Proposed book on history of Nashville in research stage

Nashville began as a village in 1828.

A lot has changed there in the years since.

Eight people with ties to the Nashville area have formed the Nashville book committee to attempt to capture the village’s history.

The committee’s goal is to gather enough information to write a book about how the village has changed over the years.

“(The process of gathering information for the book) started when we saw the book they put together on Glenmont,” said Rosanna Armbrust, one of the committee’s members. “We were looking at it, and we thought we want to try to capture the history of Nashville before it’s gone.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find anything, so before it’s too late, we wanted to try to get together what we could.”

Armbrust said any history is worth capturing, especially a village like Nashville, which used to be bigger in its heyday.

“We have a small community, and it used to be much larger than it is,” Armbrust said. “There used to be lots of businesses, and I think people today don’t even realize that, and we want to get the word out so people understand that and take pride in the community again.”

The proposed book still has a long way to go before getting published. Armbrust said they are currently in the research stage of the process, with the committee’s members all looking into different aspects of the village’s history.

“I’m currently just doing some early research on the town, trying to figure out the original town plat and who owned land and stuff,” Armbrust said, “but we have other members working with the churches to try to get history and things like that, so we’re kind of dividing it up.”

The committee had only met twice as of early August.

“We’re just getting started, so we don’t have anything put together yet,” Armbrust said.

Since it’s early in the research stage, Armbrust said the committee doesn’t know how long the book will be.

“That’s all going to depend on how much information we can find,” she said. “Our goal is to try to have a comprehensive book that includes businesses, churches, schools, families, everything, but it all depends on what we can find.”

If anyone is willing to share any historical photographs or information about the Nashville area, Armbrust said they can email it to nashvillehistorybook@gmail.com.

“We’re trying right now to get historical stories about the different families that lived there or different businesses (or) old town photos because we’re finding it’s hard to get those old photos,” she said. “We’re really looking for anything historical about the town, the histories, the schools, churches and the families.

“We want to find out what the community has. We’re trying to pull the efforts because I know there’s a lot of information out there, but we’re not sure who would have it.”