Rutherford County

Rutherford County was created in 1803, from sections of Davidson, Wilson, Williamson, and Sumner counties. The county was named in honor of Griffith Rutherford, an Irish immigrant who served on the council of the Southwest Territory. The county seat is Murfreesboro, home of Middle Tennessee State University and the Stones River National Battlefield. In addition, Rutherford County has many businesses such as General Electric, National Health Corporation, Bridgestone/Firestone, and Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corporation. Rutherford County has twenty-five Century Farms and three of them are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The oldest farm in the county is the Gooch Farm that was established in 1805. For more information regarding Rutherford County, please go to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture website.

Batey Farm

John L. Batey

In 1807 James Bass of Virginia purchased 1200 acres of land and founded one of the oldest century farms in the county.  Though he later sold around half of this acreage, he produced primarily cotton and corn and firmly established a tradition of family farming in Rutherford County that is now nearly 200 years old. James Bass, Jr. inherited the farm from his father in 1827 and he and his wife Eliza had thirteen children.  The years of the Civil War had a profound effect on all of the county’s residents, but for the Bass family the time was especially hard.  Four of their sons fought in the conflict and two were killed.

In 1930, the great great grandson of James Bass, John L. Batey, Sr., acquired 261 acres of the original farmstead.  Increasing the farm to over 500 acres, he and his wife raised beef cattle, swine, operated a diary, and grew hay, corn, and wheat.  Their son John L. Batey, Jr. worked the farm in partnership with his parents for a number of years and is the current owner.  He and his wife Melissa  produce beef cattle, swine, corn, wheat, soybeans, and hay on 483 acres.  Their daughter Katherine and her husband Brandon Whitt live in the nineteenth century dwelling, part of which dates to 1812.

Photo: This house on the Batey Farm was built in 1903.

Bennett Place

Don Click

Southwest of Murfreesboro in the Mt. Vernon community is the Bennett Place Farm which was established in 1819 by Drury and Elizabeth Manier Bennett.  On 500 acres the Bennetts built a log house and began to plant corn, wheat, and to raise livestock. Drury was a charter member of the Harpeth Baptist Church. The house and a number of outbuildings remain from these pre-Civil War years.

Stephen and Sarah Brown Bennett obtained 400 acres about 1870. They had twelve children and raised livestock as well as grains, hay, tobacco, corn, and fruit. Stephen and R. G. Owen established the Mt. Vernon community church and school.  The Bennetts were the first in the community to own a sewing machine and cook stove.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Devereaux Jarrett Bennett received 81 acres of the farm founded by his grandparents. He married Mollie Owen in 1897 and they were the parents of seven children.  A progressive farmer, Bennett was a beekeeper and, in addition to producing honey, he raised sheep, goats, cattle, mules, wheat, corn, and tobacco. He also contributed to the World War I food program by increasing production.

Ruby Bennett Marchetti, great granddaughter of the founders, inherited 144 acres.  In 1976 her brother Freeland Bennett was raising corn, tobacco, and cattle on the property. Marchetti’s grandson Don Click is the current owner of Bennett Place. 

Photo: Photographed in 1992, the nineteenth century one-story house with Greek Revival porch incorporates an earlier log structure in the kitchen.

Butler Farm

James Butler, Sr.

Located east of Murfreesboro on the Old Woodbury Highway is the Butler Farm.  Although the exact founding date is unknown, census records indicate that Josiah Butler owned the property by 1880.  Married to Martha Lillard Butler, they had seven children. On the 26 acres, the family raised corn, cotton and vegetables. In 1889, Josiah purchased more acreage that would eventually be used as the family cemetery. 

            Josiah’s and Martha’s oldest son, Perry, was the next generation to own the farm. Perry married Alice Henderson Butler and they had ten children. According to the family, Alice was the daughter or Isaac and Lavinia Henderson, two former slaves of Rutherford County Judge Logan Henderson.  Henderson owned the historic property known as “Farmington” located on the Manchester Pike.  During their ownership, Perry and Alice founded a school and a church on the property. The family raised vegetables, cotton, horses, cattle, chickens and goats.

            The third owner of the farm was Perry’s and Alice’s son, Oscar Alfonzo Butler. Oscar and his wife Annie Bell Spain Butler had four children. Their names were Elizabeth, Oscar Perry, Sr., Alice and James. In addition to raising a family, his son reports that he was also a seller of moonshine. During their ownership, Woodbury Road was constructed and as a result of the highway, two rock quarries were formed on the land.

The current owner of the farm is James Butler, Sr.  James married Dolores Williams of Murfreesboro and the couple had eight children.  In addition to managing the farm, James is a veteran of World War II and has also been an active member in the community by serving as a Mason, a  Shriner, a board member of the St. Clair Senior Center and a colunteer at the Room at the Inn shelter. Today, James still works the land that produces goats, vegetables, Black Angus cattle and hay.  A barn, the family cemetery and a farm house still stand on the property.

