You drive down 12th Avenue South, it turns into Granny White Pike, and you probably don't think twice about the name. But there was a real Granny White — and her story is something else.
Lucinda "Granny" White was a widow from North Carolina who, around 1800, made the 800-mile trip to Tennessee with her orphaned grandchildren in a cart pulled by oxen. She was around 60 years old. Along the way, she baked and sold ginger cakes to earn income — literally funding her new life one cake at a time.
She was basically given 40 or 50 acres south of Nashville on a road then known as "the Middle Road" between Nashville and Franklin. She planted gardens, made her own linens, and eventually opened a tavern and inn. It became an essential stagecoach stop, and her guests reportedly included Andrew Jackson and U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton — who later praised her story on the floor of the U.S. Senate as an example of what a person could do with just a small piece of land.
The road was renamed Granny White Pike in her honor in 1849.
She's buried just off the pike that bears her name. Next time you're walking through 12 South, you're literally on her road.
Come walk it with us — Footnotes Nashville has stories for every block.
