DAVIDSON COUNTY, TN - CLIPPINGS - Men Who Helped To Make Nashville
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		Men Who Helped To Make Nashville
						By Douglas Anderson

     William Wells Berry, son of Horatio and Sarah Godman Berry, was born in 
Baltimore, June 8, 1812.  He attended a private school until he was 16 years 
of age and then entered a wholesale drug store, where "under a kind and 
upright employer he gained a knowledge of commercial matters, which made him 
at the age of 21 an independent and self-reliant merchant."
     This beginning of business for himself, it appears by inference, was in 
Nashville in or about 1824.  Here he established a wholesale drug firm which 
for more than a generation has been known as Berry, Demoville & Co.  The firm 
was located on the Public Square until a few years ago, when they removed to 
Market street.
     Besides the drug business which he founded and managed with such ability 
and success, Mr. Berry was identified with other enterprises.  He was a member 
of the board of directors of the Planters' Bank of Tennessee during its most 
prosperous period, from 1854 to 1862.  He was president of the Third National 
bank of Nashville from its organization in 1865 until 1876, when he was 
prostrated by disease which caused his death that year.  At the time of his 
death he was president of the Equitable Insurance Co., a position he had helf 
from the organization of the company.
     He was at one time owner of large planting interests on the Arkansas 
river.  His success in all his undertakings would be sufficient evidence, if 
this were all; that he possessed in a remarkable degree two essentials to 
success in any line of endeavor, viz. the confidence of the public and skill 
in management.  Neither is worth much, in a business way, without the other.  
Character begets confidence, but along with character there must be a knack 
for management, and back of this must not only a knowledge of one's business 
from the ground up, but a knowledge of men and disposition to get along with 
them.
     In 1840, Mr. Berry married Jane E. White, daughter of Gen. William White 
of the Nashville bar; a gallant officer under Gen. Jackson in the War of 1812, 
and subsequent campaigns against the Indians; and the fighter of a duel with 
Hon. Sam Houston.

Samuel Seay
     Samuel Seay was born near Chincopin church, Amelia County, Virginia, in 
1784.  About 1804 he found employment in Knoxville in the store of John and 
Josiah Nichol.  A large part of this firm's business was with the Choctaw and 
Cherokee Indians, and due to this fact young Seay became proficient in the use 
of the language of each tribe, and retained his knowledge of it long after it 
had ceased to be of use.
     In 1800 young Seay came to Nashville with John and Josiah Nichol, who 
even at that early date thought Nashville "offered opportunity" in mercantile 
pursuits.  and so it did then as it does now.  The Nichol investments, some of 
which are still here, afford sufficient proof of this statement.
     In 1809 here was scarcely a brick house in Nashville.  The main business 
was on the public square and the principal residences were within one block of 
it.  During the war of 1812-15 Josiah Nichol was contractor for furnishing 
salt petre to the government, and as his agent Seay did most of the 
purchasing.  The supplies of salt petre were then found mostly in the caves of 
the eastern part of Middle Tennessee.  The ravel necessary to get the salt 
petre enabled Seay to establish a wide acquaintance and at the close of the 
war, he embarked in business for himself.  At different times he was engaged 
in the manufacture of gunpowder, soaps, oils, candles and rope, but he was 
best known as a wholesale grocer and commission merchant.  During his business 
career of forty years he was perhaps the most widely known of any merchant in 
Tennessee.  Among his associates in business were Joseph T. Elliston, Gen. 
Robert Armstrong, and Joseph H. Shepherd.
     He witnessed the arrival at the Nashville Wharf of the first steamboat 
that landed there.  He at once recognized the importance of steamboats to 
commerce and became the owner of single boars and interest in boat lines.  He 
was officially connected with the Planters' bank and several insurance 
companies. 
    Mr. Seay was twice married.  His first wife was a daughter of George 
Wharton of Davidson County.  Seven children of their ten children survived at 
his death in 1864.
Another Samuel Seay
    There was another Samuel Seay.  He was of a later generation and was a 
member of the wholesale grocery firm of Stratton, Seay & Stratton.  He was 
nearly deaf and it was probably due to the fact that he was in a measure shut 
off from his friends that he spent his spare time in studying the tariff.  And 
having studied it impartially and disinterestedly it follows, of course, that 
he favored a low tariff, sufficient only to defray the expenses of the federal 
government "economically administered" as the platforms used to proclaim.
     In 1888, when the tariff was the paramount issue the Nashville Democrat 
was started by certain friends of Senator Harris and advocates of a low 
tariff, after the American had fallen into the hands of the Philistines.  
Young Mr. Carmack, then about 28 years of age, was the sure-enough editor of 
the Democrat.  I was a reporter on the paper.  Frequently Mr. Seay brought to 
the Democrat office articles on the tariff which so pleased the editor that he 
printed them as editorials.

