In the closing years of the eighteenth century there came to Sumner County two families who represented the highest type of what Roosevelt calls "the backwoodsman." the Elliotts and Odoms. The Elliotts were of English descent. The family consisted of three sons and one daughter. The Odoms were from South Carolina and were Huguenots. There were the father and mother, James and Rhoda Odom, and two sons, Harris and Eli, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Sarah. These two families settled on Station Camp Creek and owned all the land from the town of Gallatin to about three miles west, extending from the Nashville pike north to the Douglass pike. It was inevitable in those pioneer days that the families should intermarry, and hence, the record goes, that Charles Elliott married Elizabeth Odom and settled at Walnut Grove, on the creek a mile west of Gallatin. Across the creek at Wall's Spring, lived George Elliott, who married Mary Odom. A mile farther up the creek was the home of James Odom, the father of the family, at Maple Grove. His wife was Rhoda Gibson, whose father was scalped by the Indianas, but who lived to be the hero of many a small boy descendant. Here Harris Odom lived with his wife, Adeline Elliston, the step-daughter of his sister, Elizabeth, who married, as her third husband, Joseph T .Elliston of Nashville. Eli Odom married a niece of his brother-in-law, George Elliot, Katie Phagan, who was the mother of Ellen Odom, Mrs. Charles Trousdale.

We are amazed at the rapidity with which fortunes are made today. But the success of these pioneers, under conditions that would seem to prohibit the accumulation of money, is far more remarkable. George Elliot was a Colonel under General Coffee in the Creek War and at the battle of New Orleans. For many years his was the most celebrated racing stud in the South. Leviathan, Albion, Pocolet and Haynies Maria were a few of the giants of the turf that made his stables famous. Men came from all parts of the United Stated to see what blue grass could do for the blooded horse. Mrs. Elliott used to say that she never knew if she would have one or twenty guests at a meal. When Colonel Elliott was reproached in those earnest, early days of the circuit rider and camp meeting for horse racing he would say, "The first race horse I ever owned I won from the General." General Jackson was an intimate friend and frequent guest at the Elliott home. "Wall Spring," so named for a fine, bold spring on the creek, which was famous and dispensed a liberal, old time hospitality. The ambition of his later years was to have the finest thorough bred stock of every kind. At the county fairs it was said, "only let old Jarret, the Colonel's head groom, lead an animal in, if it were a butting ram, a grunting pig, or a thoroughbred stallion, it always bore off the prize. " This splendid estate is now owned by Judge John W. Judd, who makes his home in the original Elliot mansion. Colonel Elliott was a man of most noble mein. In character he was simple, strong, generous, and honest. He lived to see his country rent by Civil War. His son, Eli Elliott, fought gallantly for four years for the land his father loved, and came home at the close of the war to find devastations where all had been delight.

Walnut Grove, the home of Charles Elliott and his wife, Elizabeth Odom, consisted of a square mile of land, devoted entirely to groves and meadows. About 1795 was built there the stone house which stands today in a perfect state of preservation- a model of early colonial architecture. The only child of this marriage was a daughter names Maria. Charles Elliott died in 1808, and after a few years his widow was married to a famous young Methodist preacher, Leaner Blackman. In 1815 the couple went to a general conference at Cincinnati. As they were returning home, crossing the ferry on the Ohio River, the lead horses became frightened (they were driving a coach and four). Mr. Blackman caught the bridle to quite them, but rearing up they threw him overboard and he was drowned before his wife's eyes. She returned to Cincinnati and had him buried there. The family have a portrait of her painted about this time. She is seated, dressed in black, under a weeping willow, leaning on a tombstone, on which is inscribed, "Leaner Blackman, drowned in the Ohio River, May 16, 1815." In 1816 her daughter Maria, was married to Elijah Boddie a young man of a wealthy and distinguished family of North Carolina. His grandfather, Nathan Boddie, of Edgecomb, was a member of the Mecklenburg Congress. The young man came to Sumner County to see some property he had inherited, fell in love with the beautiful Maria, and with the splendid country, and never returned to his native State. Being a man of wealth, he was able to indulge his taste in the development of his splendid estate. It used to be said that, "there was not a week on the Boddie farm." Elijah Boddie was a lawyer who never took a fee and a politician without ambition. He was philanthropist of the highest order. He was a leader in the Democratic party in Tennessee for many years, and could have held any office in the gift of his party, but he said he could not spare the time from home duties. He had eleven children, seven of whom lived to be grown. He died in 1851 at the age of 64 years. He left Walnut Grove to his eldest son, Charles Elliott Boddie, a man of the highest type, but who lost it in the disastrous wind-up of the Civil War. It was bought by Mr. Dismukes, who occupied if for a number of years. It is once more the home of the Boddies. Its owner it Miss Katie Trousdale, a granddaughter of Eli Odom, and it is occupied as a summer home by Mrs. Carrington Mason of Memphis, the only living child of Elijah Boddie and Maria Elliott.