Some Restoration Movement sites in downtown Nashville

At some point somewhere I talked about Restoration Movement sites in downtown Nashville, and how close they are.  At the risk of trivializing the geography (Alexander Campbell slept here!) it is worth noting that one cannot move around too much downtown without walking across some site where something fairly significant happened.

Metro Archives posted this photo from 1965 to their Facebook page some years ago.  It provided the perfect canvas to sketch out for my audience what I needed to say.

Downtown Nashville, aerial view, 1965. From Metro Nashville Archives

I must have been talking about the Hebrew Mission, because why else would that location be emphasized?  The green highlights are on city streets in front of locations of interest.  That is by design since Nashville natives know their city by street names, and that was one of my ‘hooks’ to draw in my audience.  Also, since most of the landmarks are now obliterated, the streets are all that remain (and some of them have been renamed).  This photo is also a good backdrop because 1) of the recognizable L&C Tower, and  2) it is so different from the skyline we now know (or have to endure).  Point being it grabbed attention and let me sketch out the historical geography of some of the important places that figured prominently in my talk.

Downtown Nashville, aerial view, 1965. From Metro Nashville Archives

So, start at the upper right corner, and we’ll go counter-clockwise:

*Foster Street Church, the Northeast Nashville outpost of the emerging suburban growth of Churches of Christ in the 1880s.  I think I mentioned this only to take advantage of the I-65 construction underway in this photo, and thereby make a point that the built environment has erased some of the important landmarks.  Even many locals 20 years ago had never heard of Foster Street Church.  Foster Street Church location is on the north margin of the on-ramp complex.

*Then go west over to Gay Street just north of the Capitol, site of the former Second Christian Church or Gay Street Christian Church, the major African-American congregation of Disciples and the first RM congregation in town to install an organ.  That building was a casualty of the Capitol Hill redevelopment program, mid 20th c.

*Then almost due south to Vine Street (later 7th Avenue, North), and we see a parking lot on the east side of the street, next to the tall hotel.  Site of the Vine Street Christian Church, built in 1889.

*Now a block or so south on 7th to the intersection at Broadway, to see the McQuiddy Printing Company building (still standing as the Barbershop Harmony Society headquarters).  This is where Gospel Advocate was edited and published for a generation, mid 20th. c.

*Now, turn the corner and at the back side of the Masonic Temple on the corner, within a stone’s throw of McQuiddy, is a four story red brick storefront with apartments above.  The Hebrew Mission occupied the ground floor of this building, ca. 1928-1932 or so.

*From there move northeast to Fifth Avenue, North, to see the Ryman Auditorium, and across the street from it the Central Church of Christ Girls Home (still standing in 1965, but would be razed in 1972).  Across Commerce to the north is Central Church Administration building and auditorium.

*Now hop up and over and across the alley to the Life and Casualty Insurance building.  The home office built before the tower is adjacent, red brick with a stone facade.  Both face 4th Avenue North just shy of Church Street.  Somewhere about where L&C complex sits was the Cherry Street Christian Church sat.  This was the grand building built for Jesse Babcock Ferguson in the late 1840s-early 1850s.  The old Church Street Christian Church sat about where the Public Library downtown branch sits, and it is not marked on this photo.

Time was you could drop me on just about any corner in Nashville, Tennessee, and not only could I find my way home, I could talk about RM sites along the way.  Given how much the built environment has changed in ten years, I don’t know if I would recognize it much at all.

 

Samuel Robert Cassius, 1897 and 1925

Samuel Robert Cassius was a tireless leader, evangelist, educator and worker among black Disciples and Churches of Christ for over 40 years.  His career spanned from just after Reconstruction to the Great Depression.  The first photo below accompanied his contribution to J. J. Limerick’s The Gospel in Chart and Sermon (John F. Rowe, 1897).  The second is the frontis to his The Third Birth of a Nation (F. L. Rowe, 1925 ed.).

