When I informed my high school guidance counselor of my college choice, I was told that I should not aim so high. That did it. I applied, and against all odds, Vanderbilt, my singular choice, accepted me for early admission.

Alexander Heard had just been named Vanderbilt's chancellor. My mother had dated him as a high school student in Savannah, and she assured me that if I ever landed in jail, "Alex" would get me out.

Despite my excellent prep-school training, I took a beating in Melvyn New's freshman English class. Words like "trite," "redundant," "clichéd," "hackneyed" and "verbose" continued to appear in red pencil on my English compositions. I was, however, permitted to opt out of Western Civilization--discretion being the better part of valor (another cliché).

Upon my Vanderbilt graduation in 1966, I returned to Savannah and worked there for eight years before moving my family to Nashville, where I had accepted an engineering position. Back in Nashville my interest in Francis Nash and his older brother, North Carolina Gov. Abner Nash (my fourth great-grandfather), led to what would become my all-consuming passion: the American Revolutionary period.

As my interest grew I became acutely aware that the American Revolution is a forgotten war, particularly in the South where it is overshadowed by the War Between the States. Few of this generation can name a single Revolutionary War general other than George Washington and perhaps Lafayette.

Periodically, I would write an article for The Tennessean about Brig. Gen. Nash, who gave his life for his country and his name to Nashville. In 2001 the Francis Nash Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) asked me to address its members on the occasion of its 70th anniversary.

Rather than filing away my talk afterwards, I kept writing. The Tennessee State Archives provided much information about the North Carolina history of the two Nash brothers, and the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia provided online transcriptions of letters that proved invaluable--letters to (and from) Abner and Francis Nash, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and members of the Continental Congress. My book, Patriot Sons, Patriot Brothers (2006, Westview Publishing Inc.), places the lives of Francis and Abner Nash in the historical context of the defense of Philadelphia, the Southern campaign of the American Revolution, the Continental Congresses, the drafting of the North Carolina and U.S. constitutions, the settling of East and Middle Tennessee, and the naming of Nashville, Tenn.

History makes no record of either brother ever visiting the area that would become Middle Tennessee. How, then, did Tennessee's capital city come to be called Nashville?

My fifth great-grandfather, John Nash, owned a 13,000-acre tobacco plantation in Prince Edward County, Va. His sons, Francis and Abner, sold their inheritance to seek their fortune. Francis relocated to Hillsborough, N.C., in 1763. The two brothers dammed the Eno River, built a grist mill, and invested in several other Hillsborough businesses. Abner moved on to New Bern, where he would become perhaps the best trial attorney in the Province of North Carolina.

Francis was appointed superior court judge at the age of 21. As Hillsborough grew to become the political and cultural center of the province, Francis grew in stature and popularity. Francis married Sarah (Sally) Moore, granddaughter of the colonial governor of South Carolina.

Francis Nash was handsome and athletic and presented a striking image on horseback, according to William Richardson Davie, lawyer, soldier, and founder of the University of North Carolina. History indicates that Francis' appearance did not go unnoticed by the local barmaids.

As members of North Carolina's ruling class, with the advantages of birth, wealth, education and marriage, Francis Nash and his brother, Abner, served in the colonial assemblies of Royal Governors William Tryon and Josiah Martin.

In 1771, serving under Gov. Tryon, Francis Nash proved himself courageous in the Battle of Alamance, fighting a band of "regulators"--backcountry farmers who had organized an armed rebellion to protest abuse by the provincial government. Alamance would forever change Francis Nash's worldview. The king's governor hanged one of the rebels, James Few, near the battlefield and executed several more regulators in Hillsborough--all without trial.

Over the next five years, Francis Nash attended the not-so-clandestine provincial congresses, where grievances against King George III were debated. When North Carolina signed the Declaration of Independence, Nash was appointed colonel in North Carolina's Continental Army and later became brigadier general.

After the defense of Charleston in 1776, Nash returned to North Carolina to recruit. He marched his nine regiments, consisting of 2,000 men, north to join George Washington, arriving in Philadelphia in time to attend the first Fourth of July celebration.