Caff-E-Hill Farm

Jack Scott Caffey, Sr.

Located nine miles east of Murfreesboro, the 334 acre farm established in 1859 by James Newton and Mary Youree Caffey has been a diverse operation for most of its nearly 145 years. The founders and their five children, in addition to raising corn, hay, wheat, and livestock, owned a community blacksmith shop which began a tradition of selling tools and horseshoes.

The farm’s second owner was their son Samuel G. M. Caffey.  He married Virginia B. Caffey and their four children were Talmadge, Sercy, Addie, and Sammie Mae.  This generation raised corn, hay, wheat, swine, sheep, and cattle on their 135 acres.  Talmadge married Willie Dee Herrod and with their son Jack Scott Caffey, they made many improvements to the property.  They also added a cabinet and antique refinishing shop and Jack began managing a dairy herd in 1948.

Jack Scott Caffey, Sr. inherited the family businesses along with the farm in 1980.  He and his wife Betty Perry have five children.  Jack, Sr. and sons Van Russell and Jack Scott, Jr. produce corn, hay, grains, swine, and dairy products on 335 acres. Three mid-nineteenth century buildings, the smokehouse, wheat house, and chicken house, are still in use on the farm.  Jack Scott Caffey III helps manage one of the few remaining family-owned dairy herds in middle Tennessee.  Caff-E-Hill Farms is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Photo: A lone dairy cow  continues feeding after the rest of the herd has moved on.

Castlewood Farm

Mr. and Mrs. James Brevard Haynes
James Brevard Haynes, Jr.
Sam Miller Haynes

In 1889 James M. Haynes, Sr. purchased a tract of land just north of Murfreesboro on the Lebanon Pike.  On the tract of nearly 400 acres was a house built sometime before 1850 by Marmion Spence, mayor of Murfreesboro from 1834-35.   Based on descriptions of castles in his father’s native Ireland and on that of Norham’s castle in the Sir Walter Scott poem, “Marmion.”  Spence was inspired to build “Castlewood,” a house that was for many years a landmark in the county. 

James Haynes and his wife Miriam and their three children Mary, James, and Brandon made Castlewood their home.  They raised horses, mules, cotton, corn, wheat and hay. Their son James Monroe Haynes was the next owner of the farm and he and his wife Margaret Brevard Haynes were the parents of James Brevard and Charles Duncan Haynes.  This generation added dairy cattle, swine, sheep, poultry, and beef cattle as well as more grains.  For most of the twentieth century, the primary source of income at Castlewood was based on dairy cattle. The farm became a Grade A dairy in the 1920s and from 1940 to 1950, milk and dairy products were sold and delivered with the Castlewood name.  The dairy ceased operating in 1987 with the United States Department of Agriculture dairy herd buy-out program which was intended to reduce the surplus production of milk and stabilize the industry.

James Brevard Haynes, grandson of the founder, acquired the property in 1975.  Mr. and Mrs. Haynes and sons James B. Haynes, Jr. and Sam Miller Haynes made their home on the farm.  In 1982, Castlewood was struck by lightening and burned. A portion of the old house remains along with four cedar log buildings from the nineteenth century including a smokehouse and cabin.  Today, James, Sr. and Sam work the land, which was incorporated into the city limits of Murfreesboro in 1981, and grow beef cattle, alfalfa, wheat, oats, fescue seed, and lespedeza.

Photo: These ruins of “Castlewood” are an impressive remnant of the house built by a former mayor of Murfreesboro before 1850.

Cates Farm

Mary Dee Ready Cates

The Cates farm near Readyville was founded in 1846 by Isaac and Elizabeth McCrary McGill.  The farmhouse was originally a single pen log cabin with a fieldstone chimney.  A two-room gable-front addition was built on to this log cabin around 1890 resulting in the farmhouse still lived in today.

           Mary McGill Becton, an only child, inherited her parents’ farm in 1863.  She and her husband Benjamin Becton purchased another 43 acres.  Mary died in 1886 and Benjamin and second wife Sally Laughlin raised three children on the farm where they produced grains and livestock.  The Bectons donated land for a cemetery for Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church.  Bessie Carnahan Cates, the founder’s great granddaughter, and her husband Joe V. Cates purchased 150 acres in 1912.  During their ownership, they hosted services in their home while a new Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church was built. During World War II, the farm was used for training maneuvers.

            Joe V. Cates, Jr. and Mary Dee Ready Cates obtained the property in 1958 and for many years the family produced grains, vegetables, and livestock.  Mrs. Cates continues to own the property which is managed by her son. 

Photo: This historic photograph, provided by the Cates family, shows the original log cabin that was added to in 1890.