Samuel Robert Cassius, 1897

Samuel Robert Cassius, 1925

Greenwood Park, Nashville, Tennessee, ca. 1900-1910s

In segregated Nashville, Greenwood Park offered black residents a place to rest, play and enjoy the outdoors, opportunities unavailable to them in city parks. It was a venture of businessman-evangelist Preston Taylor. Taylor owned an undertaking business and served the Lea Avenue Christian Church for many years as minister. The story remains untold of the web of connections binding Taylor to the Keeble family, and for a short while the Bowser family, at the very turn of the 20th century. Lea Avenue Church was located just off 8th Avenue, South near the intersection with Lafayette. Just about a block off that intersection, to the southeast, is Lea Avenue. The church building faced north. This area looks hardly residential now, except for high-rise condos, but what traces remained, even 20 years ago, of residential occupation were traces of African-American residential occupation. In other words, a ‘black’ part of town that emerged after the Civil War. From the war to the 1890s, black Disciples in the city had one main congregational option: Gay Street Christian Church. (Not the only option, as I will mention briefly below).  Gay Street (or Second Christian Church) was located almost opposite the Capitol and was torn down in the Capitol redevelopment program launched in mid-20th century. Lea Avenue formed out of dispute at Gay Street, with Taylor leaving to establish the new congregation. The Keeble family worshipped at Gay Street and Lea Avenue and Taylor baptized young Marshall. And thence from Gay Street and Lea Avenue came Jackson Street Church, one of a few strictly acapella and non-Society ventures to serve black Disciples (and prospects) in and around growing Nashville, 1890s-1910s.  David Lipscomb said once that every congregation he was a member of had black members, so there were in reality, probably, more options than might be apparent.  I have mentioned some of them before:

Religious Intelligence from 1882 Nashville

Nashville Christian Churches, 1904

But, back to Greenwood Park.  Whatever congregational options were available to black Disciples in Nashville at any one time, the city fathers restricted the recreational options, by law.  Therefore Greenwood Park, which Taylor operated as a complement to his funeral business.  Along with Greenwood Cemetery, it enjoyed a generation or more of operation and was a vital facet of community life among Nashville’s black residents.   The park outlived Preston Taylor (d. 1931) by a few years, but most of the grounds of the amusement park have been absorbed into the Greenwood Cemetery.  Marshall Keeble’s mortal remains are interred therein.

The campus library: training for service and leadership in the church

Appeal to White Brethren

Sensing this need very keenly, the colored ministers have brought this situation to the attention of the white brethren; so that now, a concrete effort is being made to equip aspiring young ministers among the colored race for effective work among their people, and to train colored young people for service and leadership in the church [p. 2].

—

Entire School Plant Bought

building a school plant is a long and expensive process. usually it take hundreds of dollars and a long span of time to construct the buildings necessary for a college. When an opportunity was afforded, then, to buy an entire school plant, complete with equipment, the Board of trustees felt it was indeed a God-send. Such a plant is to be found at Terrell, Texas. The Texas Military College, founded there in 1915, ceased to operate in 1949, and the owners offered the school facilities for sale…

The buildings include a large three-story brick administration building, gymnasium, two brick dormitories, dining hall and kitchen, three large brick residence, and five frame houses, and shops. The buildings will be complete with all furniture and other equipment used the past spring by TMC [p. 3].

—see the photograph below, with description, on p. 4

—Southern Bible Institute, Terrell, Texas, A Junior College Offering Christian Education to the Colored, Sponsored by Members of the Church of Christ [Terrell: Southern Bible Institute, 1949], pp. 2-4

This eight-page brochure served as a prospectus for the newly-relocated college from Fort Worth to Terrell, upon purchase of the former Texas Military College campus.  It was designed to inform potential donors of the opportunities and challenges facing the school, and therefore to solicit monetary donations.