Nash served at the Battle of Brandywine Creek and then at Germantown, both in the defense of Philadelphia. At Germantown, as Francis marched his troops behind Washington's caravan, a 6-pound cannonball flew out of the smoke and fog and over Washington's head. The ball struck Nash's horse in the neck and crushed Nash's thigh. Both fell to the ground, with the brigadier general pinned under the dead horse. Maj. James Witherspoon was killed instantly when the same ball struck him in the head.

George Washington assigned his personal physician to care for Nash, but the general could not be saved. After enduring a bumpy and painful 30-mile wagon ride, Nash died four days later at nearby Towamencin on the road to Valley Forge. He is said to have bled through two feather beds.

Nash's funeral was attended by American Revolutionary War heroes Washington, Lafayette and Pulaski; Generals Nathanael Greene, Anthony Wayne and John Sullivan; and 11,000 continental soldiers. Francis Nash left behind a wife and two young daughters. What a terrible price this 35-year-old officer paid for our country.

Abner's slight physique and poor health made him unfit for battle, but he demonstrated no less love for his country than his brother. One contemporary described him as "vehemence and fire" in the courtroom. While Francis Nash fought the king's army, Abner was serving as the first speaker of North Carolina's House of Commons.

Following his brother's death, Abner Nash was elected North Carolina speaker of the senate, and then governor. He was inaugurated governor the very day Charleston fell to the British. His term spanned the debacle at Camden and the successful battles of Kings Mountain, Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse.

In the fall of 1786, Abner, who had endured the ravages of tuberculosis for most of his public life, traveled to New York to represent North Carolina in the Congress. His consumption worsened.

"Congress has not yet elected a President owing to their [sic] being too few States on the floor," wrote Virginia Congressman William Grayson to James Monroe on Nov. 22. "Mr. Nash of N. Carolina, who lies dangerously ill, is talked of generally, & nothing but his death or extreme ill health I am persuaded will prevent his election [as president of Congress]."

Abner Nash, age 46, died a few days later. Had he lived, he likely would have become president of the Congress, and no doubt would have signed the United States Constitution for North Carolina nine months later.

Tennessee did not become a state until 1796. While Francis Nash was fighting the British and Abner was helping establish a fledgling new government, Daniel Boone was exploring the vast lands to the west. Boone convinced North Carolina judge Richard Henderson that the time was right for western investment, and in 1775 Henderson and several others, including North Carolinian James Robertson, struck a bargain with the Cherokee Indians. For 2,000 pounds sterling and another 8,000 pounds in goods, the Cherokees deeded over more than 20 million acres, which included about two-thirds of present-day Kentucky and much of Middle Tennessee.

Francis Nash had served in Henderson's court, and two others investors, Thomas Hart and William Johnston, had been associates of Nash in Hillsborough. It is likely that Thomas Hart's brother and partner, Nathaniel Hart, knew Francis as well. The State Record of North Carolina in 1784 recorded an act calling for the establishment of a town to be called "Nash-Ville, in memory of the patriotic and brave General Nash," on the Cumberland River near the French Lick.

Two other towns also would come to be named for Francis Nash: Nashville, Ga., and Nashville, N.C.

Francis Nash's final resting place, however, is at Kulpsville, Pa., a few miles from the place where a cannonball felled him. Many years later, in 1935, Nashville, Tenn., experienced what must have been a media frenzy when a movement to remove Gen. Nash's body to the city named in his honor caught fire. The Daughters of the American Revolution got involved. There were letters to the editor, telegrams, and even a special telephone exchange set up by Southern Bell to receive votes in favor of the proposed removal. But the body was never moved.

Today Francis Nash's grave remains in Pennsylvania, where he fought his last battle. The only marker commemorating him in Nashville, Tenn., is a bronze plaque downtown at the Fort Nashborough facsimile on First Avenue.

My ancestor never could have predicted that he would lend his name not only to a city he had never visited, but to an enduring style of music. Nashville's phone book lists more than 50 households of Nashes. Most, I suspect, do not trace their names back to my ancestors and know little of the man for whom their city is named.

