Westwood was built in 1804 by Thomas Deaderick. The mansion was off the Franklin Turnpike (Franklin Rd.) near the southern end of the Melrose community on 240 acres. Thomas Deaderick (1765-1831) married Julia Ann Daingerfield Deaderick (1735-1806) in 1790 in Winchester, VA and then moved to Tennessee - in 1802 to Mansker’s Station, and then shortly to Nashville. The Deaderick family was a prosperous one in Winchester, VA and migrated to Jonesborough, Knoxville and to Nashville. The patriarch and a son, both David Deaderick, were one of the earliest and most prosperous merchants in Jonesborough, and the elder Deaderick became known as the Prince of Merchants.
Thomas Deaderick was a prosperous downtown merchant and silversmith. He was in business with his brother, Georg Deaderick, and sometimes a partner Howell Tatum. They had a very prosperous operation - selling goods to fellow merchants and loaning money. After Julie died, Thomas married Elizabeth “Eliza” Frances Daingerfield, a relative of Julia.
By 1824, the Westwood property had become the property of another brother, George Michael Deaderick and Mary "Polly" Deaderick. He was at one time the wealthiest Nashvillian. He sold parcels of land downtown and donated land for an access alley (now Printer’s Alley) to the city for which the city named Deaderick Street in his honor. He also founded the first bank in the state, Nashville Bank. He had a homee in downtown across from the bank site. Nashville Bank was open twenty years from 1807 to 1827. The grey stone building that housed it stood until 1973 when it was torn down for a modern office building housing First American National Bank the same year.
George’s son, John G. Deaderick, moved to Memphis and grew his land holdings to 5,000 acres. He passed that estate to his son, William Pitt Deaderick, and that area was later developed as the Orange Mound community, one of the first planned subdivisions for African-Americans in the South.
He sold the property the same year to Robert Woods and Joseph Woods who married sisters, Sarah and Jane West, respectively. Joseph moved in with his wife Jane West Wood . They remained childless.
His brother, Robert Woods (1786-1843) married Sarah Brown West (1792-1879) in 1818, and their family grew. They resided on High Street in downtown Nashville. Woods was invested in banking and also owned the steamboat "The Rifleman." It was the second steamboat to dock at Nashville in 1820 after the "General Jackson" arrived in 1819.
Because of Joseph’s growing family, the two brothers swapped homes in the early 1820s and lived in Westwood - the house named by combining their last names. In an article in the Nashville City Cemetery Association’s Monuments & Milestones, Jane Woods remarks about the two brothers traveling to Philadelphia to find similar house furnishings and then having the items moved by wagon train across the old National Road to Nashville. Woods was a principal with Woods, Yeatman & Co. The brothers owned Nashville’s second riverboat, The Rifleman, along with their partner, John Yeatman. The very large estate extended between Franklin and Nolensville Rd. toward Nashville.
By In the 1920s, the property sold out of the family. The house was torn down in the late 1960s for the I-65 interchange interstate construction project.
Sources:
1880 Nashville City Guide Book https://books.google.com/books?id=nmMvAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=1880+nashville+city+guide+book&source=bl&ots=LW5CI2DuLf&sig=g88JzzkiM-LBvLHrEsr6XaM9zHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjO6s-f3ofQAhXK6yYKHUIdCxIQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=1880%20nashville%20city%20guide%20book&f=false
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