Waverly Place was the home of Col. Albigence Waldo (A.W.) Putnam (1799-1869) and Cornelia Virginia Sevier Putnam (1816-1846). It is unclear when Waverly Place was built.
They married in 1834. Putnam was a well-established lawyer/ banker in Port Gibson, Miss and a director of First Bank of Mississippi. Cornelia was the granddaughter of pioneer/ founder/ First Governor of Tennessee John Sevier. Col. His first wife was her sister Catherine Sherrill Sevier Putnam (1808-1833) whom he wed in 1825.
With that marriage, Putnam and Cornelia moved up to Nashville where initially they first purchased in 1836 the William H. White home. Three years later, in 1839, the Putnams bought the home and estate they named Waverly Place. located near the Eighth Ave South area on Benton Ave. It was the southern portion of the Woods brothers (Joe and Robert) adjoining plantations - Woodstock and Westwood. Robert's first home, Belle Vue, was directly across from Waverly Place. The Woods brothers had a total of 3,500 acres between Franklin and Nolensville Rds.
Col. Putnan named the home and plantation Waverly Place. The name Waverly Place came from a novel by Sir Walter Scott.{In addition, Col. Putnam was a Marietta, OH native and evidently planned to return to Marietta after his first marriage "to a southern bride." He had a mansion, Larchmont, built there, but never moved it.]
Putnam was a lawyer, a writer (A History of Tennessee), a founder of the Tennessee Historical Society and authority on James Robertson. In the late 1850s, Col. Putnam was president of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturing Co. Julia Chambers Putnam (1830-1906) married William O’Neil Perkins in 1885. Perkins’ family had owned Winstead House. He inherited it, but subsequently sold the home because the maintenance costs were too high.
About a decade later, Cornelia died, and Col. Putnam remarried to Mary Walker Edwards Putnam (1820-1858). Mary’s son, (Samuel) Walker Edwards and Josie Cole Edwards lived at Bellwood. Her grandfather was E.W. Cole of Colemere. A couple years after the death of Mary, Col. Putnam lived near Manchester, Tn at his summer home, “Wayside Cottage” from 1862-63. He then returned to Waverly Place.
From 1866-69, Putnam served as the Deputy Collector, U.S. Internal Revenue Collector's Office in Nashville.
About 10 years after the purchase, in the early 1850s, Putnam tried unsuccessfully to subdivide the estate. A few years later, in 1858, he succeeded and sold the farm lands to J. J. Duncan. Duncan planned to create a new neighborhood and tried to arrange new rail transportation access to the south of downtown - a process that took 30 years to get going. After an electric streetcar line was installed in the area, developers began to sell lots after 1888 for the development called Waverly Place, which became a popular streetcar suburb. A syndicate of businessmen, Waverly Land Company, were behind the development who included J.F. Yarborough, Baxter Smith, C.L. Ridley, Percy Warner, J.C. Warner, and J. F. Wheless while the officers were James E. Caldwell and Oscar Noel, Sr.. Van Leer Kirkman of Oak Hill also sold property to develop this project. During the Civil War, Waverly Place mansion was destroyed.
When I-65 was built in the mid-1960s, many of the historic homes were destroyed. The Waverly name is remembered through the neighborhoods of Historic Waverly and Woodland in Waverly. Also, the Tennessee Legislature named Putnam County to honor both Col. Putnam's literary efforts to promote Tennessee history and his relative's efforts in the Revolutionary War, Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam. NRHP 1976 See Bellwood, Colemere, Westwood, Woodstock
Sources:
Jstor schalarly article - Waverly Place
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