I was born in Trinidad, educated in England, and moved to Nashville in 2002 to teach history at Vanderbilt. My research focuses on African Americans in the Atlantic world of the 19th century. Wherever I live, I also try to do a bit of research into local history.

My daily drive to work takes me past Montgomery Bell Academy, which piqued my interest about the man for whom the school was named. My interest was aroused further when I ran across an old newspaper item about Montgomery Bell freeing his slaves and sending them to Liberia on the west coast of Africa. When I asked a local librarian why Bell had done such a thing, I was met with a knowing look, a twinkle in the eye, and the information that Bell was a bachelor. The inference was clear: Bachelors do things with women over whom they have command.

A historian of Dickson County, Tenn., where most of Bell’s forges and furnaces were located, wrote of Bell: “He was a ruthless slave driver who made hard bargains … who became wealthy exploiting Dickson County and who may even have had illegitimate white and black children, but who in later years became imbued with a philanthropic spirit and emancipated slaves and gave money for the establishment of a school for boys.”

Much is implied here, but much is left unsaid. How does someone who has been eagerly going about exploiting his slaves decide to free them?

By the time Bell made the decision to send his slaves to Liberia in the early 1850s, he had become Tennessee’s most prominent ironmaster. Born in Chester County, Pa., in 1769, he moved first to Kentucky and then to Tennessee, where in 1804 he purchased a furnace from James Robertson, the founder of Nashville. The 1850 slave schedules record that Bell owned 310 slaves, making him possibly the largest slaveholder in the state.

In a society in which racism flourished, any slaveholder who was partial to freeing his slaves faced the problem of where to settle them once they were freed. Most Southern states made it impossible for freed slaves to remain in those states unless they got special dispensation from the legislature.

Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822 as a place to settle freed slaves and free blacks who no longer wished to live in the United States. The society had a schizophrenic history and character. On the one hand it saw itself as an anti-slavery organization; on the other it was an organization that got rid of free blacks, the most dangerous people within a slave society. Many state societies, including those of Pennsylvania and Maryland, created their own settlements of freed slaves along the coast of Liberia, with the idea of keeping people from a particular area together.

The American Colonization Society relied on support from local chapters. Funds to cover the costs of passage and support were to be provided by the slaveholder. If no funds were available, the clerk of court had to hire out the slave until enough money was raised to send the slave to Liberia—an interesting emancipation concept.

By 1853 when Bell made the decision to send his slaves to Liberia, the Tennessee Colonization Society, founded in 1829, was in desperate financial straits. As a result, Bell and others who wished to send their slaves to Liberia would have to foot much of the bill, and the bill was pretty steep. It was estimated it would cost $60—in 1850 money—to outfit and support each emigrant for six months.

The society’s Tennessee agent wrote to the national office in Washington, D.C., informing them that Montgomery Bell had 200 servants—documents of the era rarely use the term “slaves”—whom he wished to settle in Liberia. One hundred of them were direct descendants of James Worley, a slave for whom Bell had named one of his forges in Dickson County. Roughly 80 were mechanics who had built sawmills, gristmills and furnaces. Bell’s slaves were skilled artisans, the cream of the crop. They blasted rock through tunnels, and he entrusted much of his business to them.

The letters I have come across bearing Bell’s signature are clearly not written by him, but his correspondence suggests he had been mulling over the possibility of freeing his slaves for some time. Under Tennessee law he would have to send them out of the country. It seems likely that Bell grew increasingly anxious—a word that crops up in all of the letters—that his death would lead to an unseemly scramble. Friends spoke about signs of physical infirmity and mental feebleness. His confidante Thomas Cross said Bell anticipated trouble from what he described as his “collateral heirs” should he die before his slaves were free.

Those who knew Bell well described him as a man of peculiar temperament who wrote his will, it was said, and disposed of his servants—only to undo all that he had done. Bell evidently wrote wills frequently. One can envision him watching to see the reaction of his family, and then changing his will yet again. Perhaps at age 85 with no direct descendants to look after, it was one of life’s joys.