Drake Farm

Marie Drake King
Ed and Gloria Drake Pitts
Shelah Adams

The violence that erupted during Reconstruction came directly to the Drake Farm only a few years after Matthew Drake paid $1,450 for 100 acres in 1857.  Located five miles northeast of Murfreesboro, the property was the home of Drake and wife Sara Randolph and their eight children.  They managed a large herd of swine and also grew cotton and watermelons.  Even though the farm was located on Stones River near the site of the battle, the farm escaped major damage during the Civil War.  But in the years just after the conflict, family history recounts that “carpetbaggers” murdered the founder and “picked the farm clean.”

James K. Drake and his wife Ida Johns were the second generation to own the land and they worked 323 acres raising sheep, cotton, corn, swine, and also watermelons.  The couple had five children and on the death of James, Ida retained control on the farm.  Their son Tom Butler Drake was the next owner and he and his wife Adaline Ingalls Drake continued production of grains, cotton, and livestock on 252 acres.  Tom continued the tradition of growing watermelons which he and Isom Randolph, a black hired hand, sold every summer on the courthouse square for over 50 years.

In 1984, Adaline Ingalls Drake became the owner of the property after Tom’s death.  She and their son Robert managed cattle and harvested hay and corn.  When Adaline died in 1990, the farm was divided into three sections.  One section became the property of Robert and on this part of the farm he and his wife Marie built a log house in 1987. Robert died in 1996 leaving Marie his land.  She and her husband Lindsey King continue to live on the farm.  A second section of the property was inherited by Ed and Gloria Drake Pitts.  The owners of a third parcel were Shelah and Idalee Drake Adams.  When Idalee Adams died in 1993, Shelah Adams became the sole owner of that piece of the property and their youngest daughter Sherry currently lives on that section of the Drake Farm.  Hay and cattle are still grown on the farm.

Photo: Hay and livestock barns, like this one at the Drake Farm, were once a common sight in Rutherford County.

Duggin Farm

James R. Duggin
Margaret Carter Duggin
Carolyn Duggin Waldron

The Duggin Farm on the Bradyville Pike was founded in 1815 by John and Elizabeth Fulks.  They owned 1000 acres and recorded 9 slaves that worked the farm to produce cotton, corn, hay, mules, cattle, and horses.  Around 1820, Fulks directed his slaves in building a log cabin with shake shingles and fieldstone chimney.  As the family grew, the log cabin became a wing to a two-story gable addition.  John Fulks served on the county committee charged with planning an appropriate welcome for former President Andrew Jackson’s visit in 1839 and  was also a delegate to the Democratic State Convention in 1840.

John, the grandson of John and Elizabeth Fulks, and Caroline Gum Fulks acquired the farm in 1875.  They planted corn, cotton, hay, and raised livestock on 750 acres.  In 1900, John T. and Lula Belle Marlin Puckett, the great great grandaughter of the founders, acquired 418 acres of the original farm.  They worked the land for nearly half of the twentieth century before deeding 85 acres to their daughter Elizabeth and her husband Calvin A. Carter in 1947.  With their two daughters the Carters raised cotton, corn, hay, cattle, and horses. 

        In 1972, Margaret Carter and her husband W. C. Duggin obtained 33 acres of her family farm. The Duggins specialized in breeding Registered Black Angus cattle. The farm was jointly deeded to the Duggin’s three sons, Charles, Richard, and James, in 1986. Today James R. Duggin owns 14 acres of the original Fulks land including the farm house; Margaret Carter Duggin owns 9 acres, 5 of which she purchased from Richard Duggin; and Carolyn Duggin Waldron, daughter of Margaret and W. C. and sister of James, owns 10 acres which she obtained from Charles Duggin. The farm is operated as one property and the owners continue the thirty-year tradition of breeding Registered Black Angus cattle.

Elmwood Farm

Nina K. Jackson

Though changes over time have marked Elmwood Farm, located thirteen miles southwest of Murfreesboro in the Rockvale community, it still retains a number of buildings from the late1800s and early 1900s.  Established by Nathan Robert Jackson around 1845, the original farm included 500 acres.  Nathan and his first wife Emma Lee Dawson had nine children and the family produced corn, wheat, hay, beef cattle, and mules.  Jackson owned stock in the Eagleville-Murfreesboro Turnpike, which fronted the farm, in 1859.  Jackson fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

Nathan R. Jackson, Jr. was the second-generation owner and he and his wife Sarah Gardner managed 133 acres.  The Jacksons and their two children made a number of improvements through their years of ownership.   In the early twentieth century they developed a more efficient water system, added electricity and plumbing to the house, and built a sheep barn.  Other crops were hay, grains, and swine.

