A Brief History of the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike

A Brief History of the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike

By DJ Hutcherson

In 1804, James Robertson cut the path of what would later be known as the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike, often referred to as the Charlotte Road or Charlotte Pike.  Robertson owned several iron furnaces in the area, including several in Dickson County near the town of Charlotte, which was founded in 1803, the same year Dickson County was established.  Charlotte was named after Robertson's wife.

Two years after the road was completed, The Nashville Impartial Review newspaper, dated July 12th, 1806, announced various mail routes in Middle Tennessee, including the opening of a mail route between Nashville and Memphis, which would use the Charlotte Pike.  

In 1829, the road was purchased by The Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike Company, which had been charted that year. This marked the beginning of toll booth operations along parts of the road, officially making it a turnpike. The company was owned by Jetton, Walker & Co. 

After becoming a turnpike road in the 1830's, it was the main stagecoach route between Nashville and Charlotte. According to an ad in a Nashville newspaper, stages would leave Nashville every Friday at 6 A.M., and arrive in Charlotte by noon, meaning it took around 6 hours to travel the entire length of the road at that time. (Approximately 35 - 40 miles)

That same year, a newspaper advertisement appeared in The Arkansas Gazette of February 2nd, 1830.  The ad announces the start of stagecoach service between Nashville and Memphis, with operations set to begin in January 1830.  The stage coaches would run 3 days a week. The ad states that the coaches were lead by a team of four horses, and that the coaches were "fitted up in "superior style" for the passengers. 

By the 1840s, at least two toll gates had been established on the Turnpike. The first was located 6 miles or so from Nashville on top of the first of several ridges known as Sullivan's Ridge. A stage coach stop had been built near the toll gate at the top of the ridge shortly after the Turnpike became a main stage road.  This stage coach stop was primarily used as a place where the teams of exhausted horses could rest and recover for a bit, after just having pulled the heavy stage coaches full of passengers and their luggage up the long, steep grade.

Samuel Adkisson, a wealthy land and slave owner who lived on a large farm in the early to mid 1800's in the area where Dog Creek Cemetery is located, was put in charge of handling the operations of the second toll gate on Charlotte Pike about 20 miles west of Nashville. It was located near his home on Dog Creek, which was located near the area where modern day Dog Creek Cemetery is today.

Adkisson was best known for having been the stone cutter and engineer who had played a roll in assisting iron master Montgomery Bell excavate the tunnel at Narrows of the Harpeth in 1818. The tunnel was completed by 1819 or 1820.  Adkisson probably also worked for Bell in the partial excavation of a second tunnel several years later at the Narrows, located a short distance down river from the first tunnel.  For unknown reasons, the second tunnel was purposefully left unfinished. Samuel Adkisson, along with his wife and their children are buried in Dog Creek Cemetery, not far from where his toll gate was located on Charlotte Pike.

With the advent and rapid construction of railroads by the 1850s, traffic along turnpike roads in Middle Tennessee sharply declined, including the amount of traffic on the Charlotte Pike. The decline was mainly the result of the construction of The Nashville & Northwestern Railroad, which offered travelers a faster, easier, and more comfortable mode of transportation, when compared to traveling by stagecoach. The railroad had been completed from Nashville to Kingston Springs by the beginning of the Civil War, and later to Dickson in 1863.  The trip between Dickson and Nashville took only 3 hours or so by train, while it was still around a 6 hour journey by stagecoach on the turnpike. 

From the late 1860's up until the turn of the century, travelers along the road could stop for a rest or an overnight stay at Nichol's Inn, located near Sullivan's Ridge. It was owned and operated by Lydia Nichols, whose husband was killed while fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  The large orchard that surrounded the Inn was famous for its apples and pears.  The structure still stands to this day on Old Charlotte pike, one mile from the first climb up Sullivan's Ridge.

Charlotte Pike was sold in the 1880's, and it's use as a stage coach road eventually came to an end by the 1890's.

Most of the Turnpike was still traversable up until the sometime around the 1930's, but after the construction of the new Memphis - Bristol Highway (Highway 70) was completed in 1926, some sections of the old Charlotte Road were bypassed by the highway and cut off or closed to traffic, including the section between where Dog Creek Road dead ends today to where it would have crossed Sam's Creek Road. 

After passing through Shacklett headed west, the route of the new highway generally followed the old route of the Charlotte Turnpike  between Shacklett and White Bluff. Some sections of the old road can still be seen, especially on each side of the long straight stretch of the Highway just before entering White Bluff.

Sources :

1. "West Nashville, Its People and Environs" by Sarah Foster Kelly, 1988

2. The Economic & Social Beginnings of Tennessee" by Albert C Holt, page 303

3. The Arkansas Gazette, February 2, 1830

4. The Daily Republican Banner (Nashville) February 6, 1830

5. Early North Carolina & Tennessee Land Records, ancestry.com

History of Pegram Elementary School

The Fourth Pegram Elementary School 

The history of Pegram Elementary School dates back to at least the 1890's, though it is very likely that a school of some kind had been established much earlier than that, perhaps as early as the mid 1800's. In the July 14th, 1896 edition of The Tennessean, it was noted that a Professor John Smith was to teach the summer session which began on that day. In the same article, the school is referred to as simply "Pegram School".

