DAVIDSON COUNTY, TN - CLIPPINGS - Attic Turns Up Sundry Stuff
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		Attic Turns Up Sundry Stuff in An Old Paper

     In Nashville 120 Years ago newspapers struck a doleful note and in 
discouraging tones the Nashville Whig predicted.
     "The period must soon be here when it will be impossible to do justice to 
this all important subject, the early history of Tennessee.....  In a few 
years more nothing will remain of its details, but mutilated fragments, 
amounting to little more than traditional romance."
     On the same page of one of Nashville's earliest newspapers, near the 
proposal of the editors to record the early history of Tennessee, a man who 
was to contribute more to Tennessee's "traditional romance" than almost any 
other figure in the early  history announced the opening of a law office in 
the Courthouse in Nashville.
     The advertisement states simply that, "Sam Houston (Attorney at Law) 
occupies (as an office) a room of the Courthouse in Nashville.  He will 
practice in the counties of Davidson, Sumner, and Williamson.  Business 
confided to him shall have fit attention."
     A copy of the Whig, dated Wednesday, March 15, 1820, was discovered 
recently in an old attic trunk by Miss Mattie Dismuke, a member of one of 
Nashville's oldest families.
     Many of the names in the two-sheet, six-column paper are still familiar 
in Nashville.  Some of them are remembered by streets which bear the same 
names.
     On the front page, cluttered with paid advertisements, Doctors McNairy 
and Shelby "request those indebted to call and pay their accounts, as no 
longer indulgence can be given."
     Josiah Nichol, president of Nashville Bridge Company, announced that the 
third installment of $5 "on each share of the capital stock of said bridge, 
be, and the same is hereby required to be paid unto John Shelby, treasurer, 
on, or before the tenth day off April next ensuing."
     Where Nashville's market house now stands the Nashville Inn under the new 
management of P. Craddock was pledged to provide "entire satisfaction to those 
that will honor him with their custom."
     A memorial was presented to the Senate on February 24, 1820, the Whig 
announced by a Mr. King of New York, "from Maj.-Gen. Andrew Jackson, on the 
subject of the report made in the Senate of the United States, at the close of 
the last session of Congress on the subject of the Seminole War, and the 
incidents connected with it.
     The paper devoted four and one columns to the debate on the Missouri Bill 
in the House of Representatives, the bill that, forty years before the 
American Civil War, declared slavery legal in the new State of Missouri.
    
(Submitter:  Margaret Nolen Nichol, MNNichol@aol.com.  Date of this newspaper 
clipping is unavailable.  Original copy is in file of the submitter.)