Southern Bible Institute grew from the efforts of George Philip Bowser, R. N. Hogan, John S. Winston, H. H. Gray, R. B. Bond, O. B. Butler, G. P. Holt, Levi Kennedy, W. D. Morrison, R. F. Nunley, Paul Settles, G. E. Steward, and Walter Weathers, and others.   Working in cooperation with them were various white leaders, such as E. W. McMillan (President of SBI at the time this brochure was printed), John Young (elder at Sears and Summit Church of Christ in Dallas), Otto Foster, J. B. McGinty, Gayle Oler, Walter Adams, B Sherrod, H. E. Speck and others more or less generally, or specifically in some cases, affiliated with Abilene Christian College.

While Nashville Christian Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, provided primary and secondary training, SBI intended to focus on secondary and junior college work.

Name Authority for Nashville, Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations, 5th edition, now available

Name Authority for Nashville Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations, 5th edition, revised and enlarged. April 18, 2020.  This list comprises 440 variations of time, place and character names for 247 known congregations of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee from 1812 to March 2020.

Vacation Bible School. Eastview Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, early 1950s

Nashville Christian Churches, 1904

John T. Brown published in 1904 an encyclopedic pictorial and summative account of the Christian Churches.  Churches of Christ however was not exhaustive and underrepresented those writers, evangelists, congregations and publications opposing instrumental music in worship and Christian missionary work through agencies or societies other than a local congregation.

He provides on pp. 357ff a large and beautiful photograph of the Vine Street Christian Church along with its board of elders and a brief narrative sketch.   He concludes with a list of the other congregations in Nashville.

“There are seventeen other congregations in the city.  The following is a list:

1. South College Street [South Nashville]

2. Woodland Street

3. Tenth Street

4. Lockeland Church

5. Fourth Street [Grandview Church is first listed in the 1905 City Directory]

6. Foster Street [North Edgefield]

7. Highland Avenue

8. West Nashville

9. Carroll Street

10. Line Street [Jo Johnston]

11. Waverly Place

12. Beuna Vista [not listed in the City Directory for 1904 or 1905]

13. Nashville Bible School

Three of the eighteen are colored churches:

14. Lee Avenue

15. Gay Street [Second Church]

16. Jackson Street” [listed in the 1905 directory with the white congregations]

I compared Brown’s list to the 1904 and 1905 Nashville City Directories*.  In the list above, in square brackets, I add the names of the congregations as they appear in the City Directories.  The Directories have these additional congregations: Cherokee Park, Davis Hill, Green Street, North Spruce Street, Scovel Street and Willow Street.

I point this out only to say that both sources illuminate each other; at the same time both are incomplete and even when merged do not tell the whole story.  For example, in 1904-1905 the little mission on 12th Avenue North in North Nashville (launched from the North Spruce Street Church) was underway but it was too new for Brown and so far under the radar, it seems, as to escape notice of the Directory compilers.  There was also an African-American congregation/mission in East Nashville that no one seems to have noticed.

Also, Brown and the City Directories speak of the same congregations using different names:  Line Street and Jo Johnston are the same congregation; same for North Edgefield and Foster Street; Fourth Street is probably a reference to the mission that became the Grandview Church, first listed in the 1905 Directory; South Nashville is the same as South College Street; and Vine Street is also known as First Christian Church.

Such is the nature of the sources.

All of this to say that compiling a Name Authority for the Nashville Christian Churches and Churches of Christ requires relentless sleuthing, sifting, comparing and hypothesizing.  It has been not only enjoyable but satisfying.  Five years between revisions is long enough.  One of my 2018 goals for this blog is to publish a third revised and corrected edition of the Name Authority.

*Nashville City Directory 1904. Nashville: Marshall and Bruce Company, 1904, p. 62 and Nashville City Directory 1905. Nashville: Marshall, Bruce, Polk Company, 1905, p. 35.

 

 

Nashville, The City of David (Lipscomb): Three issues of Gospel Advocate remember Lipscomb and his legacy

The December 6, 1917 issue of Gospel Advocate was devoted to the memory of the recently-deceased David Lipscomb.  It is a rich treasure of memories and tributes. To my knowledge this issue was the first to carry Lipscomb’s photograph on the cover. Similar covers followed in 1931 (the July 11 Davidson County Special Number) and 1939 (the December 7 special issue about the history of the Nashville congregations).