The first classes were held in a large room in the back of a house that was located near the corner of Riverview Drive and Thompson Rd, or across from modern day Pegram City Park. (see photo below) The second school, built in 1911, was located near the intersection of Thompson Rd. and Beech Hill Rd. This building was later torn down after the third school was built at the top of the first hill on Thompson Rd around 1930-31.

The following paragraphs on the history of the current Pegram Elementary School come from the book "Some Middle Tennessee Pegrams and Their Ancestors" by Dorothy Pegram Roland.

The Fourth Pegram Elementary School:
"This school was called the "Old Belvedere School". After the old Belvedere night club on Highway 70 was abandoned, the county paid the owners of the property fifteen hundred dollars for it, to use for an elementary school. The people of the community raised part of the money to purchase the property.° The present Pegram Elementary School is located on this same land. This building was about one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. When it was used as a club, it consisted of a large "dance hall", gambling room, kitchen, a long hall, office, and two rest rooms. According to former students the night club had used a warning system, to alert it's owners of an impending raid. The first person who became aware that the law was approaching, would drop a nail in a hole in the floor of the rooms, this activated a bell to the gambling room.° The school used the dance hall area for grades 4-8, and the smaller gambling room for grades 1-3. The cafeteria was located behind the stage, which was at one end of the dance hall. The two rest rooms were at the opposite end of the building. A coal stove was used for heat.

The first Parent Teachers Association Meeting at Pegram was held December 15, 1948, at the home of Noel and Pearl (Stuart) March, on Thompson Road. (See photo of officers elected below) Around 1950, while Mr. Jack Nicholson was Superintendent of Schools for Cheatham County, the county built a new school at Kingston Springs, and at the same time added on to one of the rooms of this school at Pegram, built one new room, and remodeled the rest rooms. The school now had a library.
In 1952, two years after the school had been remodeled, fire dostroyed it. Minnie Mai (Clark) Greer, one of the cooks at the school at the time, when asked (tongue in cheek) by this writer if the cooks started the fire, laughingly declared that they did not. It had started in a closet, which was used by them for a pantry. Minnie Mai opened the door to get supplies out and discovered the blaze, already in progress. It very quickly spread, burning the hairnet off of the head of Mrs. Grace James, one of the teachers. The students barely escaped. Mr. George Hickey was the other teacher at the time, and there were fifty-three students enrolled.
After this school burned the Pegram students were bussed to Kingston Springs to the school there, until a new school was built and opened in Pegram in 1963. The school at Kingston had the first through the ninth grades. For many years, all students who graduated from this school had been bussed to Bellevue High School, in Davidson County, to graduate. Their tuition was paid to that county by Cheatham County. This writer's oldest son was in the first class to graduate from the new Pegram Elementary School. Miss Carrie Street was appointed principal of the new school at Pegram. She had been principal at the school at Kingston Springs for many years, and was an outstanding educator, loved by students and parents alike. She ran her school like a big home, but was a firm, no nonsense individual.

Both schools were immaculately kept when she was principal. She put the students to work to help keep it that way. She took pride in the way the school looked and instilled this in her students. (more about Miss Carrie below)
Some of the teachers who taught at the old Belvedere School were: Rose Emma Justice (Cooper); Helen Robinson (Greer); Mary B. Clifton; Mabel Miller, (mother of Warren Miller), Leura Henry; Lillian Grimes; William Walker; Grace Frazer, (mother of Joe Frazer, husband of Martha Frazer, who was the principal at PES from 1968-1993 (see paragraph below), Grace James; George Hickey; Hattie Reeder; and Annie Anderson. William Walker and Ethel Thompson were principals here.
Some of the cooks here: Lillian (Judd) Marsh; Jeanette Hamilton; Maudie Rust; Susie Knight; Louise Palmore; and Minnie Mai Greer."

Pegram Elementary School Principals
"Miss Carrie" Elizabeth Street
"Miss Carrie" was born November 22, 1908, in Cheatham County, Tennessee, near the "Narrows of the Harpeth". She was the daughter of D.W. Street and Lula (Pack) Street, and attended elementary school at Cedar Hill School. At about the age of fourteen, she moved with her parents, to White Bluff, in Dickson County, Tennessee, and attended William James High School. After graduating, she earned a B.S. Degree in Social Science, at Middle Tennessee State University, at Murfreesboro, where she was an English major in elementary education.
Carrie began her teaching career in 1926, at the age of nineteen, at the Harpeth Valley School, in Dickson County. She then moved back to Cheatham County, and taught school at Dog Creek Elementary. (this school house, torn down a few years ago, was located on Dog Creek Rd. behind Foggy Bottom) Next she taught at Chapmansboro, and then later, at Kingston Springs, where she became principal. When the new elementary school was built at Pegram, she was appointed it's principal, where she remained until her retirement. Miss Carrie never married but raised her two nephews, Homer. and Woodrow Dodson, and was like a mother to them. She died April 5, 1984, and is buried in the Scott Cemetery, on Dog Creek. (Cedar Hill Rd.)

Dr. Martha Frazer, principal 1968-1993
Martha Louise Johnson, born November 15, 1932, was the daughter of William Wade and Gertrude Guthrie Johnson of the Pond Creek community, Cheatham County. Pegram Elementary School principal Miss Carrie Street asked Martha to substitute teach at Pegram. She began teaching full time the following year, and became principal one year later. Despite being diagnosed with metatistic cancer in 1970, she continued her career as an educator in Cheatham County. In 1993, she retired after 25 years at at Pegram Elementary. She passed away in 1998, after her 27 year battle with cancer.