Nathan R. Jackson III bought 50 acres from his uncle Henry Grady Jackson in 1949. In 1983, he and his wife Nina Kerr inherited the family land.  For twenty years they operated a Grade A Dairy.    In addition to building a dairy barn they expanded the water supply to include the barn and also added the first silo to the farm buildings. They harvested corn, hay, and wheat, and raised swine as well as Angus and Guernsey cattle. After her husband’s death, Nina K. Jackson inherited the farm.  Her brother James T. Kerr, retired U.S. Navy Reserve, manages the operation and continues to raise Black Angus on the farm where a nineteenth century house, barn, log corn crib, smokehouse, well house, and wheat house form the nucleus of the nearly 200 year old farm. Mrs. Jackson, a retired Colonel in the U. S. Army Reserve, was on the nursing faculty at MTSU for fifteen years.  Changes continue to occur with this farming landscape as Highway 99, which fronts Elmwood Farm, is widened.

E.S. Williams Farm

John M. Williams
Robert G. Williams

Rutherford County’s Century Farm families have often donated or sold property on which the county’s school were built.  In 1998, the Williams family sold approximately 100 acres of their farm for the Blackman School complex.  Dating to just after the Civil War, Linneas J. and Fannie Jordan Smith purchased 376 acres five miles west of Murfreesboro. Established on land where the Battle of Stones River had been fought just a few years earlier, one of the farm’s boundaries was the Wilkerson Turnpike (now Manson Pike). On this property was an established black cemetery where slaves had been buried. The Smiths, who had three children, grew cotton as well as grains,   cattle, and swine.  A major cotton producer, the Smiths owned and operated a gin around the turn of the century.

            Ernest Manson Smith inherited a portion of the farm and purchased the remaining part of the farm from his brother and sister in 1901.  He expanded the farm to 700 acres in order to plant more cotton and corn and to raise larger herds of cattle and swine.  Ernest and his wife Eunice Christopher had two children.  Their daughter Ernestine Smith Williams, married to John B. Williams, obtained 273 acres of her family’s land in 1973. Their sons, John Manson (Bubba) and Robert G. (Bob) Williams own and manage the farm today where they raise corn, wheat, soybeans, and cattle.

Photo: This photograph of Mrs. Ernestine Smith Williams making one of her quilts was taken in the 1990s.

Gamewell Farm

Robert L. Gamewell, Jr.
Kitty M. Gamewell
Aleta Gamewell Tuma

Located along the West Fork of Stones River in the Barfield community is the Gamewell Farm which dates to 1884.  In that  year William T. and Nancy Hill Gamewell purchased 140 acres.  Here the Gamewells and their eight children grew cotton, corn, and wheat and raised swine and diary cattle.  Second generation owners, Robert Lee Gamewell and his wife Aleta Deas farmed 240 acres adding tobacco to the farm crops.

        In 1957, the founder’s grandson Robert Lee Gamewell, Jr. acquired 140 acres and, by the 1980s, was farming 310 acres growing beef cattle and hay.  Buildings including the founders’ farmhouse, built in 1884, a Colonial Revival house from 1950, and  barns constructed  in 1920 and 1950 illustrate how this property has changed to meet the needs and farming decisions of the family over the past 120 years. 

Photo: The 1915 barn proudly displays a Century Farm sign.

Gooch Farm

David and Carolyn Gooch
 

David Gooch, born in Virginia in 1763, migrated to middle Tennessee and purchased land in northeastern Williamson County in 1805. In 1818, he purchased an additional 169 acres on the headwaters of Hurricane Creek in both Rutherford  and Williamson Counties.  In time, Gooch and his wife Jane Williams, whom he married  in 1788 in Caswell County, North Carolina, operated a diary and farmed their land that also crossed into Davidson County.  In fact, the three county lines meet in the center of the Gooch Cemetery where the founder and other family members are buried. 

Owen Allen Gooch and his wife Eva carried on the tradition of dairy farming begun by his great grandparents. David Gooch, great great grandson of the founders, acquired 296 acres in 1967. He and his wife Carolyn and their children Kimberly Lucille and David Michael Gooch and his wife Lana also live on the farm where beef cattle and hay are raised.   The Gooch family has completed a history of their Century Farm where, in a rare occurrence and after nearly 200 years, the current owners’ name is the same as his founding ancestor.  

Photo: This tombstone marking the grave of founder David Gooch (1793-1831) is part of the family cemetery that is located where three county lines come together on the Gooch Farm.

Gordon Farm

Charles and Catherine Gordon
    Gilbert and Ginny Gordon

The Gordon Farm, located in the Christiana community, was founded by Alfred While Gordon and his wife Amanda Josephine Rosett Nelson about 1866.  The Gordons, both born in Rutherford County, married in 1860 and were the parents of five children, three of whom survived to adulthood.   Cotton was the primary farm crop in those days, though Amanda Gordon was know for the turkeys that she raised.  The progressive couple also installed the first gas lights, had the first running water in a bathtub, the first telephone, and first radio in the community. The founders are buried in the family cemetery on the farm.

