Last night when we out walking the hyper-dog Sparky, we stopped to chat with long-time Salemtown resident Patsy Gidcomb (Patsy lives on the 1800 block of 5th). Patsy has lived in her current house for 46 years, and for most of her preceding years, she lived across the street. She remembers Freeman’s Restaurant on Buchanan and 5th, the dry cleaners and the grocery store all within two blocks of her house.
We asked Patsy the inevitable question: How did Salemtown get its name? She wasn’t sure, but she did contribute mightily to our quest: “Salemtown had its name before the Salem AME church was created and built”. Another naming myth debunked!
I’m leaning strongly to the theory espoused by the lone wolf of Salemtown in S-townMike’s seminal post last week in his Enclave blog.
Smoke em’ if you got em’…
2 Comments
September 28, 2005 at 2:47 pm
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September 28, 2005 at 3:08 pm
As a mutual friend would say, “I don’t know sh_t about sh_t!” but let me throw out an idea about your Salemtown’s heritage.
The now named American Tobacco Company, makers of snuff and stuff in plant(s) in the area of North Nashville ajoining Salemtown was originally part of the original American Tobacco Company started by James Buchanan “Buck” Duke. Buck Duke was an original robber baron, but was best know in the tobacco industry for introducing ready rolled cigarettes from his factories around Durham, Winston-Salam, and other towns in North Carolina. When he started those factories, the people in the world who knew all there was to know about cigarette machines were Greek. Thousands of Greeks had immigrated to the Norheast and were lured to North Carolina by the American Tobacco Company. Even today, there is a relatively large Greek population in mid North Carolina many of which work for big tobacco.
That all being said. Working in a tobacco factory requires more skilled tradesmen than is intuitively obvious. One wonders if Mike, in his seminal post, had the tobacco right but the reason wrong. What if Buck Duke, or others, started snuff factories in Nashville and sent a relatively large group skilled workers from North Carolina who were from the Winston-Salem area who settled in the enclave in North Nashville within walking distance of the snuff factories? What if they called their new neighborhood ‘Salemtown’ in honor of their North Carolina roots?
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