Nashville's Riverwood Mansion

Courtesy Metro Nashville Archives

According to Paul Clements in volume one of his set of books, A Past Remembered, the back section of the Riverwood house, originally a two story federal style structure is the older part, and was built by Philip Philips.  Philips purchased the land in 1795 and was dead by 1797.  Philips, land speculator and a very wealthy man, left his wife Susannah with a number of children, some of them nearly grown.  With the help of ten slaves and her older sons, Susannah managed the farm until her death in 1805.  In 1820 the house along with 580 acres was sold by the Philips heirs to Dr. Boyd McNairy.  Dr. McNairy had a house in Nashville and the Philips place was his country house.  

 

In 1829 Dr. McNairy sold the house to Alexander Porter, Sr. and his wife Susan. Alex Porter died a few years after buying the house.  The widowed  Susan Porter, soon after the death of her husband in 1833, constructed a large two story home in front of and only a few feet away from the old Philips house.  The old house was then used as a kitchen and slave quarters.  The Porter's called their plantation "Tammany Wood."  In about 1851, Alexander Porter Jr. was thirty years old and the only child of Susan who remained at home.  He oversaw a renovation of the two houses, which enlarged the front of the house and connected the Porter house to the old Philips house. The Greek Revival front with the large columns, that you see today was, added with the 1851 renovation.   

In December of 1859, Alexander Porter, Jr., who had earlier purchased the share of his brothers and sisters in their parents land, sold Tammany Wood to William Cooper, who changed the name of the plantation to Riverwood.  Cooper, who never married, lived for a time in the house with his brother Henry and Henry's family.  The Cooper brothers were attorneys in Nashville.  Henry was elected to the U. S. Senate and moved, with his family, away from Riverwood, in 1870.  About this same time William, who had been appointed as a justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court, also left Riverwood, moving to Nashville.  The Cooper brothers, Henry and William, never returned to live at Riverwood.   

William moved to New York and at his death in 1909 he left his property to his brothers and their heirs.  He left the home Riverwood and 69 acres to his brother Duncan Brown Cooper.

Duncan had lived most of his life in Maury County, TN but after the death of his wife in 1893, he moved to Riverwood with his children.  Sometime after 1910  Duncan's daughter, Mrs. Sarah Burch and her husband, moved to Riverwood to live with her father.  Known by the nickname Sadie, she had been married in 1899 to Lucius Edward Burch.  In 1914 Sadie and Lucius Burch began to purchase some of the surrounding tracts of the William F. Cooper land.  Also in 1914, Sadie bought from her father and her siblings their interest in the home tract of Riverwood.  Duncan continued to live at Riverwood until his death in 1922.  Sadie Cooper Burch died in 1975 and Riverwood belonged to Cooper family descendants until 1978.

Special thanks to Paul Clements for sharing his excellent research on the Riverwood property, from the "A Past Remembered Collection" at Metro Nashville Archives.  Mr. Clements book  can be found at Metro Nashville Archives and at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.  

Riverwood timeline: 
1783 - Ephraim McLean receives grant for land along the Cumberland.

1795 - Philip Philips purchased the farm, where Riverwood Manison now stands, from Ephraim McLean. Philips built a two story Federal style house that is now the back section of Riverwood Mansion.

1797 - Philips dies, leaving the management of his home and farm to wife Susannah Philips, with help from her grown sons and many slave.

1805 - Susannah Philips dies.

1820 - Philips heirs sell house and 580 acres to Dr. Boyd McNairy.  Dr. McNairy lived in the Nashville and used the Philips house for a country home.

1829 - Dr. McNairy sells home to Alexander Porter, Sr. and his wife Susan. They called the plantation "Tammany Wood" after the Porter ancestral home in Ireland.

1833 - Susan Porter having been recently widowed constructed a larger two story house just in front of the older Philips house.  The Philips house was used as a kitchen and slave quarters.

1851 - Alexander Porter, Jr. connected the Porter house to the Philips house and renovated and enlarged the residence.  It was in 1851 that the Greek Revival columned front was added to the house.

 1859 - Alexander Porter, Jr. sold the home along with 851 acres to William F. Cooper.  Cooper renamed the place Riverwood.  He was unmarried and lived in the home with his brother Henry Cooper and Henry's family.

1870 - Both William and Henry Cooper moved away from Riverwood, never to live there again.

1895 - Duncan Cooper moved to Riverwood, from Maury County, Tennessee with his children, after the death of his wife Mary in 1893.