James Petis Gordon, second son of Alfred and Amanda and married to Nettie Jennings,  was involved in the training and breeding horses.  James was also a member of the Tennessee County Court for 18 years, a Road Board member for seven years, and a one term state legislator.  Several generations of the Gordon family have been involved in politics, including current Congressman Bart Gordon.

Photo: The Gordon Farm was featured in Hearthstones: The Story of Rutherford County Homes (1993) and the circa 1870 farm house, remodeled in 1895 is also recognized by APTA.   The current owners of the Gordon Farm are Charles and Catherine Gordon and Gilbert and Ginny Gordon. 

Jernigan Farm

Estate of Raymond Murray Jernigan

The Murray-Jernigan Farm, established in the 1820s by William H. Murray of South Carolina is one of the most intact nineteenth Century Farms in the state.  Around 1850, the family built the two-story white frame I-house. The kitchen, originally built separately, was joined to the house early in the twentieth century. A short distance from the house is the smokehouse where hams and bacon were preserved.  A blacksmith shop and springhouse also date to the mid-1800s. The census of 1850 shows that William owned twenty slaves and his son Hiram another nineteen.  One slave cabin remains today out of ten which were built for the slave families.

Hiram Murray and his son Davis, who was sixteen when he enlisted, both fought for the South during the Civil War. Family history recounts that Matilda Lyon Murray, wife of Hiram and mother of Davis, received a broken arm when she tried to prevent Union soldiers from taking the farm’s mules.  When Davis inherited the farm from his father in 1878, he began raising sheep, turkeys, and goats in addition to traditional livestock herds of cattle and swine. He also planted wheat, cotton, clover, oats, and kept bees.  To support these crops, new buildings were constructed to store grain and house the livestock and raise chickens. 

Davis and his wife Sarah Ann Pinkerton had six children.  Their daughter Mae Belle and grandson Raymond Murray Jernigan came to live on the farm in 1908.  They inherited the farm in 1935.  Raymond became the sole owner of the farm’s 81.5 acres in 1948.  Along with his wife Mary Duggin Jernigan and their two daughters Elaine and Martha, the family produced cattle, swine, corn, and hay on around 156 acres. 

Raymond Jernigan died in 2000 having lived and worked on the farm for nearly the whole of the twentieth century.  Today,  Martha J. Tucker and her family live on the farm and beef cattle, soybeans and hay are raised by Ronald Duggin.  Meredith Ann Tucker, who represents the seventh generation of the family, was married to Kevin Patrum in July 2002  on the lawn of the family homeplace.  The Murray-Jernigan Farm, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been used as an open classroom to teach geography, early settlement, architecture, social studies and it was featured on the television series, An American Moment.

Photo : A milk house on the farm.

Jones Farm

Beverly Randolph Jones
Sally Jones Wall
Carolyn Jones Cook
John Claude Jones, Jr.

Eight miles north of Murfreesboro is the Jones Farm established in 1876 by John L. and Caroline Hood Jones.  The Jones and their six children grew cotton and corn as well as cattle, horses, mules, and swine on 185 acres.  John Hickman Jones inherited the farm and he and his wife Zoa Henderson were the parents of two children.  This second generation grew cotton and corn but livestock was the primary revenue producer.  The third owners of the farm were John Claude, Sr. and Sarah Randolph Jones who had four children. The current owners of the Jones Farm, which originated with their father’s family, are also owners of Riverside Farm, a Century Farm founded by their maternal ancestors.

Photo: pasture on Jones Farm

Lane Farm

Mary K. Batey Lane

Mary K. Batey Lane, descendent of Revolutionary War veteran David Burlason is representative of the many women who have owned and kept their family farm intact through the years.  Two of Rutherford County’s early settlers, David and Ursula Burlason established a farm of 1800 acres seven miles north of Murfreesboro.  Of the Burlason’s eleven children, son Issac inherited land from his parents on which he and wife Julia Barner planted and harvested wheat, corn, and hay.   Isaac died in 1865 and left the farm to his only daughter, Kate Burlason.  Mary K. Batey and J. M. Batey, Jr. received title to 100 acres from Kate B. Talley in 1939.  Seven years later, Joe P. Lane, Mary’s husband, purchased J. M. Batey, Jr.’s share of the family land.  For over fifty years Mary and Joe Lane operated the farm together, raising corn, hay, and beef cattle.

Joe Lane died in 2000 and Mary and their son John B. Lane continue to live on the farm and produce cattle and hay on 106 acres of the original Burlason Farm.  The founder is buried in the family cemetery on the farm that is owned by his great great granddaughter.  

Photo (top right) Beef cattle have long been a major commodity of the Lane Farm, founded by a Revolutionary War Veteran.

