BAXTER SEMINARY
Jere Baxter
-BAXTER TENNESSEE-
Brief History
Nuggets
History Sketch 1934
Historical Marker
Jere Baxter
Tennessee Central Railroad
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Jere Baxter (1852-1907)
Mine Lick renamed to Baxter, Tennessee
Baxter is located in a beautiful section on the western end of Putnam County. It is bordered by Highway 70
on the north and Highway 56 on the east. The Nashville and Knoxville Tennessee Central Railroad, NKTCR, built the railroad
with the tracks running right through downtown Baxter. At the time the town was named Mine Lick with a Post Office
located just southeast of it named AI. The town name was changed to Baxter in 1902. The name change was made to
honor Jere Baxter, the President of the Tennessee Central Railroad. Under
his leadership the Tennessee Central acquired and expanded the NKTCR. Baxter is only 8 miles west
of Cookeville. It is eighty-one-miles east of Nashville and one hundred and twenty-nine miles west of Knoxville.
Today it is bordered by Interstate 40 on the south. The Nashville and Eastern railroad now own the tracks running through
downtown Baxter. Railroad Entrepreneur New South railroad entrepreneur Jere Baxter challenged the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad’s control over Middle Tennessee commerce by building the Tennessee Central Railroad to connect Nashville and Knoxville. Baxter was born in 1852, the son of a prominent Nashville politician, Judge Nathaniel Baxter. After adventures in travel, law, legal publishing, and real estate, the young, energetic Baxter turned to railroading. While still in his twenties, he became president of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company and went on to help organize companies promoting the development of coal fields in northern Alabama and eastern Tennessee. He was involved in the founding of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, and Sheffield, Alabama.
Baxter’s attempt to break the L&N’s control over Nashville commerce earned applause from many Nashvillians, who supported TC construction with city bonds. Baxter started his own Nashville newspaper to counter adverse reports in the city’s two L&N-controlled newspapers. In 1900 the L&N ignored public indignation and refused to allow TC trains to use the newly opened Union Station. In 1903 Baxter won election to the state Senate, where he pushed for legislation to force the L&N to open Union Station to TC traffic. With the defeat of the bill, the TC lost its last chance to become an equal contender for Nashville’s railroad business. Baxter died in February 1904 of kidney disease.
Baxter failed in his confrontation with the L&N, but his railroad exerted a lasting impact on economic development in the
Eastern Highland Rim and Cumberland Plateau. The TC reached areas without river or highway connections and provided a
link to the national economy. Farmers shipped produce on the TC, sawmills and coal mines sprang up along the line, and
cash replaced barter as the region entered the larger market economy. Until the 1920s the TC remained the chief link to
the outside world for the Upper Cumberland and the Plateau. Baxter became a hero to many people in the hill country,
and one small town in Putnam County changed its name to honor him. -
Tennessee Encyclopedia,
Memorialized
Then, around 1946, the statue was moved to the front of Jere Baxter Elementary School at the corner of Gallatin Pike and Hart Lane in East Nashville. The statue stood there for many years. One day, when I realized that the statue was no longer there, I parked my car and went into the school’s front door and looked for the office. By this time, the Jere Baxter School had become an alternative school. I found the Vice Principal, and he was very kind to inform me that the statue was moved to stand at the front of the new Jere Baxter Middle School. I went back to my car and headed out to see that statue which I had seen many times as a child down at the Broadway and West End Avenue split. The new Jerre Baxter Middle School is located on out Hart Lane going from Gallatin Pike and across Ellington Parkway. The school sits up on a hill, and this very distinguished statue of Jere Baxter and the monument have an honored place right by the flagpole before the main entrance of the school.
(Above) Full length bronze statue honoring Jere Baxter who organized the Tennessee Central Railroad Honored by Statue
Colonel Jere Baxter is a wonderful character in his own right. He was a lawyer and a newspaperman and later served as
state senator and president of the Tennessee Central railroad. He helped found South Pittsburg, Tennessee, and
Sheffield, Alabama. Baxter, Tennessee was so grateful that he ran the railroad out to them that they changed their name
in honor of him. Y’all probably know him from Jere Baxter Middle School (where the aforementioned statue of him now
stands) or Jere Baxter Lodge there on Gallatin."
The Statue is moved to Jere Baxter School
A full-length bronze statue of Jere Baxter, a prominent Tennessee businessman, lawyer, and politician who founded the Tennessee Central Railroad. This outdoors sculpture, located at Jere Baxter School, 3515 Gallatin Road, Nashville, Tennessee was commissioned before Nov. 1905, with Belle Kinney, a prominent sculptor. The statue was dedicated on May 28th, 1907. Around 1946, the statue was moved to the front of Jere Baxter Elementary School at the corner of Gallatin Pike and Hart Lane in East Nashville and stood there for many years.
Jere Baxter School was built on a parcel of land conveyed by Jere Baxter and his wife, Mattie M.
Baxter, to the three directors of School District 18--and to their successors in office--by a deed dated December 3, 1887.
The first Jere Baxter school opened in 1888, and was a one-room frame structure. That building was destroyed by fire
and was replaced, in 1915, by a two-room brick building. In 1920 it was expanded and became a four-teacher school.
In 1923 an additional building was erected and the two buildings housed not only the students of the eight elementary grades,
but also those of the first two years of high school until the completion of Isaac Litton High School in 1930.
In 1941 the small brick building was razed and replaced by a new, up-to-date one. It was intended that this new
structure should house only the first four grades and that at a later date the building would be expanded. The building
was completed destroyed by fire on December 6th, 1941. Despite WWII war shortage and priorities, the expansion of the
new building was completed by October of 1942.
Statue Relocated to Jere Baxter Middle School
Today the statue resides on the campus of Jere Baxter Middle school at 305 Hart Lane in Nashville, TN. The inscription on the front base of the statue is:
JERE BAXTER
HIS GENIUS CONCEIVED THE The right base reads:
THAT I LOVE MY COUNTRY THE The left base reads:
IN RECOGNITION OF HIS INVALUABLE - Photo: Mike Alexander Jere Baxter U. S. Post Office An East Nashville U. S. Post Office was name in honor of him. The Jere Baxter Post Office is located at 1011 Gillock St, Nashville, TN 37216. This is just east of the intersection of Baxter Ave. and Gillock St. and is also near the location of the very first Jere Baxter school. 
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In 1893 Baxter organized the Tennessee Central Railroad Company (TC). Baxter planned to build a rail line to span the
state from Knoxville to Memphis and break the L&N monopoly over rail connections to Nashville, but the Panic of 1893 stymied
construction and left the TC bankrupt. Baxter then turned to Louisville capitalists, who created a syndicate to buy the
TC and placed him back in control. At the turn of the century, Baxter used convict labor to build a railroad line from
Monterey in Putnam County to Harriman and then to Knoxville. The purchase and construction of connecting branch lines
enabled Baxter to provide rail connections from Knoxville to Nashville and west to Clarksville. - TCR
engine number 551 with a passenger train at Nashville on a snowy January day in the 1940's.
After the death of Jere Baxter, he was honored by having a full length statue cast in bronze and displayed on a large
base. The graceful statue was done by Belle Kinney, and it was unveiled on May 28, 1907. For a long time, this statue
stood at the junction of Broadway and West End Avenue.
"Miss Belle Kinney was awarded the contract for a statue of Colonel
Baxter, and the statue, cast in bronze and of heroic size, was unveiled May 28, 1907. The monument was erected in the
apex of the triangle made by West End Avenue and Broad Street at Sixteenth, formerly Belmont Avenue.
