THE COMMUNITY OF BENDING CHESTNUT, located about ten miles west of Franklin, Tennessee, in
Williamson County, was named for the fact that Native Americans used to mark their trails by bending a chestnut sapling to the ground. One was near the crossroad of Bending Chestnut and Garrison roads. One such chestnut was so large a buggy could pass under it.
. The community had a one -room school, located just across the road from what is now Fox's Grocery Store on the corner of Bending Chestnut and Garrison Roads. The original school was knocked off it pillars when a cyclone went through the area in 1909. Cara Foster , a native of the Garrison community, was the teacher at Bending Chestnut School from 1917 to 1949. In the early years, school started in July and students were dismissed to help with the harvest in the fall.
Down Garrison Road about three miles was the Garrison School, another one room schoolhouse, which had been built in the middle of a cattle field. It was painted with whitewash, to which someone had added some salt. I remember when I was a kid my grandfather, Ollie Anderson, would add salt to the whitewash. He said that adding salt to the lime would make it stick better. The cattle soon began licking the whitewash off the school building
The Bending Chestnut School was used for many years as a church with all denominations represented. Will Irvin, a Presbyterian minister, would come from Nashville to Franklin on the Interurban (The Interurban was an Electric Railroad that served Franklin for many years from the early part of the century untill 1941, when it was replaced by buses.) then take a Ford model truck out to Bending Chestnut, where he would preach for as little as fifteen cents a Sunday. Every year, on Mothers Day, folks would gather for the homecoming meeting. Before the school was used as a church, people would hold a brush arbor meeting.
The Fox family continues to be one of the mainstays of the community. Colley Fox and his father purchased the store in 1919 after World War 1. They rented the building for two years and then purchased it in 1921. After Colley Fox's death in 1975, the store has continued to be run by Mr. Fox's daughter, Jewel Anderson
During the thirties and forties, the store was Saturday night's entertainment spot. Folks would come in and sit on the nail kegs, hay bales or feed sacks, and listen to the Saturday Night Fights or the Grand Ole Opry on a battery-operated radio. Electricity did not come to that part of Williamson County until 1947
Telephones were also late in coming to Bending Chestnut. If someone needed to call a doctor, they went to one of the few phones in the area located at Harold Meacham's home on Garrison Road. When a doctor came into the community, it would usually herald the arrival of a new baby. The Burns family had twenty-one children and a neighbor Mrs Narciss Anderson was the community midwife and doctor, if one was unavailable.
From the book; " Back Home in Williamson County " by Lyn Sullivan Pewitt with comments added by Kenny Anderson Sr.
THE COMMUNITY TOOK IT'S NAME FROM NATIVE AMERICANS METHOD OF MARKING TRAILS
As the name implies, the community was the site of a variety of trees, especially chestnut, and until the blight hit them in the 1930's, chestnut trees were used to build the beautiful split rail fences (My grandmother, Jeppenerlee Zula Wall, would tell us stories of how she would help her father, Rufus Wall, split the logs to make the rails to sell ) that dot the country side. Harold Meacham once remarked that he found new chestnut trees coming up and said they might be from the roots of the old trees which died some sixty years ago.
Sawmills have been the only industry for many years with trees once being used for railroad ties and barrel staves. Mules would haul the lumber into Hillsboro for transportation into Nashville. Fox's sawmill was started in 1953 by Gilbert and T.C. Fox Jr. Their primary product is lumber used by area farmers for their barns and storage buildings. Some lumber is sold to factories for furniture and hardwood flooring.
Gospel singing is a favorite in the Bending Chestnut community. When the Bending Chestnut School building was sold, the Fox boys started using it to practice what they loved to do best, sing gospel songs. What started out as a performance one summer evening has turned into a two-night event and, in the last years, crowds of over 2500 people made this one of the largest gatherings in the area. The concert is free to everybody who enjoys an evening of good gospel music
