Downtown Presbyterian Church

Proverbs chapter 31, verse 25 reads, "She is clothed with strength and dignity; she laughs with no fear of the future.” This verse could certainly be used to describe some of the influential women who were early members of Downtown Presbyterian Church. Called First Presbyterian Church until 1955, this is actually the third sanctuary built on this site. Designed by William Strickland in the Egyptian Revival-style, it was constructed between 1849 and 1851. 

Women have been active major participants in the life of this church since its founding in 1814. When the congregation was chartered, Ann Phillips Rogers Grundy was one of the seven founding members. She partnered with Methodist minister Samuel P. Ament to begin a non-denominational Sunday school for the poor in 1820, the same year that she gave birth to her tenth child. Sessions included religious study and spelling lessons using the Bible and Webster’s Speller as textbooks. Ann Grundy also helped to establish the House of Industry for Females, organized in 1837, a predecessor of sorts to the YWCA and other settlement houses. When Ann Grundy died in 1847, the local newspaper wrote, “Mrs. Grundy, widow of the late Honorable Felix Grundy, a lady universally respected and beloved.” 

Martha Maney O’Bryan dedicated her life to serving the poor after her fiancé was hanged as a Confederate spy near the end of the Civil War. For the remainder of her life, she reportedly dressed in widow’s black. She founded the Gleaners Society in 1894, based out of this very church, before establishing permanent headquarters years later in North Nashville. Not only does the organization still exist, it has been renamed the Martha O’Bryan Center. The center focuses on anti-poverty, educational, and recreational programming. 

Adelicia Acklen, another member of this church was a contemporary of Martha O’Bryan. Her first husband Isaac Franklin was in the slave trade industry. When he died in 1846 after only seven years of marriage, she became one of the wealthiest women in the antebellum South. Three years later, she married Colonel Joseph Acklen, who signed a rare prenuptial contract, which allowed Adelicia to maintain complete control of her assets. The couple began construction of Belmont, a 20,000-square-foot summer villa, now maintained as a house museum on the campus of Belmont University. Acklen faced financial ruin when the Confederate army threatened to burn 2,800 bales of her cotton to keep it from falling into Union hands in New Orleans. Acklen saved the cotton and shipped it to England where it sold for a reported $960,000 in gold. She attended Downtown Presbyterian, along with her children, when she was in Nashville. She gave the church the funds to purchase bell in the church’s tower that served for many years as the city’s fire alarm.

Continue walking east on Church Street, and turn RIGHT onto Fourth Avenue. Continue listening to the narrative as you walk down down Fourth Avenue, and pause when you reach the entrance to the Ryman Auditorium on your right.