Nolensville book project creates a visual history of the town

STEVE HARMAN

COUNTY COMMISSIONER, JOURNALIST PRESENT NOLENSVILLE’S PAST IN PICTURES

BY SUSAN LEATHERS

In a town like Nolensville, where the population has grown threefold since the turn of the 21st century, helping history come alive to those with no institutional knowledge of the place they now call home can help build community.

Historic preservation also grows in importance when so much of what built the town -- farms and agricultural-based enterprises – is quickly disappearing. A new book, Images of America: Nolensville, does just that. After two years of painstaking research, interviews and hunting down more than

900 photographs, authors Beth Lothers and Vicky Travis are excited to spread the word that a project first considered five years ago, has finally made its way to local stores and online retailers. The 127-page, soft-cover book is one of Arcadia Publishing’s popular Images of America series. The series celebrates the history of neighborhoods, towns and cities across the country through vintage photographs and explanatory words.

When the authors started the project, “we had like 20 pictures in our possession,” says Travis, a journalist who has called Nolensville home for close to 25 years. “We knew the book would contain a minimum of 180 photos and thought we’d never be able to find that many.

“It was like following the bread crumbs,” she says of finding photos that illustrated stories they wanted to include and the right people who could share context about specific photos they collected.

Lothers recalls a breakthrough moment at the Nolensville Library when they were researching the 1966 integration of local schools. “We really wanted to speak with someone who was there that day, and in walks Jackie Green,” Lothers says.

Green, it turned out, was a Nolensville School third grader in 1966. Her personal experience and perspective provided answers to the authors’ questions.

They collected, borrowed and scanned over 900 images representing Nolensville’s modern history, which dates back to 1797 when town namesake William Nolen experienced a broken wagon wheel near Mill Creek. Quickly taken with the area, Nolen ultimately decided to claim 120 nearby acres of a Revolutionary War land grant.

The book includes historic maps and drawings to illustrate stories before photography became commonplace in the late-1800s.

“The hardest part was deciding what photos stayed and what didn’t,” Travis says. In the end, 240 photos made the cut. The sixchapter book begins with “Settler Stories” which introduce the town’s earliest residents and ends with “Coming Together,’ about its churches, parks and schools.

Another difficult decision was deciding what photo would be featured on the sepiatoned cover. In the end, an image of former Nolensville Co-operative Creamery and the local farmers who owned it was selected.

Travis hopes readers will find the photobased history accessible, entertaining and educational. Lothers says the experience has made her appreciate the past every day.

“I don’t turn on a faucet without thinking of the early artesian wells. I don’t grumble as much about a pothole, thinking of the rough, holed earth that was called a road with a toll gate. I don’t worry as much about school rezoning, when I recall the one-room classrooms that burned and the tent students met under while the locals assembled a school. “History provides perspective.” Images of America: Nolensville (Arcadia Publishing, March 11,2019, $21.99) is available at local stores and from online booksellers.

Six of the authors' favorite stories from "Images of America: Nolensville"

Asking Beth Lothers and Vicky Travis to pick their favorite stories discovered when researching Images of America: Nolensville was like asking a parent to pick his or her favorite child. But in the end, each came up with three. Here they are:

The Butter Story (page 40): In 1921, local dairy farmers formed the Nolensville Co-Operative Creamery. Its slogan was “Better Cream made into better butter.” It operated until 1957. “You don’t think about those folks as businessmen. They made this massive business that benefited hundreds of families,” Travis said. An accomplished woman (pages 22-23): If educator Elmer Sherwood Jenkins – greatgreat-grandson of settler Green Jenkins -- had not traveled to Mississippi in the early 1900s, he would not have met and married Minnie Alice Mauldin, a gentlewoman and accomplished artist.

“(She) left family and all that she knew for a rustic Nolensville that must have felt like the wild frontier,” Lothers says. “She brought her genteel roots, grace and painting, and was part of the fabric of what Nolensville would become.”

Meet the real Sam Donald (page 33-34): Countless vehicles have traveled Sam Donald Road but few know the story behind its namesake. Maj. Donald was one of the longest-held POWs in World War II. An Army chaplain, he survived the 125-mile Bataan Death March. He conducted more than 2,700 services for Americans who died by starvation or bayonet while imprisoned.

“So many times he should have died -- but he didn’t,” Travis says. After the war, he and his wife bought a farm in Nolensville and became active members of the community. “He took tragedy and moved on from it.” Nothing civil about war here (pages 26- 29): Nolensville was not a Civil War battle site but the war left many scars and stories of survival on and among its residents.

“Everyone suffered,” Lothers says. “The differences that separated sides, by ideology or skin color, came down to being similar in the quest to survive. Those at the end of war, from both sides, who turned their suffering into empathy for, and service unto, others, were the most inspiring of all.” Integration done right (page 126): In March 1967, about 50 Nolensville school children were invited to meet President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson at the dedication of Columbia State Community College to celebrate the town’s smooth integration of its schools. The school was rewarded with a new set of encyclopedias.

“Integration went smoother here than almost anywhere,” Travis says, explaining that being a small town, citizens young and old already worked and played together. Grandfathers of both black and white students gath

Beth Lothers and Vicyy Travis collected more than 900 vintage photos of Nolensville.

COURTESY OF KENT TRAVIS

ered at the school to make sure no one from outside the town disturbed the peace. World War II close to home (page 31): From 1941 to 1944, some 850,000 soldiers practiced military maneuvers in Middle Tennessee. Tanks traveled Nolensville Road before turning to practice military maneuvers in the woods between Kidd and Rocky Fork roads.

“I had always grown up thinking of WWII as something that happened far away,” says Lothers. “Thinking of Army tanks maneuvering in small-town Nolensville preparing for battle, or German POWs working local fields during the day before heading south to their prison camp, has made even that war more local and personal to me.”

Author ponders the history that surrounds us

While journaling through the process of compiling the stories and photos for Images of America: Nolensville, co-author Beth Lothers penned this entry:

Where do you find the history of a town? What shadows of the past can come into clear view? What structures still remain?

Does one look to the creek that still winds its way through the rocky, grassy banks, running high or low, a moving mirror for faces to peer into, feet to wade in, arms to splash in, fishing lines dropped to its depth while cows plod surefooted to cool in the heat of a day? Does one look at the largest and oldest of trees, with roots spread wide and deep … the one spared for shade and cover, for climbing, or for hiding, or to be used as a perch for the enjoyment of a distant view or for survival as a Native American scout or Confederate spy?

Does one look to the Native American trail that became a dusty stagecoach surface, then a toll road before becoming a paved highway? There are bones in the ground, graves marked and unmarked, pioneer plots, slave graves, family cemeteries with rock walls and iron gates, and tombstones in cemeteries white and black. There are buried secrets and stories and dreams … how they came, why they stayed or left, or for some, why they returned. Rare fading photographs hint at their substance and will to survive, organize, and create commerce while building places to gather for worship, education and recreation. Even the photographs of faces without names, tells part of the story, of a town. > Beth Lothers, Author, past Nolensville Mayor, current Williamson County Commissioner