William Nichol
     Reference was made above to the Nichol investments in Nashville real 
estate.  Josiah Nichol was a dry goods merchant and was president of the 
United States Bank. He owned the tier of lots fronting the north side of Union 
street, between the present Fourth and Fifth avenues.  His residence was at 
the corner of the present Fourth avenue and Union Street, where the Nichol 
building now stands.  He died in 1833.  But he was not the only Nichol who had 
the foresight and wisdom to lay up treasures on earth for the enjoyment of his 
descendants, by investing in Nashville real estate.
     William Nichol was born in Abingdon, Virginia in 1800.  After serving an 
apprenticeship under his father he, at the age of sixteen years, went into the 
dry goods business with Joseph Vaulx as a partner, and so continued until 
1825.  In this year, he married Julia Lytle of Rutherford County.  
     "Immediately after Mr. Nichol's marriage," says an authorized sketch, "he 
went into the general commission business and speedily formed a partnership 
with Harry R. W. Hill, who afterward took into the firm Mr. Porterfield.  In 
the fall of 1825, they owned the steamer "Dewitt Clinton" and subsequently 
built the steamer "Nashville" and a `lighter' to bring up goods from the 
Harpeth Shoals, called he "Talleyrand."  The enterprise was remarkable 
successful and was known throughout the country for it high character and 
credit.  The firm was dissolved in 1833 and Harry Hill went to New Orleans, 
became a member of the house of Dick and Hill, greatly increased his estate, 
and died.
     "William Nichol became secretary of an insurance company in which he 
continued until the establishment by the state, of the Bank of Tennessee, when 
he was made its first president.  he invested his estate, made by his own 
skill and judgment and business talent in Nashville city property, and in a 
large farm and tract of land with improvements of great value, dwelling house, 
etc. on the Lebanon pike, the late residence of Mr. Jo Clay; here for the 
remainder of his life he made his family residence and lived in a liberal and 
hospitable style and reared a large family of children, giving to each all the 
advantages of education the country could afford.
     He also invested his capital in a cotton plantation and large tracts of 
land in Arkansas, on the Arkansas river, which yielded him for many years a 
princely income, where he settled his son Josiah on a cotton plantation and 
then his son Alexander, where he is now (1880) residing and planting cotton.  
At the beginning of the war his estate was estimated at one million 
dollars.......

Locating the Capital
     "One of Mr. Nichol's public-spirited acts---known to the writer---was the 
part he took in aiding and obtaining for the city of Nashville the location of 
the seat of government in 1843.  He was at the time mayor of Nashville.  There 
was great difficulty in getting the legislature, then in session, to locate 
the capital at Nashville.  Other rival places for the seat offered sites for 
the capitol building.  It was thought it would aid in its location at 
Nashville to offer a site for the capitol building, and would probably be 
decisive.  Accordingly (the writer knows that Mr. Nichol suggested and became 
active in obtaining and offering such site, free of cost to the state.  He and 
others contracted with George W. Campbell for the purchase of Capitol Hill; 
made themselves personally responsible for the purchase money, the sum of 
$30,000 and offered it as a site, and the seat of government was located at 
Nashville.  The city authorities afterward assumed and paid the consideration 
or purchase money, and relieved the public-spirited citizens who had made 
themselves personally responsible."  Mr. Nichol died in 1878.
     This series of sketches is prepared mostly from sketches apparently 
authorized by interested parties, that are printed in local histories.  
Probably many of the original sketches contain errors. Such as I discover 
incidentally I correct.  William Nichol was mayor in 1835-36 and not in 1843, 
as stated by the authority quoted above.
     According to another account Nichol was a member of a committee appointed 
by the city council to negotiate the purchase of Capitol hill for which 
$30,000 of city bonds was tendered in payment.  Campbell declined to accept 
the bonds for the reason that the city's credit was still impaired by the 
panic of 1837.  He agreed to take Nicholas individual note, which was given.  
Later the city assumed the debt, as stated.

(Submitted by:  Margaret Nolen Nichol, MNNichol@aol.com.  This is copied from 
a newspaper clipping in the submittal's files. Origin unknown.