In any case, Bell’s decision came during a time when there was a spike of interest in colonization, with inquiries from Tennessee towns like McMinnville and Murfreesboro. The most significant of them came from William Kennedy, a slaveholder from Columbia, Tenn., who sent a first group of his slaves to Liberia in December 1852, sailing from New Orleans. A second group of Kennedy’s slaves was to follow in the spring.

Bell initially planned to send 70 or 80 of his servants to Liberia in two separate groups. He proposed to cover half the cost to outfit them and get them to the ship if the American Colonization Society agreed to cover other expenses. Not uncharacteristically, Bell made a number of additional demands. He wanted to know if he could buy 2,000 acres of land rich in iron ore on which to settle the emigrants. When it appeared that was not possible, he insisted his company be settled with those of Kennedy’s where there were known deposits of iron ore. The society replied that only the government of Liberia could grant such a request but promised to approach the government.

Knowing that many of Kennedy’s company had died on the last emigrant ship to leave the port the previous December, Bell insisted his company not ship out through New Orleans. His and Kennedy’s groups would join the company in Savannah, Ga. The enterprise was to be headed by Thomas Scott, the patriarch of the family, who was rumored to have helped produce the cannonballs used by Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.

These trips tried the souls of the emigrants. There was the cross-country trip to the ship from Middle Tennessee to Savannah in the period before rails. On this and other trips, the society hired an agent to assist and protect the former slaves, who usually took too much baggage with them. Along the way there were people willing to exploit the situation, and many of them had to be paid off. The voyage took an average of 40 days and, as one local person said, it was “hotter than hell.”

As is the case with most of the emigrants to Liberia, little is known about the first company of Bell’s slaves who landed in 1854. Within six months they sent back to Bell a bar of iron, which suggested the land had rich deposits of iron ore. Within weeks of the departure of the first company of 38 emigrants, friends of Bell were reporting to the society that he was ready to send out a second company. The group that left in May 1854 comprised 49 emigrants.

Kennedy reported that Bell planned to offer an additional 200 “iron men,” as they were called, to the society if they could join early expeditions and if the Liberian government would grant additional land.

The prospects seemed good. One report declared that an analysis had found the land where Bell’s former slaves settled boasted the best and richest iron ore in the world.

But among Bell’s family there was widespread suspicion that he was not only losing his marbles but frittering away his assets in a misguided scheme. And family members were not the only persons who had other ideas.

Bell asked a trusted nephew, George Bain, to accompany the third group.

Bell sent a pair of trusted slaves, a man named Joe Hall and another called Jim Burrus, to give another nephew, James L. Bell, an envelope stuffed with $3,500. The money evidently was to be sent to Thomas Scott, leader of the first expedition, to help pay for establishment of iron forges and to help see the emigrants who had already gone out through the hardships of their first settlement.

Joe Hall and Jim Burrus came up with an ingenious scheme. They sent half the money to Thomas Scott and used the other half to make their way to freedom in Ohio.

I found this advertisement for Burrus and Hall in the local newspaper:

Run away from the subscriber about 21st of August
Two Negroes
Joe is a black Negro, 24 years old, very stout but not fleshy. Weighs about 180 pounds. Has a scar on one of his cheekbones caused by a burn. Can read and write.
Jim is a copper-colored Negro with a peculiar yellowness about the eyes, about 60 years old. About 5 feet 9 and weighs about 175 pounds.
They have a large amount of money with them in notes on the Bank of Tennessee.
They are both keen, shrewd Negroes, possibly have forged free papers with them, and may have had assistance from a white man.

Always, there’s a white man lurking in the background, as if, faced with $3,500, these guys couldn’t look out for themselves. The Bank of Tennessee offered an award of $300, an amazing amount of money at the time.

Plans for a third company, at any rate, fell apart on April 1, 1855, when Bell died. In the end I am left unsure of Bell’s motives. Bell’s friend Kennedy may have reflected his views when he described colonization as “the grandest benevolent enterprise of its time that was good for the Negro and even better for the white man.” Friends spoke of Bell’s long desire to free a people to whom he was deeply attached. The cynic wonders why it took so long.

