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Historic development of local business district

By ZOË HAGGARD - zhaggard@t-g.com
Posted 6/4/22

The Shelbyville Square serves not only as the center of Bedford County but also as the center of business development in the County’s 200-year history.  

According to County Archivist …

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Historic development of local business district

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The Shelbyville Square serves not only as the center of Bedford County but also as the center of business development in the County’s 200-year history.  

According to County Archivist Carol Roberts, the “Shelbyville Plan,” that is, the layout of the Square, is unique in that it was the first town center where the streets arrive on the corners in a square with the courthouse in the center— not round like Williamson or Wilson counties.  

Though the street names have changed over the years, the Shelbyville Square itself is a time capsule for how businesses developed in Shelbyville. Even through fires, civil war skirmishes, and population depletion, “That’s what’s interesting: it hasn’t changed that much,” said Roberts.  

Its central location, waterways and turnpikes all served to bring thousands of families south and west who were seeking farmland.  

According to Roberts, Bedford is just now getting back to the population rate it had around the decades of its settling. She said population stagnation began to occur around the early 1900s and remained through the 1980s.  

Most populous county  

At one time, Bedford County was the one of the most populous counties in the south-central region.  

According to an article from Goodspeeds, in 1810, the population of Bedford County was 8,242. By 1830, it had increased to 30,396.  

This was a trend in Middle Tennessee during that time, as by 1810, Tennessee had 250,000—a 250 percent increase from the turn of the century.  

According to the US Census Bureau, the population of the nation in 1810 was 7.2 million.  

With those moving, you needed products and services to sustain the population of farmers and laborers. From the thesis paper “Bedford County, Tennessee: Settlement to Secession (1785 – 1861)” by Robert Paul Cross, it says, “Bedford’s first merchant is thought to have been James Deery who opened a general merchandise store in 1809 near what became the city of Shelbyville. On the second Thursday in July, 1810, the sale of town lots commenced in Shelbyville, and not long thereafter stores began to spring up around the public square.”  

Among Shelbyville’s early businessmen were several artisans who made and sold their own goods Roberts explained. Manufacturing enterprises existed in the county on a small scale in 1810, but the “manufactures” came out of the home, according to Cross.  

There were also 11 distilleries at one time, which could produce 4,080 gallons of liquor per year, according to Cross. “Evidently the distilleries furnished the county with a spiritual need which the churches could not fulfill,” he wrote.  

Bedford’s business community became complete in 1818, when a branch of Tennessee’s first bank, the Bank of Nashville, was opened in Shelbyville. “By 1823, Shelbyville was well populated with merchants, many of whom appear to have been selling similar items [food, drink, lodging]. Goods were brought into the county from Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and New Orleans,” Cross explains.  

Development and migration in Shelbyville are not new. From a 1925 Nashville Banner article by N.T. Gregory, “Shelbyville has progressed wonderfully in the last thirty or forty years in the structure of its stores, and most notably in the interior furniture and fixtures of those stores...”  

According to Gregory, the business district covers practically the same territory it did in the mid 19th century—that is, “the public square, Depot Street, Bridge Street and parts of block contiguous.”  

He continues, “Miles of concrete sidewalks and paved streets have taken the place of the old limestone streets. Two harness factories that ship most of their manufactured goods have succeeded the old harness and saddle shops that their products only to the home trade.”  

Beautification of the Shelbyville Square goes back to 1907, with the Ladies’ Beautification Club removing old fence from the Courthouse.  

Griffin’s term as mayor  

The Shelbyville Square would find itself once again getting a renovation in the 1970s when H.V. Griffin was serving his four terms as Mayor. In his Shelbyville Plan book from 1986, he details 22 different projects accomplished under his term.  

Under his “Beautification of the Public Square,” Griffin said the committee wanted to put new brick sidewalks all around the square as well as new gas lights and plant trees.  

Griffin writes, “We all agreed that the old concrete sidewalks were worn out and needed to be replaced anyway and it would cost a lot of money to tear the old sidewalks up and move them and replace them with red brick.”  

Sound familiar? This spring, the City of Shelbyville finished up the eight-month long sidewalk project, which repaved the sidewalks with stamped concrete and removed the trees to help the businesses have more visibility. 

At that time Griffin was completing the project, he writes that the City was receiving about $250,000 from the federal government every year for projects like this. Amazingly, in today’s money, that’s $1.3 million.  

He also highlights his top three goals, which are ambulance services, developing a year-round recreational program, and East Side urban development renewal. Griffin explained that along with the housing authority and city planner Bill Colloredo, it took them over five years to finish the urban renewal project.  

“...Some of the buildings were the old National Pencil Company that was about to go out of business, Hubert Lawell Cedar Company and a graphite company all were an eyesore to the area.”  

He continues, “There were also a lot of old rock houses, many with no one living in them with doors torn off and windows out.”  

Griffin said the city was fortunate to clean up this part of town—to have “corrected two parts of Shelbyville where several things needed correcting.”  

Griffin also touched on the increase in traffic on Madison Street in the late 1970s.  

“We were already having too many accidents on it,” he writes. The road was then widened to become a four-lane.  

Griffin ends his report on a positive note.  

“I was very glad to be a part of these projects, and I believe everyone in our city and county are proud of them also and feel we couldn’t do without the services they afford everyone.”