1909 - William Cooper dies, leaving his property to his brothers and their heirs.  He left the home Riverwood and 69 acres to his brother Duncan Brown Cooper. 

1914 - Sarah Cooper Burch and her husband Lucius began to buy surrounding tracts from the heirs of William F. Cooper. She also purchased from her father and siblings their interest in the Riverwood home tract.

1922 - Duncan Cooper dies at Riverwood, now the home of his daughter Sarah Cooper Burch.

NNashville's Riverwood Mansion by Debie Oeser Cox is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. 

Inglewood - Just where do we live?

I wrote this in response to a question on the Inglewood listserve awhile back. A newcomer to Inglewood was confused by all the names that can be applied to the area and asked, "Just where do we live." it's sort of jumbled, with little editing, but I decided to share.

Inglewood Theater, courtesy of Metro Nashville Archives

There are a lot of answers as to where we live. When we pay our taxes, it's Davidson County. If the house is on fire, the Nashville Fire Department responds. If we call the police they consider us East Nashville. Mayor Purcell heads up Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County. When we pay our water bills, some of us send the money to Madison Utilities. Maplewood is an older name than Inglewood. Inglewood has been used for about 100 years, starting with the subdivision of the area around Inglewood Kroger. It is the right of any Inglewood resident to say he lives in East Nashville, or just Nashville, if he so chooses, but please don't forget the history of why it was called Inglewood in the first place.

The first town in the vicinity was Haysborough, chartered in 1799. It was located on the river bluff in back of where Springhill Cemetery is today. Much of Inglewood proper was the Williams place. On the East side of Gallatin at McGavock was the Maxey farm. Just north on the west side was the homeplace of Thomas and Martha Martin. The Maxey family graveyard is shown on a plat as being on what is now the southside of McGavock Pike about halfway between Gallatin and the railroad. Just about where the large grassy areas are between the street and the sidewalk. The Stull plantation was on the other side of Gallatin in this area. Stull's land ran south from Trinity Lane, all the way to where Nashville Auto Diesel College is now. Stull descendants built the historic house on the NADC campus that was later the home of Warner family of Warner Parks fame. The house was also used for Trevecca Nazarene College at one time. Near the East YMCA was the farm of Isaac Litton, who born in Ireland, became a wealthy landowner after settling in Nashville. You will find the memoir of Judge Litton Hickman, grandson of Isaac Litton here - http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~nashvillearchives/hickman.html).

Hickman described his neighborhood as "a very well defined one, extending from Tenth Street in East Nashville out the Gallatin Road to the Madison area. It was a distinct unit, apart from Edgefield on the one side and open country on the other." Hickman graduated from Vanderbilt in 1896 and was a practicing attorney in Nashville by the time Inglewood was developed. Back when there were county and city government Hickman served as county judge equivalent to county administrator. When the two were combined our Mayor's office was changed to more of a county administrator than the a municipal mayor.

Jere Baxter purchased land and a house from the Williams family on the West side of Gallatin Road. Baxter owned land from the Hart Lane area out to about Maplewood Lane. It was Baxter who gave the name Mapelwood to his farm and his home, which stood at the end of what is now Curdwood. We all know about Evergreen and the Craighead family who lived on that land. The Bradford family lived at Evergreen for many years. Just north beyond Evergreen was Glen Echo, built by Rev. Craighead about 1790 and occupied for many years by Emily Donelson Walton and her family. The Love family, and later the McGaughey's, owned much of the land where St. Joseph's Church and Springhill Cemetery is now and their property ran south to the Haysboro, Brush Hill neighborhood. The Riverwood neighborhood where I live, is made up from several old farms. The first being Riverwood, the land of which covered the south section of Riverwood, along Cooper Lane and Sandy Dr and McGinnis and that area. Brothers, Aaron and Jonathan Strech, had adjoining farms that covered the present streets of Milton, Avalon, Ivy, Fremont and some of Moss Rose. The restored 1855 homeplace of Aaron Strech, still stands on Warden St between Avalon and Moran.

Community names come from families, streets, subdivisions, rivers, creeks or sometimes just from the imagination of the residents. Community names can change over time. Donelson was first called Slip Up and later McWhirtersville. With the integration of neighborhoods, those communities that were traditionally African American have blended in with the surrounding area and the names and history of most are gone or will be with the last of the old folks. I hope we don't lose more. I'm writing it down as fast as I can.


Inglewood - Just where do we live? by Debie Oeser Cox is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.