There’s no evidence that Bell came to his decision because many of those he freed were his offspring. To put it indelicately, I get the impression that Bell wanted to give his family the old digit. He was clearly being difficult, and his “collateral heirs” were not treated kindly.

But his last will—really last will—insisted that the executors sell his slaves to “good masters” and that families not be separated.

Years later I came across the following notice in a Missouri newspaper:

The undersigned receivers of Montgomery Bell will offer in Valley Forge in Dickson County 140 Negroes consisting of men, women and children, many of them skilled in every department of the iron business, forgement keepers, and the majority of women and children excellent farm hands. Said slaves will be sold on 12 months’ credit and as families as far as practical.

Montgomery Bell’s heirs, in the end, got hold of some of his slaves, though the period of slavery by then was drawing to an end. Abraham Lincoln proposed sending free blacks elsewhere, though not necessarily to Liberia. Lincoln viewed colonization as a way of softening the conflict between Southerners and Northerners, and stayed with the idea through the middle of the Civil War.

Black Americans, however, were not partial to the idea of colonization. The United States was their country. They’d fought and died for it. Lincoln was stunned by how opposed black Americans were to colonization.

America’s connection with Liberia remained strong, nonetheless. Iron ore would become Liberia’s most important asset until the founding of the rubber industry in the 20th century.

In the end we are left with as many questions as answers regarding Montgomery Bell’s decision to send his slaves to Liberia. Several years ago when a librarian at the Nashville Archives showed me a copy of Montgomery Bell’s will, one phrase stood out. The will stipulated a bequest to open a school for “indigent boys.”

Since then, every time I drive by Montgomery Bell Academy with its manicured lawns and imposing iron gates behind which generations of young gentlemen have prepared for academic careers at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, I have visions of poor indigent lads trying to cross Harding Road. Clearly something went awry with that part of Montgomery Bell’s plan, too.

The lesson we are left with, perhaps, is that we should give away our riches before we grow old.

Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from a lecture given by Richard Blackett, the Andrew Jackson Professor of History, as part of the Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box series last year. A bit of trivia for Vanderbilt history buffs: Montgomery Bell Academy originated in 1867 as part of the old University of Nashville, which became Peabody Normal College in 1888—later to become George Peabody College for Teachers and, in 1979, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.

Nicotiana tabacum. It's a lovely plant, really--large, bright green leaves on a central stem that reaches 6 feet or more.Mid-season, a fat cluster of nearly white tube flowers crown the stem. It's a hardy plant, too, resistant to both heat and drought. Perfect for the land I call home.

I grew up on a tobacco and cotton farm in eastern North Carolina.My cousins and many ofmy friends did, too.We never thought much about being part of a community whose fertile heritage included growing a product that has contributed to the deaths of thousands upon thousands. The grownups paid it no mind, either.

Daddy used to say that cotton was king. But the real lord and master in these parts was tobacco.

Flue-cured tobacco, the crème de la crème. Grown primarily in the Carolinas,Virginia, Georgia and Florida, it fairs especially well in the sandy loam that distinguishes this western edge of the coastal plain. Our tobacco is grade A prime produce.

Today the tobacco industry is light years from where it stood some 40 years ago when I was girl, but it is by no means a dead or even dying trade.The Federal Tobacco Quota Buyout in 2004 ended a price support system in place since the 1930s that determined how much would be grown where.

Everyone said the buyout would prove the end for tobacco growers. Even though fewer farmers in this part of the state now grow the crop, those who do have increased their farm size and are growing more. In fact,North Carolina remains the nation's leading producer of flue-cured tobacco.

I am proud to be a member of an evershrinking community that worked on a traditional tobacco farm. In those days tobacco was planted, tended and harvested by human hands. Lots of them.

In the late fall we planted tobacco seeds in frames and covered themwith porous fabric. By spring of the following year, the seedlings were ready.

