived from my garage-full of bound volumes, from microfilm I have copied while doing research and from other sources.

I make no promises about what this blog will accomplish, but all who share my love of local history are welcome to peruse it. I hope it will prove interesting and useful to fellow researchers.

-Tom