Mile End was located a mile southeast from Nashville’s Public Square on what became Stevenson St - what is now Eighth Ave. South. Travel about a block south of Eighth Ave. roundabout, turn left on Drexel St., and you will be on the southern edge of the Foster family land.
The home was built as a Colonial brick house in 1813 by Anthony Coleman Foster (1765-1825) and Eleanor Foster (1778-1825). He was a leading citizen with experience as an Indian fighter, friend of Andrew Jackson and of TN Territorial Governor William Blount. Foster was a signer of the Nashborough Compact in 1780. In 1792, President George Washington and Secty of War Henry Knox asked Foster and James Robertson to negotiate with the American Chickasaw and Cherokee tribes to settle disputes and end skirmishes.
Later Foster bought 33 acres about a mile south from Knob Hill (center of downtown Nashville and now Capitol Hill) and at the edge of the city limits. After Foster died, his son Robert sold the property to Dr. Joseph Planta Minnick (1770-1835) and Ann Green Minnick in 1829. After being wed in 1792, the Minnicks moved to Nashville from Pennsylvania about 1815. [Their daughter Anna Maria Green Shelby Minnick married John Shelby, M.D. of Shelby Mansion] Vernon K. Stevenson and partners bought the home and property to get land for the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.
One of the partners, Orville Ewing (1806-1876), lived at the house and supervised construction. He was also a politician, lawyer, merchant and president of Planter’s Bank in 1855. He built up large real estate holdings in South Nashville, and with careful development, the neighborhood became very attractive. Orville married in 1832 to Milbrey Horn Williams (1815-1884).
The property was then sold about 1866 to Dr. William Morrow, a famous CSA medical officer who was related. After Dr. Morrow served in the CSA, he worked in mercantile in Nashville and in Georgia. From 1871-1877, he served as Tennessee State Treasurer. In 1880 it was sold to James Woods (related).
In the same year it was sold to a relative Samuel Jackson Keith (1831-1909). He was married to Elizabeth Evert Bell Snyder Keith (1837-1925). They wed in 1870. He was president of First National Bank. In 1852 Keith became president of Fourth National Bank until his death in 1909. He was a member of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust from 1894-1909. He died at the resort getaway town Ridgetop, TN. [Keith’s daughter, Sammie Keith Glasgow, married Dr. Samuel McPheeters Glasgow of Montrose.]
Afterward, in 1905, it was demolished for Mother Katherine Drexel (later Saint Katherine Drexel) to construct the Immaculate Mother’s Academy - the state’s first Catholic school for African-American girls. She had founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and had been asked by Bishop Williams to start a school of this type. By this time, all the surrounding acreage had been sold, and the area was becoming much more industrialized.
About 50 years later, in 1954, the school was razed and a Sears Department store was built. The Sears store closed in 1991, and the Nashville Rescue Mission and homeless shelter (at 639 Lafayette St.) opened in the space in 2001. See Montrose, Shelby Mansion
Sources:
excerpt from A Restless Landscape: Building Nashville History and Seventh and Drexel
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