Belle Meade is a city in Davidson County, Tennessee. Its total land area is 3.1 square miles (8.0 km2), and its population was 2,901 at the time of the 2020 census.
The Fugitives also known as The Fugitive Poets, is the name given to a group of poets and literary scholars at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who published a literary magazine from 1922 to 1925 called The Fugitive. The group, primarily driven by Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Allen Tate, formed a major school of twentieth century poetry in the United States. With it, a major period of modern Southern literature began. Their poetry was formal and featured traditional prosody and concrete imagery often from experiences of the rural south. The group has some overlap with two later movements: Southern Agrarians and New Criticism.
Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) is a preparatory day school for boys in grades 7 through 12 in Nashville, Tennessee. The school is located in the Whitland Area Neighborhood.
Douglas Selph Henry Jr. was an American attorney and Democratic politician. He was the longest-serving member of the Tennessee legislature. He was a member of the Tennessee Senate, representing the 21st district. He served as a state senator beginning with his election to the 87th General Assembly, prior to which he was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives during the 79th General Assembly.
Anne Dallas Dudley was an American activist in the women's suffrage movement. She was a national and state leader in the fight for women's suffrage who worked to secure the ratification of the 19th Amendment in Tennessee. After founding the Nashville Equal Suffrage League and serving as its president, she moved up through the ranks of the movement, serving as President of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association and then as Third Vice President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, where she helped lead efforts to get the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution ratified, giving women the right to vote nationwide. She is especially noted for her successful efforts to get the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in her home state of Tennessee, the final state necessary to bring the amendment into force.
William Ridley Wills was an American novelist, poet, and journalist. Born in Brownsville, Tennessee, he was a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a member of the "Fugitives" a literary movement of the 1920s. He worked for the Memphis Press, The Commercial Appeal, and the Nashville Banner newspapers before leaving for New York to become the Sunday Editor for the New York World. He served as a 2nd Lieutenant with the U.S. Army, 76th Field Artillery during World War I and saw action during at Somme, St. Michel, and Meuse-Argonne, France. He was honorably discharged in France on July 12, 1919.
William Giles Harding was a Southern planter, attorney, and horse breeder who was made a Brigadier General in the Tennessee militia before the American Civil War. He took over operations of Belle Meade Plantation near Nashville from his father in 1839. During the course of his management, he acquired more property, expanding it from 1300 acres to 5,400 acres (22 km2) in 1860. He specialized in breeding and raising Thoroughbred horses, as well as other purebred livestock. In 1862 after Union forces took over Nashville, Harding was arrested as a leader and imprisoned at Fort Mackinac in northern Michigan on Mackinac Island for six months. He was released on a $20,000 bond.
Edward Emmett Dougherty, a.k.a. Edwin Dougherty was an architect in the southeastern United States. One of his best known designs was the Tennessee War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville in 1922. The work won state and national design competitions.
John R. Ingram is an American heir, businessman and philanthropist. He serves as the chairman of the Ingram Content Group, Lightning Source and Digital Ingram, and Ingram Industries. He is the owner of Nashville SC.
Joseph Columbus Davis Jr. was an American businessman and tennis player.
John Harding (1777–1867) was an American Southern planter and thoroughbred breeder in Middle Tennessee, near Nashville. He developed Belle Meade Plantation from 250 acres to 1300 in Davidson County; Bellevue at McSpadden's Bend on the Cumberland River, also in the county; and a 10,000-acre cotton plantation at Plum Point Bend in Mississippi County, Arkansas.
Bradley Walker was a Nashville attorney who, in his youth, was found to be naturally proficient at virtually any sport he tried, including football, baseball, track, boxing, tennis and golf— in all these sports he either set records or won championships or awards.
Richland Creek is a stream in the western part of Nashville, Tennessee, in Davidson County. It winds for 28 miles (45 km) through the Nashville suburbs of Belle Meade and Forest Hills and eventually flows into the Cumberland River near Rock Harbor Marina at the end of Robertson Avenue. This is one of at least five streams by the name of "Richland Creek" in various regions of Tennessee.
Edwin Augustus Keeble was an American architect who was trained in the Beaux-Arts architecture tradition. He designed many buildings in Tennessee, including homes, churches, military installations, skyscrapers, hospitals and school buildings, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He is best known for Nashville's landmark Life and Casualty Tower built in 1957 which was the tallest commercial structure in the Southeastern United States at that time. It reflected an architectural turn to modernism and was one of the first buildings emphasizing energy efficiency.
Thomas Isham Webb Jr., (1880–1975) was a Tennessee attorney who excelled at golf and won the 1913 Tennessee state amateur. He was one of Tennessee's earliest golfers at the cusp of the sport's popularity in the United States near the beginning of the twentieth century. While a student at Vanderbilt University in 1896, Webb constructed a rudimentary nine-hole golf course next to University campus and the group attracted like-minded golf enthusiasts. Prominent citizens became interested and eventually formed a golf club which still exists over a century later. In 1901, Webb was a charter member of the Nashville Golf and Country Club where Grantland Rice, Webb's Vanderbilt classmate, first became interested in golf. The club was later renamed "Belle Meade Country Club" and Webb was the club golf champion in 1913 and 1917. At the time of his death at age 95, Webb was celebrated as club's oldest living member. He endowed an annual trophy for the Belle Meade Junior Golf championship; a room named for him was dedicated by in 1976 by sportswriter Fred Russell.
James Cowdon Bradford Sr. was an American businessman. He was the chairman of Piggly Wiggly from 1924 to 1926, and of chairman of the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee from 1934 to 1951. He was the founder of J.C. Bradford & Co. in 1927, and remained a senior partner at the investment bank.
William Ridley Wills, was a founder of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company in Nashville in 1902. Born in west Tennessee, Wills came to Nashville in 1893 to serve as Tennessee's deputy commissioner of insurance. There he met C.A. Craig and C. Runcie Clements and the three men formed the National Life and Accident Company after purchasing another insurance company which was being sold at auction. The new company sold health and accident insurance policies to industrial workers, a large percentage of whom were African-American. The company grew and moved into a large stone building in downtown Nashville where, in 1925, it launched radio station WSM which won international fame in creating the broadcast the "Grand Ole Opry". Wills died of a stroke in 1949. His nephew was poet and novelist William Ridley Wills, and his grandson is author and historian William Ridley Wills II.
Jesse Ely Wills (1899–1977) was an American businessman and poet. He was the chairman of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company and the author of four poetry collections. National Life was founded by his father, William Ridley Wills in 1902. Jesse Wills began working there at age 23 when he was a student at Vanderbilt University and remained with the company his entire career. In 1925, the company created radio station WSM to help promote their business and built a studio on the fifth floor of their building. National Life Insurance and station WSM achieved international recognition in creating the "Grand Ole Opry " which was broadcast nationwide and became the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history.
Joseph Thompson Jr. (1919–2012) was a decorated World War II pilot from Tennessee, who later in life became active in Nashville civic affairs. Nicknamed "Tiger Joe", Major Thompson flew 90 combat missions in 1944 for the Allied forces in Europe, most behind German lines, performing aerial reconnaissance. He received the Croix de Guerre from France and the Distinguished Flying Cross from the US for his role in liberating France from Nazi Germany. Thompson was awarded France's highest honor, the Legion of Honor on March 15, 2012, shortly before his death on March 24, 2012.
West Meade is a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. It is governed by the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County, due to the fact that the government of Davidson County is consolidated with that of Nashville