Lawrence Farm

Thomas G. Lawrence

Nearly 130 years after it was founded,  Thomas G. Lawrence acquired the farm established by his great-grandfather John Devereaux Lawrence in the Barfield community.  John D. Lawrence was married to Mary Jane Crockett, daughter of Granville S. Crockett who was a Democratic activist and county sheriff in 1832.   The couple had 10 children and their daughter Rebecca and her husband Archer Wood acquired 58 acres in 1900.  Hardy Thomas Lawrence and William Granville Lawrence, grandsons of the founder, purchased 58 acres in the 1930s and produced corn, cotton, and hay.

Thomas G. Lawrence and his wife Robbie Hoover Lawrence and their daughter Diana live on the family farm, now totaling over 200 acres, where they grow hay as well as goats, swine, burros, and cattle.  The farmhouse is a two-pen log building with loft and fieldstone chimneys at either end.  Over the years the logs were covered with clapboard and a Greek Revival portico was added to the front of the house. There is also a log outbuilding on the property which family tradition maintains was slave quarters.  Both of these buildings date to the time of the founder of the Lawrence Farm.

Photo (Top Left): A historic photograph, supplied by the Lawrence Family.

Photo (Top Right): A present day photo of the Lawrence Farm house.

Marlin Farm

Harry Whitehead Marlin, Jr.
Raleigh William Marlin
Linda Joyce Lynch

Philip Marlin was a soldier under Andrew Jackson’s command during the War of 1812. Some time after that adventure and prior to 1829, Marlin and Elizabeth Mayfield Prater established a farm on 324.5 acres and produced sheep, swine, flax, corn, and cattle. Marlin also set aside property for a family cemetery. 

Monroe Prater Marlin inherited his parents’ farm in 1845.  He donated land for the construction of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church and subsequently established a second burying ground for the Prater family.  Monroe married three times and fathered eight children.  For market he produced cotton, wheat, horses, and mules.  In 1909, Addie F. Marlin inherited a portion of her father’s land and purchased the shares of her siblings.  She produced cattle and hay.

In 1950, Harry Whitehead Marlin, the great grandson of the founders, inherited a portion of his mother’s land and purchased the share owned by his sister Pearl (Mrs. William Hoyt) Smith. For more than three decades, Harry and his son Raleigh Marlin were major livestock producers in the county.  When Harry died in 1983, his widow inherited the farm. In 2001, Harry W. Marlin, Jr., Raleigh Marlin, and Linda Joyce Marlin Lynch inherited the 229-acre farm following their mother’s death.

Murray Farm

Howard and Margaret Murray Jones

The Murray Farm in the Bradyville community is one of two Century Farms that originated with William H. Murray of South Carolina in the 1820s. In 1935, Thomas Blackburn Murray, great grandson of the founder, acquired 158 acres of family land. A progressive farmer, he belonged to the Farm Bureau and raised cattle, mules, swine, hay, corn, cotton, and sorghum.  Thomas and his wife Kate Dill were active in the community the parents of James, Sara, and Margaret.  The children jointly inherited the farm in 1975 and James managed the operation which produced hay, corn, cattle, and swine. 

At the death of Sara Murray in 2001, Margaret Murray Jones inherited the farm which included about 30 acres of the original Murray Farm.  On this and an additional 60 acres, Margaret’s husband Howard Jones and their son Thomas grow hay and vegetables and manage herds of cows and calves. The remodeled farmhouse is home to Thomas and his wife Robin.  The Murray family cemetery is located on this farm.

Photo (top right) Acres of pasture support the cattle grown on the Murray Farm.

Riverside Farm

Beverly Randolph Jones
Sally Jones Wall
Carolyn Jones Cook
John Claude Jones, Jr.
Beth Snow O’Brien
George Randolph Snow
John Claude Jones III

Beverly Randolph grew up on a farm in the Walter Hill community that his father and mother, Beverly and Lucy Searcy Randolph had inherited from her parents after their marriage in 1818.  The elder Randolph was elected to the Rutherford County Court and served from 1840 until 1866. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the younger Beverly Randolph enlisted in the Forty-fifth Tennessee Infantry. While fighting at the Battle of Stones River, not far from his home, he was captured and spent sixteen months in the Federal prison at Camp Morton, Indiana.

On returning to Rutherford County in 1865, he married Elizabeth C. Wade.   In 1871, they purchased nearly 600 acres of land and built a home, Riverside, in the popular I-house style.  Beverly Randolph succeeded his father and sat on the county court for 24 years. Beverly and Elizabeth had six children and their land supported cotton and corn crops and herds of swine and cattle.  Their son, John Beverly Randolph was the second generation owner of Riverside.  He and his wife Alice Fletcher and their three children established a dairy business and grew cotton and grains. John Beverly Randolph continued the family tradition by serving in the county court from 1912 to 1959.

In 1966, Sarah Randolph Jones, the granddaughter of the founders, acquired 500 acres.  She and her husband John Claude Jones, Sr. continued to farm the land and additional acreage on which they produced corn, hay, soybeans, and cattle. For many years, they also ran an antique business at Riverside.  Beverly Randolph Jones now owns 15 acres and lives in the historic home on Jefferson Pike. T he remaining acreage is owned by his siblings and the great great grandchildren of the founders.  Cattle and hay continue to be grown at Riverside Farm. 

