"Washed and Dryed after being Executed"
Historical Humor from the Records of the Metropolitan
Nashville Archives
By
Kenneth Fieth, Metropolitan Nashville Archivist
Working in an Archives is akin to teaching school; over the years you accumulate favorites. The Archives staff has discovered records with deliberate and sometimes unintended humor. Some of those presented here have proven to be the favorites of many an audience and the staff.
Some of our earliest records are tavern licenses. These were issued to individuals granting permission to run a tavern or "Ordinary" in Davidson County. Apparently, many were granted since a form was created and printed for use.
The 1780s language is quite specific as to the business requirements for the budding, new entrepreneur. In order to run an establishment in Nashville, one must (sic) “...confantly find and provide in his or her faid Ordinary good wholefome, and cleanly lodging and diet for travellers...nor on the Sabbath day suffer or permit any perfon to drink any more than necessary….”
We're still working on what, exactly, that means.
The following handwritten entry appears on the City of Nashville Arrest Blotter, December 31st, 1930. “If every body that broke the law was locked up, they would be no body left to carry water. W. A. Gibbons, Lieutenant.” Must have been a long New Year's Eve. Did the Lieutenant ever get his water?
Moving to the gentler side of things leads to the honorable estate of marriage. The Court Clerk, William Barrow, felt duty bound to inform future generations as to his opinion of the happy couple before him. Many marriage licenses bear his sometimes-caustic opinion.
Clerk Barrow writes on an 1825 license: “...solemnized the rights of matrimony between the within parties, the groom's first wife had been dead for at least five weeks.” Another gives a glimpse through the window of time onto our energetic if not wholesome 1820s waterfront district: “... I married the within named person and his wife at the upper ferry at Nashville—no person present but a drunk stonemason whose name I do not know.”
A witness is a witness, inebriated or not.
It has been said that a last will and testament is just that. Human nature being what it is, these make for fascinating reading. Take, for instance, the great aunt who is concerned for her nephew. Her 1920 will grants him a generous portion of her estate provided “...he marries no one from Jackson, Tennessee.” It was a large estate; did the prospective bride ever move to Memphis?
Mostly ordinary people make the history of our city. They haven't changed much in the last 216 years. History can be as dull or as lively as you wish, it just takes a little looking to find the lighter side.
By the way, the title was taken from an 1830 marriage license. Leaving things in the pockets of clothes to be washed is not new. In a world of immediate and constant change it's a tradition that many of us are trying to sustain.