These three issues are of significant historical value. As primary sources they provide information unavailable elsewhere. As interpretive reflections they are a beginning point for how Lipscomb was remembered and how congregational history was recorded and carried forward. The 1917 issue, other than newspaper obituaries and Price Billingsley’s diary, is the first secondary source about the life and impact of David Lipscomb. The Billingsley diary (housed at Center for Restoration Studies, Abilene Christian University) contains a description of the funeral along with its author’s candid thoughts and impressions. It was not intended, at the time, for public reading.

The issue of the Advocate, however, is a product of the McQuiddy Printing Company and is most certainly intended to capture the mood and ethos in the air just after Lipscomb’s death and by way of the mails deliver it to subscribers wherever they may be. In point of time, it is the first published sustained historical reflection on Lipscomb’s life and ministry. The 1931 and 1939 special issues focus on Lipscomb’s activity on the ground among the citizens of Nashville’s neighborhoods. Here his legacy is as a church planter: an indefatigable, patient, faithful steward. He plants, he teaches, he preaches, he organizes. He observes shifting residential patterns and responds with congregational leadership development. To meet the needs of the emerging streetcar suburbs, he urges elders to take charge of teaching responsibilities, engage evangelists and establish congregations through peaceful migrations and church plants. The 1931 and 1939 issues are testimonies to the effects of this approach. Along the way they preserve details and photographic evidence that is simply unavailable elsewhere.

All three are available for download below.

Click here to download the December 6, 1917 David Lipscomb Memorial Number.

Click here to download the historical sections from the July 11, 1931 special issue about the history of the Nashville Churches of Christ

Click here to download the December 7, 1939 special issue about the history of the Nashville Churches of Christ.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Stone-Campbell Movement

One distinctive contribution Nashville made (and still makes) to the world of choral music, particularly Negro spirituals, is through the long history of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

A fine early source of information about the group is The Story of the Jubilee Singers; With Their Songs. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1875.  Authored by J. B. T. Marsh, it went through several editions and printings.  My copy is a second edition (likely a second printing).  Later editions vary and there are a few editions online.  The quote below indicates an intersection of the Stone-Campbell movement with this world-famous group:

“Every member of the company is a professing Christian, one or two having been converted in connection with the religious influences that have be God’s lessing ever attended the work.  The unsectarian feature of the work at Fisk could not, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the fact that the singers represent in their church-membership five different denominations–the Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and “Christian.”  Whenever the exigencies of hotel life or railway travel do not prevent, family worship is held each morning–a novelty to hotel servants usually, and a season of spiritual refreshment with friends who are occasionally present always refer to afterward with peculiar interest…” p. 89

In particular, the intersection centered on one of the founding group members, Georgia Gordon.  This short notice was published in James T. Haley’s Afro-American Encyclopaedia (1895) p. 222:

Marsh included this longer sketch in his book, pp. 100-101.  later editions shortened and deleted some detail.:

In 1897 James T. Haley produced another book and featured Georgia again.  This sketch appeared on pages 75-76 of Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading:

To read more, here are a few links:

Mark Lowe blogged about Georgia and Preston, providing greater detail. Emma Bragg compiled a helpful short biographical sketch.  Taneya Kalonji has a nice short blog as well.

 

Claude Spencer pays tribute to Sarah Lou Bostick, ca. 1948

Sarah Lou Bostick

“No, there were not any rare imprints or beautiful bindings among the things Mrs. Bostick saved; a book dealer wouldn’t have given $1.50 for the lot. There were just the commonplace things, the stuff most of us destroy, but which is so necessary in writing the history of our people, our churches, and our brotherhood. Better history can be written because of Mrs. Bostick.”–Claude Spencer, “An Appreciation” in The Life Story of Sarah Lue Bostick, A Woman of the Negro Race, ca. 1948, p. 39.

