Being From a Place; Wilson Co., Tennessee
By: Rev. Dr. Katelin Fields
Spring 2025
To paraphrase Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum: “we won’t save the places that we don’t love, we can’t love the places we don’t know, and we don’t know the places that we haven’t learned.”1 Learning the stories of a place helps us know where we are from so that we can actually be from a place with unique traditions rather than from somewhere with ubiquitous strip malls and housing developments. This learning quest can show us how to live and move in the present day world, and it can help us love and care for the land we inhabit. Two months before his death in 1940, Judge Ed Walker of Lebanon, TN, lamented in an interview “during the lifetime of one generation husking bees, pulling taffy, folk songs, tall stories and planting signs have become curiosities.”2 Judge Walker had witnessed how easy it is to lose significant cultural observances only just in the span of one generation if they are not retained in collective practice or memory. Cue: Wilson County, Tennessee.
“I wanted my kids to be of here and to know what that meant and to understand why that’s different, and when we get on a plane and go visit somewhere else, why is that place different than where we are from. That sense of identity and place has always been important to me… so whenever these opportunities at Fiddler’s Grove come along to help folks preserve their family’s history and their neighborhood’s history, I jump on it because they don’t have much time. Every volunteer and person I’ve ever met that had a story to tell that is over 90 is now dead. And when those things pass on if you don’t do something about it, it evaporates and then you’re trying to remember it and sometimes memory doesn’t work right. It’s a relay race. If one person doesn’t pass the baton, it doesn’t matter how fast you are… you can’t win.”
Scott Selliers, Fiddler’s Grove Board
Not far from the music of Nashville lies Wilson County, Tennessee, a land made up of hills and hollers, cedar glades and eastern red cedar trees. When Ms. Mary Dicken Morriss-Smith traveled to Lebanon in the fall of 1812, she found large ash, cedar, hickory and “sugar” trees (likely sugar maples). She had never seen a cedar tree before nor had she seen the architecture used at the time, which was a hued log house painted with lime. This is because Wilson Co. had large limestone deposits; in the 1920s, a large deposit was found on Rev. WJ Watson’s land near Hunter’s Point. It was ground, sacked, and used for high grade fertilizer.3
Additionally, sheep thrived on Wilson Co.’s karst, stony terrain, and in the 1940s, Wilson Co. led Tennessee in sheep production.4 Lebanon was widely known for its wool production through the Lebanon Woolen Mills. Another claim-to-fame from Wilson Co. involves the owner of Cloverdale Farm, William Haskell Neal, who is in the TN Hall of Fame. Haskell was a geneticist who bred corn varieties and was the first to breed a variety of corn which had two ears, which immediately doubled a farmer’s corn output. This new and widely popular variety of corn was called Paymaster corn. There are still saw and corn mill sites that can be visited, like a 230 year old site on Cedar Creek.
Wilson County is not just rich in limestone, it has rich foodway traditions. One example is sorghum; there is a deep and long historical tradition in Wilson Co. of using sorghum as a sweetener instead of sugar or molasses. It has a unique flavor that would have influenced recipes that it served to sweeten.5 Still today in Monterey, TN, Mark Guenther and family keep the tradition of sorghum alive. Every year, they travel to the Wilson Co./ TN State Fair to display the old way of making sorghum with the power of a mule.
Another interesting foodway from Wilson Co. is the drinking of “pink tea.” In the 1800s in Wilson Co., folks would make what they called “pink tea” out of boiled bright red sumac berries that appear in the late summer/early fall in order to ingest vitamin C. At the time, it was one of the only viable sources of vitamin C available in the eastern woodlands because not many native fruits grew in the area. This was a curative drink to treat what they would not have known was scurvy, a disease caused by the deficiency of vitamin C; they simply knew that if their eyes turned slightly yellow, and they began languishing with wounds which were not healing, that if they drank “pink tea,” they would feel better. 6
Creative recipes which were sourced from the land covered Wilson Co. tables. As evidenced by Mrs. Reese Lillard of Lebanon in a revised 1922 cookbook (originally written in 1912), Wilson Co. boasted unique recipes like Shad Roe Croquettes, Green Pea soup, Creamed Tripe, Sweetbread Patties, Hog Head Cheese, Pig Feet, Chestnut stuffing, Turnip Greens with Hog Jowl, Soda-biscuits and Hoe-cakes. Tom Hunter who is from the Rice family, a long-time Wilson Co. family, shared about visiting his uncle Ed Rice’s farm in Gladeville when he was a child. The Rice Farm was purchased from a lawyer and land speculator named Andrew Jackson. Coincidentally, this year, the Rice/ Hunter family will celebrate 225 years of owning their farm! When Tom would visit the Rice farm for Sunday lunch after church, they would have a massive spread of Aunt Tardy’s fried chicken, pork chops, country ham, smoked sausage, roast beef, whatever vegetable that was ripe from the garden, as well as cornbread, corn muffins, and baked bread. To top it off, they would have pies, cobblers, and cakes for dessert. Tom reminisces: “it was unbelievable; I was so happy… it was like going to the Waltons, you left with a warm feeling in the stomach and in the heart. It was awesome and it made a big impression on me.”7 The central table seemed to serve more than a holder of food; it functioned as a way for friends and family to share their lives together.