In June of 2003, descendents of James and Jenny Randolph, slaves who belonged to Beverly Randolph, gathered at Riverside.  The reunion brought together people from Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio, as well as Tennessee, to tour the plantation, learn about its history and share stories passed down through the generations of both white and black Randolphs who trace their roots to Rutherford County. 

Photo (center left) 19^th Century log cabin on the  farm.

Sanders Farm

The Sanders Family

In 1869, Robert Andrew and Florence McLean Smith built their home in the middle of 370 acres of land on Armstrong Valley Road, three miles south of Salem.  Interested in new livestock breeds, Smith raised prize-winning short horn cattle, sheep, and swine and also grew cotton, wheat, corn, and hay.  The couple had ten children; seven reached adulthood.  Clifford, Dana, Neva, and Missie, four of their children, managed the farm after their father’s death, adding the breeding of Hereford cattle and growing alfalfa to the farm’s program.

Robert Smith Sanders, the founder’s grandson, inherited one-fourth of the farm and purchased the balance of the 370-acre farm from relatives in 1966. Sanders managed the sheep and lamb production until 1972 and grazed stocker steers until 1996.    Dr. Sanders and his wife Patricia Pelot Sanders raised their two children, Robert Smith Sanders, Jr. and Priscilla Pelot Sanders, on the farm. Trained as a pediatrician, Sanders was director of the Rutherford County Health Department from 1969 to 1991. In 1975 he began a campaign for child restraints in automobiles which resulted in Tennessee becoming the first state in the nation to enact a Child Restraint Law.  Known as "Dr. Seatbelt" for his pioneering efforts, Dr. Sanders died in 2006.  Several of the farm’s nineteenth century buildings remain including the 1869 farm house, a log cabin, a smokehouse, log corn rib, and an enclosed log barn. The Sanders Farm is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Smiths’ Farm

 Rebecca Smith
Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Howard Smith
Mr and Mrs. Charles Burton Smith
Mr. and Mrs. James Howard Smith

Another farm that dates to the period of Reconstruction is the Smiths’ Farm southeast of Murfreesboro.  It was 1871 when Alexander T. and Lou Ott Smith purchased 150 acres in the Dilton community. The Smiths, who were the parents of four children, planted corn, cotton, wheat and clover.  In 1882, Alexander Smith gave an acre of land for the Oaklands School.  Following her husband’s death that same year, Lou Ott Smith raised their children, continued farming with the help of hired hands, and finished paying for the farm. She donated timber from the farm for the construction of the Dilton Church of Christ which was built on land given by the Dill family for whom the community is named.

Ernest Lillian Smith inherited a part of the farm from his mother and purchased his sisters’ shares between 1903 and 1904.  On 150 acres he and his wife Annie Harrell and their two sons William Hoyt and Ernest Howard Smith produced wheat, cotton, corn, hay, cattle, and swine.  The two brothers inherited the farm in 1958 with William Hoyt receiving 90 acres and Ernest Howard receiving 60 acres. Ernest Howard and his wife Bright Brandon Smith made the 1883 house their home and still live there today. Both are 93 years old.  Their sons Charles Burton and James Howard own small acreages of the original family farm and their father retains 53 acres.  Rebecca Smith, daughter of William Hoyt Smith who died in 1997, owns  87 acres.  She rents her part to Charles and James Howard Smith who raise, hay, cattle, and vegetables.

Photo:  Cotton was an annual crop on the Smiths’ Farm for decades.

Sugg Farm

Mary Alice Sugg Holden

James H. Grant, a native of Maine, was the civil engineer who supervised the building of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, the state and county’s  first completed railroad. In 1853, he bought 150 acres of land in the community he is credited with naming Christiana.  Here Grant built a farmhouse in the Gothic Revival style, a design rarely seen in Rutherford County.  Elizabeth Sherbrooke who came from Syracuse, New York to teach French at Soule College in Murfreesboro, married Grant in 1857.  During the Civil War, the Grants remained staunch Unionists though family tradition recounts stories of wounded soldiers from both armies who found food and shelter on the farm.

Alice Grant, daughter of James and Elizabeth Sherbrook Grant acquired the property after her parents’ deaths.  Alice and her husband Jesse  F. Sugg owned and operated a dairy and raised beef cattle and grains on the farm from the 1870s until 1945.  The Suggs had five children and their son Jesse and his wife Estelle obtained 45 acres in 1945 and continued to produce beef cattle and hay.  Their daughter Alice Sugg Holden has lived on the farm for over 40 years. Jack Sugg Holden owns the cattle that graze on the farm today and helps his mother to “look after the place” that is a landmark in the railroad town of Christiana.

