Lets Talk About The Women Who Inspire Us
Leading Ladies of Rutherford County History
This list of influential Rutherford County women was developed in 2019-2020 in order to give voice to a diverse, representational selection of women who have gone before us and shaped our history and culture.Dr. June S. Anderson
Ruth Bowdoin
Innovative pre-school educator and first dean of education at MTSU; created Classroom on Wheels and developed the “Bowdoin Method”; Bellwood-Bowdoin School in Murfreesboro named after her
Image courtesy Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU
Kate Carney
Kept illuminating diary during the Civil War years of 1861-1862; attended Soule College and later taught there; married the father of one of her students, and the family lived in Clarksville and Nashville
Image courtesy Lee Emerson
Priscilla (Prisy) Carney
Enslaved woman who supported the Union cause during the Civil War and then made the transition to freedom; by 1880, widowed and working as a cook for Mary Carney Wilson and her family in Nashville.
Sarah Spence DeBow
Suffragist who wrote the "History of the Case," pamphlet about local women lobbying Sen. Andrew Todd of Murfreesboro to support women’s suffrage; made sure the Methodist Church’s bell was rung in celebration of ratification of the 19th Amendment; married Judge J.D.B. DeBow in about 1920 and moved to Nashville
Image courtesy Linebaugh Public Library
Will Allen Dromgoole
Local-color writer, editor, and renowned orator; published her first novel in 1886; columnist and then literary editor of the Nashville Banner; named poet laureate by the Poetry Society of the South in 1930; wrote in support of women’s suffrage in Jan. 30, 1910, the Nashville Tennessean; believed to be first woman to serve as a yeomanry warrant officer for the U.S. Navy
Image courtesy Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU
Maud Ferguson
Red Cross public health nurse who wrote “Pioneer Nursing in Tennessee,” a 1955 account of the establishment of public health nursing in Rutherford County during the 1920s (she was the second such nurse and lived at the Woman’s Club); she had the idea for the county to partner with the Commonwealth Fund of New York; the resulting Rutherford Health Department was the first of its kind in any rural county in the U.S.
Image courtesy Linebaugh Public Library
Amanda Josephine Rosett Nelson Gordon
Owned farm in Christiana with her husband, Alfred White Gordon, beginning in 1866; they had 5 children, 3 of whom lived to adulthood; she raised turkeys to sell; former U.S. Congressman Bart Gordon is great-great-grandson.
Image courtesy Bart Gordon
Lillian Jordan Hammons
Inspiring teacher for more than 50 years in Rutherford County; founded the Bradley Nursery School, which later included a kindergarten; belonged to Criterion Club (African American women’s group); daughters had impact on education at Oakland High School and in Metro Nashville schools
Image courtesy Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center
Christine Huddleston
Influential community activist; first woman elected to Rutherford County Commission; founder of Room at the Inn homeless shelter in Murfreesboro; worked for 40 years at Murfreesboro Credit Bureau; married to Clyde William Huddleston (mail carrier at Lascassas Post Office)
Image courtesy Linebaugh Public Library
Annie Brawley Jackson
Suffragist who served as secretary of Murfreesboro suffrage society organized in 1914; assisted Sue Shelton White and the National Woman’s Party at its campaign headquarters during the 1920 ratification effort in Nashville; she was a freight clerk in Murfreesboro and her husband, Walter Cobb Jackson, was a freight agent
Image courtesy Linebaugh Public Library
Rose Culotta Meshotto
Ran the Busy Bee Cafe with husband Dominick Meshotto after they married in 1937 until it closed in 1946; daughter of Italian immigrants who had settled in Philadelphia and later lived in Birmingham; Meshotto family later had another restaurant called Dominick’s Place
Image courtesy Albert Gore Research Center
Adeline King
Smyrna writer and journalist; wrote fiction and plays; known for The Smyrna Bulletin written during WWII
Image courtesy Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU
Mariah
As an enslaved girl at age 12, she worked as a lady’s maid for Sarah Polk right after her marriage to James K. Polk in 1824; when sent back to Murfreesboro from Columbia to be sold the next year, she escaped back to Columbia, and James Polk purchased her from the Childress family’s creditors; she became an expert weaver; married and had a son; died on the Polks’ Mississippi plantationLucy Burke Maney
Formerly enslaved woman who made the transition to freedom in Murfreesboro; in 1869, married David Maney, one of first the deacons at First Baptist Church who worked on the railroad and later as a blacksmith; Lucy raised at least two children, kept house, and later washed and ironed as her occupationSarah McKelley King
Local preservationist and political activist; played key role in the preservation of the Rutherford County Courthouse and Oaklands Mansion; first Tennessean elected president general of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution; member of Charity Circle; related by marriage to Adeline King
Image courtesy Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU
Myrtle Glanton Lord
Renowned teacher and community activist; graduate of Bradley Academy; taught at Little Hope in Smyrna, Bradley, and Hobgood; served on Bradley Museum Board; named Tennessee’s Most Outstanding African American Woman in 1999; the library at Patterson Park Community Center is named for her
Image courtesy Mary Watkins (from Rev. Melvin E. Hughes, A History of Rutherford County’s African American Community (1996))
Mary Noailles Murfree
Local-color writer known as Charles Egbert Craddock; also penned post-Civil War novel about the aftermath of the Battle of Stones River, Where the Battle Was Fought (1884); Craddock Study Club, named after her; Woman’s Club has her writing desk.
Image courtesy Rutherford County Archives
Willie Betty Newman
Artist who attended Soule College; grew up in Rucker-Betty-LaRoche House; studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the Julian Academy in Paris; established a short-lived art school in Nashville and also taught students privately; against women’s suffrage; received the Parthenon medal from the Nashville Museum of Art
Image courtesy Tennessee State Library and Archives
Mary Kate Patterson
Confederate spy and friend of Sam Davis (later married his brother, John); lived in La Vergne most of her life; first woman buried in Confederate Circle in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Nashville; cousin of Amanda Gordon
Image courtesy MTSU Center for Historic Preservation
Sarah Childress Polk
Emma G. Rogers Robert
First African American principal in Murfreesboro City Schools (Bradley Academy); first African American educator elected to Tennessee Teachers Hall of Fame in 1995; member of Criterion Club; adviser to Be Natural Social Club at Holloway High in mid-1940s
Image courtesy Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center
Nannie G. Rucker
Mary C. Scales
Lottie Sublett
Mary Ellen Vaughn
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