Farm workers sat on a tobacco planter, which was four seats wide and hitched to a mule, and dropped the little plants in rows of freshly turned soil.Mid-season,when those pretty flowers were blooming,workers walked up and down each row to cut them off--called "topping"--so that all the nourishment would go into the leaves.

By July tobacco was ready to harvest.When farmers were "putting in" tobacco, other chores were left undone.We worked steadily through the day, every day except Sunday, with a break for lunch. It was grimy, sweaty, hard work, and because of it many a girl and boy came to appreciate that a college education might be useful.

Hand labor for the harvesting of tobacco was considerable. Both whites and blacks worked on our land.The Hispanics who comprise the bulk of farm workers in North Carolina now weren't here then.

I don't remember race being so much an issue as gender and age. The boys and men worked in the fields and picked the leaves, called "priming."They picked from the bottom up, grabbing just the larger leaves, allowing the smaller ones toward the top to mature a few weeks more.

They laid the leaves in a "slide,"which was a mule-drawn long wooden box that slid down a row just wide enough for it and a mule. A "trucker" drove the mule. I coveted this job because I was horse crazy at the time, and mules were as close to a horse as I could get. But Daddy wouldn't let me be a trucker; I was a girl, and girls just didn't do that.

When the slide was full, the trucker brought it to the barn. Tobacco barns were built in clusters of at least two and often four. One of the barns was usually constructed with a shelter attached, and those not in the field worked under that shelter.

Children, girls (including me) and young women were "handers."Handers grabbed four or five leaves, clumped them together, and handed them, stems out, to the "looper," who was typically an older woman.

She tied the handfuls of tobacco on a stick with cotton twine. They were not fastened in knots, exactly, but the string was wound around the bunches in such a way as to hold them fast.When a stick was full, we hung it on a frame.When the frames were full, the strongest and most agile of the young men hung the sticks on rafters in the barn.

Once a barn was full, the process of curing began. The green leaves were dried by heat. Gas-fired stoves with flues for sending out heat sat on the dirt floor of the barn, and as their heat rose, baking the leaves, they gradually turned from green to yellow-gold.When they were completely dry, the leaves were removed from the sticks and taken to a nearby warehouse, where they were put in piles and graded. Buyers from tobacco companies would walk among the piles and bid on their favorites.

Tobacco warehouses were dim, hot and musty. I can still see the piles of yellow leaves and smell their sweet pungent musk. It always made me queasy, and I seldom accompanied my father to the warehouses because of it.

Aside from the heat, humidity, long days, and sheer boredom of putting in tobacco, it's a grimy crop. Tobacco leaves have short hairs that produce a thick, sticky substance called "gum." After a few hours, black tobacco gum would be glued to your clothes, your hands, and anything you touched. Lava soap and Comet cleanser would take most of it off, but even then, by the end of the week scrubbing was futile--it had to wear off.

I worked in tobacco for just a couple of years. As soon as I was old enough to drive, I found a summer job in air conditioning, working as a hostess-cashier at a Ramada Inn. It was paradise.

My father died in 1994, and my mother has rented our land to other farmers since. Sometimes they raise tobacco, but usually they grow peanuts, soybeans or, like this year, corn. Everyone is growing corn for ethanol.

I have been thinking recently about why I don't feel guilty about my hand in growing tobacco. There are many reasons: It has been grown for centuries before me, and smoking is a personal choice.Also, I used the product for about 10 years. I fought the war and survived, so to speak. Quitting was tough, but I never swore at tobacco.

It has contributed greatly to my good life. It bought me a horse, sent me to college, carried me to England one summer, and purchased my first car. Tobacco built the region of North Carolina in which I live, and it did the same for other parts of the state. If I were anything other than grateful to tobacco, I would be a hypocrite.

Today when I pass a tobacco field, I don't see cancer and caskets. I see Susie,my favorite looper; Betty Jean,my best childhood friend; and those young men hanging sticks of green leaves up high in the barn. Tobacco is wound tightly through some of my best childhood memories, and it defines more than a little my early years on the family farm.