Photo (bottom left) The Sugg farmhouse has elements of the Gothic Revival Style in its exterior gable.

Tarpley Farm

Thomas Madison Tarpley, Jr. and Jane Matthews Tarpley

On West Jefferson Pike is the Tarpley Farm that was established in 1871 by Anderson Searcy. The beautifully proportioned I- house with its Greek Revival portico dates to this time when it was the center of a farm of 105 acres.  A. J. Matthews, Searcy’s son-in-law, became the next owner.  After working the land for over 30 years, he willed the land to G. C. Matthew, the founder’s grandson, in 1936.  Just four years later, the farm became the property of another grandson, Epps Edwin Matthews.  Though the property was bought just a short time later by his sister, Erline Matthews Erwin, ownership of the farm returned to Epps and his wife Sara Ridley Matthews in 1948.

In 1952, the farm became the property of Jane Matthews Tarpley and her husband Thomas Tarpley, Jr.   For the next fifty years, they made their home in the house built by Jane’s great grandparents.  A buggy house, milk house, well house, cook’s house, and barn also remain on the property.  With the help of Epps Matthew, Jr., they raised wheat and soybeans.  In 2003, Mrs. Tarpley reported they have ceased most of the farm’s operations and she and her husband have moved to Murfreesboro.  The house is rented and she is hopeful that “some one will like the place and would like to make it their permanent home.” 

Photo: Tarpley farmhouse.

Thomas Jackson Farm

Thomas Fowler Jackson Sr.

In 1811, Francis Marion Jackson and wife Elizabeth Worsham Childress, both Virginians, came to Rutherford County to establish a farm and home. On 5,000 acres located between Versailles and Rockvale, the Jacksons and their 11 children produced cotton, corn, and wheat, and supported cattle, chickens, hay, and mules.

Among the couple’s children was Francis M. Jackson II who became the next owner of the land in 1836. He and his wife Elizabeth Hale were the parents of 13 children. The large family produced a variety of crops and raised livestock including cattle, chickens, hogs, and mules. In 1861, their son, Francis Jackson III, was a 1^st Lt. in Company “A” 24th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteers, organized by his cousin, John C. Jackson.   

Francis succeeded his cousin as captain of the company and was in battles at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro and Chickamauga. He returned to his home after 1865 and began the process of bringing the land back into production. Following his death in 1901, his second wife, Anna, managed the large farm and reared five children. Three of these children, Grover, Richard and Carmine, acquired the property in 1952.  

The son of Grover and Velera Todd Jackson, Thomas Fowler Jackson Sr. acquired the farm in 1982. Today, he and son Thomas F. Jackson Jr. work and manage their 200-acre farm, where they produce tobacco, hay, wheat, corn, and beef cattle.  A primary family house, built by Francis Marion Jackson II, loom house, smoke house, hay barn, and a cook’s cabin still stand on the property, which is among the oldest and best-documented of Rutherford County’s historic Century Farms, Hankins says.  

Wild Acres Farm

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce H. Werme

About 1825, William N. and  Mariah Hoover Malone moved into a log house on 426 acres which was purchased from land grant settler William Smith.  As the family grew and prospered, a new house was built in 1835 which incorporated the log dwelling as a rear ell.   Malone owned a cotton gin which processed his crop, grown with the help of slaves, and that of his neighbors.  When he died in 1847, the founder of the farm left 350 acres, the house, and gin to his wife and their son, Thomas.  In 1898, Thomas, who never married, sold 123 cares and the house to his niece, Bettie Malone and her husband Robert  Hatton Henderson.  The Hendersons and their ten children lived in the house and raised cattle, grain, fruit trees, and sold cedar lumber.  The family donated three acres for the construction of Powell’s Chapel Baptist Church in 1921.  The U. S. Army trained troops on the farm in World War II.

Following Robert Henderson’s death in 1943, his seven surviving children  acquired the property and Laddie Peyton and wife, Ollie May Lahew Henderson, moved into the house and worked 157 acres for almost forty years.  Laddie and his son Dayton raised registered white face Herefords, poultry, sheep, and grains on the land they called “Cave Spring Farm.”  After the death of Laddie in 1979, Aste Werme, a direct descendent of the founders, and her husband Bruce acquired the farmhouse and 69 acres at auction in 1980.  The Wermes renamed the farm “Wild Acres Farm” after her grandfather’s farm of the same name located on the Cumberland River.   Making a home in the nineteenth century house for their four children -- Amanda, Annelise, David, and Adam -- the Wermes continued to raise Herefords and poultry. Today, Bruce and Asta continue to own the farm even though the property has been divided among their children. David and Adam have their homes on 5 acres of the family land.  The Wermes are justifiably proud that their children  “represent the 7^th generation of continuous occupancy” on the farm founded by their ancestors over 178 years ago. 

Photo (top left) The farm house incorporated a 1825 log house into its rear ell.