Sarah Lue was the President of the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions Auxilary at Pea Ridge (AR) Christian Church. As such she acquired (and saved) a truck load (literally, a tractor-trailer load) of programs, letters, documents, periodicals, etc. documenting African-American Christian Churches. Spencer said “only once or twice in a lifetime does the curator of a historical society get so much unusual material as was collected and saved by Mrs. Bostick.”

My take-aways from Spencer’s remarks: 1) you never know what use can be made of a seemingly insignificant source, or what information can be gleaned from it; 2) you never know what might survive, or how much, or where, or by whom; 3) better history can be written because the availability of more/better/different/nuanced source material; 4) better history can *only* be written when these materials see the light of day and are available to history-writers.

7 December 1939 Gospel Advocate: The Nashville Special

7 December 1939 Gospel Advocate “Nashville Special”

This special issue of Gospel Advocate highlights with historical sketches and photographs several dozen Churches of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee, the City of David (Lipscomb).  In view of an upcoming lecture at Lipscomb University (I’m co-presenting with Christopher Cotten, John Mark Hicks and Jeremy Sweets), this will be the first of several daily posts of the photographs from that issue.  From now until the end of June I will post one photo daily.  Look for the portraits of Fall, Fanning, Sewell, McQuiddy and Harding tomorrow and the meetinghouses in alphabetical order beginning 23 May until 30 June 2013, d.v. …. You are invited to our sessions Monday July 1 and Tuesday July 2.  See the Summer Celebration schedule for time and place. Please come, I’d like to meet and talk with you.

Content Summary

[B. C. Goodpasture], “How Special Was Prepared”, page 1166:

In collecting the material for the special number of the Gospel Advocate we have sought a short history and a picture of the meetinghouse of every congregation in what might be called the Nashville district.  There are some congregations not within the city limits which have been so vitally related to the work in the city that it was thought proper to include them.  To this end each congregation was asked by telephone or letter to supply a sketch of its work and a good picture of its meetinghouse.  We are grateful that most of the congregations complied with our request, but regret that some did not.  Except where otherwise stated, we have used only the material that was sent in to us.  Where the type of meetinghouse and of picture permitted, the cuts are uniform in size.—EDITOR.

——-

H. Leo Boles, “General History of the Church in Nashville,” 1146-1148.  Included in this brief essay are portraits of Philip Slater Fall, Tolbert Fanning, Elisha Granville Sewell, Jephthah Clayton McQuiddy and James Alexander Harding.  David Lipscomb’s portrait graces the front cover.  The bulk of the issue are the sketches and photos of the congregations and their meetinghouses.  Boles’ task is to introduce the issue with a lead-off broad historical resume.

List of Congregations, pages 1148-1167

Listed below, in the order of appearance, are the congregations featured; those without an accompanying photograph marked with an asterisk [*].  I cannot discern an organizing principle, if there was one, governing the listing of the congregations.  For their relative locations consult the map on the back cover.

