This is a story about my Mama, Lola Mae Steele Oeser, and a story about an old house that was lost to urban renewal. Mama grew up in East Nashville and moved to Northeast Nashville after she married Daddy. Except for a few years spent in Inglewood, she never lived more than three miles from the place she was born. Our East Nashville roots run deep. William Sanders Hunt, Mama's great-grandfather was living in Edgefield as early as 1855, long before it came to be known as East Nashville. He was the first generation of the family in East Nashville. My sister's granddaughter is the seventh generation to live in East Nashville. Most of our family stories are centered in East Nashville and this one is no different.
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| Lola Mae Steele Oeser, 1919-1983, |
The spot where the Exxon station sits, on the southwest corner of Shelby Avenue, near the Titan's Stadium, has a special meaning to our family. Anytime we would drive past with Mama in the car, she would point to an empty graveled lot, west of the station and say, "That's where I was born." I have to confess, being young and occupied with other things, I didn't ask questions or think about it much.
After Mama died, in 1983, all of the questions I should have asked about the past, came
at me. I found a
copy of Mama's birth certificate among her papers and noted that she was born
at 227 Shelby Avenue which fit with the place she had pointed out. Within a few years
of her passing I was researching in earnest at Metro Nashville Archives, for
any family information I could find. I
looked in city directories to see who lived at that address over the years and
made notes. I found a photo at the
archives made during construction of the Shelby Avenue Bridge that had Shelby Avenue
and East Nashville in the background. I zoomed in on that area and did a high
res scan and could see several houses on Shelby.
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| Shelby Avenue, 1910. House on extreme right is the Harvey Campbell home, 227 Shelby Avenue. |
That is about as far as it went, until one day, while looking at Marty
Evan's Historic Nashville website, I found a photo of an old house on Shelby
Avenue. When I compared Marty's images
to my scan, the houses matched. Marty
had titled the photos as "Guzze House Shelby Avenue." I began my search for the original owner of
the house, with the Guzzi family. Going
backward through deeds and other records it was finally determined that the
builder of the house was a man named Harvey Campbell.
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| 227 Shelby Avenue, circa 1961, image from Marty Evans, Historic Nashville. |
Mr. Campbell, born in New York in 1812, came to Nashville in the late
1840's with his wife Mary, and four young children, Charlotte, Charles, Alonzo
C. and Maria. A fifth child, Sarah was born in Nashville in 1853. Campbell was a retail merchant and for many
years had a store on the Nashville Public Square and another in Edgefield. He sold dry goods, household furnishing and
groceries.
Harvey Campbell had purchased many lots and constructed houses that
he would rent to Edgefield residents. At one point he had more than twenty houses for rent.
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| Nashville Union and American, December 28, 1871 |
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| Nashville Union and American, June 4, 1872 |
He
was also the proprietor of the Edgefield House, near the Woodland Street Bridge
and advertised his rental properties in local newspapers.
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| Nashville Union and American, May 11, 1873 |
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| Edgefield House, Creighton Collection, Metro Archives |
He sold his store on the public square to his son Charles.
Campbell became involved in the political affairs of Edgefield and was
involved from the beginning in the incorporation of Edgefield as a city. Campbell served on the first board of aldermen
for Edgefield. He was also involved in
the political side of Davidson County, serving as a magistrate in the County
and Chancery Courts.
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| Nashville Union and American, December 24, 1868 |
In the 1860's he purchased lot 43 of Shelby's second addition to Edgefield. He already owned several adjacent lots and
decided to build a house for himself on Shelby Avenue. . The house that
Campbell built, was Second Empire style, popular in the U. S. from 1860 through
1880, though not common in the South. With a mansard roof topping the single
tower and porch, this house looked different than most of the neighboring
structures in East Nashville.
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| Nashville Union and American, October 15, 1869 |
When
Harvey and Mary Campbell moved into the new house in 1871, their sons, Alonzo
and Charles, and daughter Charlotte had left home. Charles, along with at partner, had taken
over his father's store on the public square.
Alonzo became an engineer and chemist.
Charlotte married John H. Hunt and lived with her family at 233 Shelby
Avenue. Maria married attorney Malchi
Bryan in 1873 and moved to Kentucky.
Sarah married W. Matt Brown, Jr. son of a former Nashville mayor. By 1880 Mary had died. Harvey's son Alonzo and his family and
Harvey's daughter Sarah and her husband were living in the house, with Harvey.
Harvey Campbell died in 1887 and the house
passed to his grandson William H. Hunt and later to William's sister, Mamie
Hunt. The Hunt's did not live in the
house but kept it as an investment, renting the house to others. In 1917 the house was sold to Judge Malachi
Thomas Bryan. He had been married to
Harvey Campbell's daughter Maria and was now a widower. Bryan was also the brother of Nora Bryan, who married Alonzo C. Campbell.
During the time that Bryan owned the house it continued to be a rental
property. Nashville directories list the
families that lived in the house in those years. In 1919 Felix and Lorena Hunt moved in,
sharing the house with another tenant. Felix Hunt lived in the house until 1921. Their daughter Minnie Hunt Steele, was my
grandmother. Apparently Minnie and her
husband Wilmoth Steele were living in the house, with her parents, on August
23, 1919, the date on which Mama was born. By the time the 1920 Nashville directory was published, Wilmoth and Minnie (and Mama) were living on Howerton Avenue, north of Main Street.
When Malachi Thomas Bryan died in 1923, the house was sold out of the family for the first time. The purchaser defaulted on the mortgage, and the executors, reclaimed and, sold the house to Mrs. Lena
Guzzi in 1928. The
house remained in the Guzzi family until 1961 when it was sold to the Nashville
housing authority and was soon after demolished.
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| 227 Shelby Avenue, 2014, Google |
