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Hewitt-Childress Home - early settlement in Nations/ McCabe Park area

Updated: Sep 28

Corner of 51st Ave. North & Nebraska Ave. Nashville, TN

Circa 1795-1900. 2-story home


Between 1795-1800, Judge Robert Hewitt and Lydia Ann Shute Hewitt (1783-1845) built their homestead. They wed about 1800. Judge Hewitt was a commissioned justice of the peace in 1799 and when the Davidson County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions was created in 1828, he was appointed chairman.


His daughter, Emily D. Hewitt Childress (1800-1844) and husband Edwin Hickman Childress (1791-1865) purchased the home of Emily’s father in 1834 along with 264 acres. They wed in 1817. Edwin was a prosperous lawyer with business interests worth $10,000 and thousands of acres in North Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas as well as stepbrother to John Childress of Rokeby plantation. His sister was Martha Patsy "Mattie" Childress Barrow, wife of Catp. Matt Barrow, both at Barrow's Hill. After Emily died, Edwin remarried to Elmira Reid. The Childress family was a "backyard neighbor" of the Bosleys.


In 1862, Edwin hid family silver and gold on the farm but didn’t tell anyone. In 1887, son-in-law Lemuel H. Davis (1852-1936), who was a real estate agent, sold the farm. Between about 1900-1905, Jesse Fleming Brown (1865-1928) and Carrie Taliaferro Hill Brown (1865-?) owned it. In 1905, it was sold to John Murray DeKnoblough, a horse trader, and his wife Dorothy Adams Huff. Then Robert Walter Fields (?-1924) and Hettie Sanders Griffin Fields (1876-1957) owned it. They wed in 1895. Fields worked for Bush Coal Co.


After Hettie's death, the last owners (likely family members) deeded the property to the city of Nashville, and later it was razed. Metro Social Services established an elderly care program called Richland Village Residential Care with multiple small cottages and an administrative office in the late 1960s/ early 1970s. The program continued until 2002 when it was closed. The area is near Metro Parks McCabe Golf Course. See Rokeby, Barrow's Hill

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