Salemtown Was Once McGavock Farmland

I spent some time this afternoon in the Metro Archives in Green Hills. I braved Green Hills Gridlock in order to attempt to hunt down some historical information on Morgan Park.

One of the sideshows of this little project that I am embarked on has been to find out interesting information about secondary subjects like the area now known as Salemtown. For instance, I found out that the neighborhood now called Salemtown was subdivided from a farm originally owned by Dr. David T. McGavock, who was one of the titans of horse racing in the early 19th Century.

According to the December 22, 1929 Nashville Banner, McGavock's farm stretched from the top of the hill upon which now sits St. Cecilia Motherhouse to a point south of what is now Morgan Park. What would become Werthan Lofts was farmland for well more than half of the 19th Century. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War the McGavock farm was subdivided by "promoters," who declared that the area was "the most advantageous and coming residential sections of the city."

Some of us still feel that way some 140 years later.