Wilson Co. not only had tasty recipes sourced from the land, but wonderful residents who worked hard and took care of each other through food. Mrs. Ruth Wharton, whose parents AC and Mary Wharton ran the Wharton Grocery Store in Lebanon for many years, described her parents as folks who worked hard growing a garden and raising chickens and hogs to supply the store. AC and Mary were good folks who took care of their family, sold pies for the local band to raise money for band uniforms, and cared for their elderly neighbors like Ma Hester, who they’d make sure had enough kindling for her fire. Any of Ruth’s school friends who did not have much to eat could come by and ask: “Mrs. Mary, what you got cooking in the pot today?" And they were
welcome to it.8 Mary Wharton was an expert cook and kept traditions like hot water cornbread, greens seasoned with fat back, black eyed peas, string beans, boiled custard, and pound cake with caramel frosting alive on her table. Ruth recalled her Sunday lunches after church on Sugar Flat, noting that families would bring picnics to each other in baskets with tablecloths within; each family would bring dishes that they were known to be good at cooking.
In a beautiful move to connect the past with the future, in the “BeHealthy” kids camp that occurs each summer at Fiddler’s Grove, children were given purple hull pea seeds to grow from Mary Wharton’s freezer that were 40+ years old. This camp is run by Alex and Shené Scott who started Vine Branch Fellowship (VBF) which offers programming and healthy food access for low-income groups in Wilson Co. This amazing couple has started several school and community gardens in Lebanon, teaching children how to grow healthy food, while meanwhile also providing nutrition and cooking classes. In speaking about why he started VBF, Alex shared: “VBF grew out of our love for kids and gardening… the easiest way to affect change is kids!” Shené, who is a teacher by profession, loves showing children how to grow food: “you can grow in a bucket, in a container, in a trashcan— just put holes in the bottom of it… no matter where you live, you can still grow.”9 Alex and Shené are carrying on a vital tradition that was beginning to dwindle in Wilson Co. — how to grow your own food.
Teaching children how to grow their own food in the village of historic buildings at Fiddler’s Grove is not all that different from the first home demonstration clubs which came to Wilson Co. in 1913 in the Oakland community. In 1917, Mrs. Ilah Polhill who was the home demonstration agent worked with school-aged girls in forming “tomato clubs” where they would learn to grow tomatoes and how to can them together. In a powerful way, the Scotts are continuing a 110-year-old tradition in Wilson Co.
Connecting yesteryear Wilson Co. with present day practices is necessary and good because it carries over decades-even-centuries-old well-proven traditions that benefit the health of the community and individuals within. The Wilson Co. Cast Iron Community is one group who does this work, standing in the gap between past food traditions and those of 2025, keeping the traditions of cast iron cooking alive in Wilson Co. More than cooking, they invite folks around a large kettle formerly used to render pig lard for delicious cooking demonstrations. People flock around the kettle to share their stories of beloved ancestors who they remember using cast iron to cook for them. Scott Selliers, one of the four leaders of the group said it best: “The cast iron isn’t really about cast iron, it’s really about people around a fire talking and getting to know each other and telling the stories about what their grandma cooked, and what their uncle used to say. Those little details are that sense of place I am talking about. And I have found someone of them that I haven’t seen anywhere else.”10 The sense of place and host of stories that the group is helping Wilson Co. remember is so vital.
When creating the Wilson Co. Cast Iron Community on Facebook, group founder, Dave Stout shared:
“We found out that this really is a fantastic way to keep a culture alive that was going too quickly— it’s already disappearing…I’m sold on the idea that deep down in somebody’s heart, they know that they are keeping something alive that would disappear and that’s the culture of cooking with a fantastic cookware that your Granny and aunt used. So that was my main reason for starting the group and we’ve got over 1000 members now…That’s why cast iron is so important. Just like the Sunset Restaurant that used to be here…it’s another car wash. Those places will never ever be around again. There is power in the subject. What in the world can anybody talk about cast iron? You’d be surprised at how many people come up and say the same story…everybody is really connected. Once it’s brought up, they start listening to the stories that they’re still tied to in their minds and their hearts, but they just don’t think about this anymore. That’s just power in being able to connect with others. It’s kinda fun!”11
In a time when folks are very divided, this group centered around the yesteryear traditions of cast iron is fostering a beautiful present-day community around food in Wilson Co. Wilson Co. is a place to be from. It has stories of weddings celebrated and loved ones grieved at funerals. It holds recipes which are stories of a long agricultural history. It holds the successes and mistakes of its foremothers and forefathers. It holds stories of the community coming together around a table for Sunday dinner. It holds memories of loved ones who are now ancestors. The invitation is extended to all of us to get to know these stories of where we are from, to carry the baton in keeping them alive whether it is teaching kids how to plant purple hull peas or cooking potato soup in a large cast iron kettle while remembering our grannies. In all these efforts, we will discover the beauty and good fortune of being from Wilson Co., Tennessee.
1 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6430296-in-the-end-we-will-conserve-only-what-we-love
2 Lebanon Democrat, 15 February 1951.
3 The Lebanon Democrat, 7 June 1923.
4 The Lebanon Democrat, 11 July 1948.
5 Interview with Scott Selliers, 24 February 2025.
6 Interview with Scott Selliers, 24 February 2025.
7 Interview with Tom Hunter, 27 March 2025.
8 Interview with Ruth Wharton, 3 March 2025.
9 Interview with Alex and Shené Scott, 7 April 2025.
10 Interview with Scott Selliers, 24 February 2025.
11 Interview with Dave Stout, 12 April 2025.
