Hendersonville Tennessee History & Facts

Hendersonville is the largest city in Sumner County, Tennessee, on Old Hickory Lake. The population was 61,753 at the 2020 census.

Hendersonville is the fourth-largest city in the Nashville metropolitan area after Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Franklin and the 10th largest in Tennessee. Hendersonville is located 18 miles northeast of downtown Nashville. The city was settled around 1784 by Daniel Smith, whose house Rock Castle, completed in 1796, is maintained as an historic site.

The city is named for William Henderson, the first postmaster here.

Numerous 20th-century musicians in the Nashville area lived in Hendersonville, especially some associated with country music. These include Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash, and Roy Orbison. The city's main road, Johnny Cash Parkway, is named for the late singer.

Other notable past and present residents include Conway Twitty. (His home, Twitty City, was adapted as the Trinity Music City complex after his death in 1993.) In addition, Jean Shepard, Marty Stuart, Kelly Clarkson, Max T. Barnes, Taylor Swift, Young Buck, and Chris Henderson (3 Doors Down) have lived here.

In 1784 Daniel Smith received a land grant from the state of North Carolina in payment for surveying Middle Tennessee. (North Carolina at the time claimed its boundaries extended to this territory across the Appalachian Mountains.) He began work on his house later known as Rock Castle, but it was not completed until 1796. Due to his surveying trips, he frequently was gone on long journeys, and his wife supervised much of the construction.

In 1790, William Henderson settled in Sumner County and later became the namesake of the town. It was a trading center for the county, which was devoted to the production of tobacco and hemp as commodity crops, and blood livestock: both horses and cattle. During the Civil War, Monthaven was used by Union troops as a field hospital, as they occupied Middle Tennessee from 1862 to 1870. In the late 20th century, this historic home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, refugee slaves with their families found their way to Union lines in the state in search of freedom. The Army established a contraband camp near Hendersonville, to offer shelter to the freedmen, help them with supplies and food, and sign them up to work for wages for the Army, often building defenses. Missionary societies helped teach both adults and children among the slaves.

The small city was not incorporated until 1969, as the area continued to be rural and devoted to agriculture and related activities. It then had roughly 250 residents and was led by L.H. "Dink" Newman. Since the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it has grown to become the largest city in the county.

With the completion of the Old Hickory Dam and an associated lake in 1954, Hendersonville started to develop more rapidly. The lake attracted sportsmen and people seeking recreation; some became residents or acquired second homes here. Since the late 20th century, it has become the most-populous city of Sumner County, and one of the most populous suburbs of Nashville, along with Franklin and Murfreesboro. The city contains around 0.7% of the population of Tennessee

Famous Peoples From Hendersonville Tennessee

Roy Kelton Orbison

(April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames "The Caruso of Rock" and "The Big O." Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers chose to project machismo. He performed while standing motionless and wearing black clothes to match his dyed black hair and dark sunglasses, which he wore to counter his shyness and stage fright.

Born in Texas, Orbison began singing in a rockabilly and country-and-western band as a teenager. He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956, but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Orbison's singles reached the Billboard Top 40. He wrote or co-wrote almost all of his own Top 10 hits, including "Only the Lonely" (1960), "Running Scared" (1961), "Crying" (1961), "In Dreams" (1963), and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964).

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