Lindsley Avenue Church

Twelfth Avenue Church

Old Hickory Church

Charlotte Avenue Church

Grandview Heights Church

Riverside Drive Church

Shelby Avenue Church

Joseph Avenue Church

Grace Avenue Church

Park Avenue Church

Park Circle Church

Lawrence Avenue Church

Central Church

David Lipscomb College Church

Acklen Avenue Church

Chapel Avenue Church

Eleventh Street Church

Reid Avenue Church

Cedar Grove Church

Trinity Lane Church

Fairview Church

Russell Street Church

Donelson Church

Third and Taylor Church

Mead’s Chapel Church

Highland Avenue Church

Fifth Street Church

Seventh Avenue Church

Hillsboro Church

Madison Church

Radnor Church

Whites Creek Church

Fanning School and Church

Lischey Avenue Church

Belmont Church

Waverly-Belmont Church

New Shops Church*

Neely’s Bend Church*

——-

W. E. Brightwell, “Record Not Complete”, pages 1166-1167:

“Some congregations failed to provide a picture of their building; some prepared something, but there was a slip-up in delivery.”  Brightwell briefly recalls details about Green Street, Eighth Street [Eight Avenue, North], Jo Johnston, Twenty-Second Avenue, Otter Creek, and Reid Avenue.  Within Brightwell’s note are photographs of the Home for the Aged (overseen by the Chapel Avenue Church), Jackson Park Church and Rains Avenue Church.  He closes by asking, “What became of the sketches for Jackson Park and Rains Avenue congregations?  Gorman Avenue, Richland Creek, Edenwold, Fourth Avenue, South, Pennsylvania Avenue, Ivy Point, Dickerson Road, and possibly others within the area of Greater Nashville, failed to report, or something happened that their report did not arrive in time.”

Given Brightwell’s note, I thought it worthwhile to discern which congregations were absent.  It became readily apparent that there was no mention, at all, of any African-American congregation or preacher in the issue.  There is a list of six “Colored Churches” on the rear-cover map.

If George Philip Bowser’s 1942 directory is any indication, Nashville was as much “Jerusalem” for African-American churches of Christ as it was for whites.  In 1942 Nashville claimed six black Churches of Christ, the same as are listed on the rear cover of this ‘Nashville Special.’  No other city in America at that time, known to Bowser at least, had as many black congregations or as many members among them.  Were Bowser to describe these congregations, their establishment and growth and the great men and women who built and nurtured them, he might use Henry Leo Boles’ words which opens this ‘Nashville Special’: “Nashville, Tenn., has been called the modern Jerusalem. There are more churches of Christ in this city than in any other city of the world.  The church in Nashville, like the church in Jerusalem, had a small beginning, but it has grown to great proportions.”  If not, at least his data would support the claim nonetheless.

The rear cover, with map, lists sixty-five congregations, fifty-nine [white] and six “colored.”

——-

The congregations listed below have neither photo nor sketch in the issue proper:

Bells Bend

Dickerson Road

Edenwold

Eighth Avenue

Fourth Avenue

Gorman Avenue

Green Street

Jo Johnston

Pennsylvania Avenue

Richland Creek

Rural Hill

Twenty-Second Avenue

Watkins Chapel

Buford’s Chapel [this is an earlier name for Whites Creek church listed above]

Neely’s Bend

Pennington’s Bend

Woodson Chapel

Una

Goodlettsville

Otter Creek

Ivy Point

Fourteenth and Jackson

Twenty-Sixth and Jefferson

Sixth and Ramsey

Fairfield and Green

South Hill

Horton

——-

Neither on this map nor inside are:

South Harpeth

Philippi

Hill’s Chapel

Antioch

Burnette’s Chapel

Gilroy

Smith Springs

Pasquo

Pleasant Hill

Little Marrowbone

Chapel Hill (possibly a variant name for Little Marrowbone)

Bethel

All of these are in Davidson County, reasonably within the bounds of Goodpasture’s “Nashville district” or Brightwell’s “Greater Nashville.”

The 1939 City Directory lists a Sanctified Church of Christ at 408 16^th Avenue, North and a Metropolitan Church of Christ on East Hill as a ‘Colored’ congregation.  The same directory lists Emanuel Church of Christ which I have confirmed is not a Stone-Campbell congregation.  Sanctified is entirely new to me; there is an outside chance it could be the predecessor to the Fifteenth Avenue, North congregation (est. 1955 according to the 2012 Churches of Christ in the United States).  If so then it is a black congregation…15^th Ave is a plant from Jefferson or Jackson Street.  Metropolitan Church is likewise new to me.

——

Remember, check back daily for a new photograph.  Comments are welcome for memories, suggestions, etc.  Should you like to contact me privately, do so at   icekm [at] aol [dot] com.  Should you have or know someone who has photographs, directories, bulletins or other paper from any of these congregations, please contact me.