DICKSON

A short history of Dickson

Dickson was named for Congressman William Dickson, as was Dickson County. The City started as a stop on the railroad line between Nashville and the Tennessee River. When Union Troops had finished the supply line during the Civil War, the area was known as Mile 42 post.

It is disputed on what the community was known as prior to being named Dickson. Dr. Robert Corlew's book A History of Dickson County makes the claim that the community was named Sneedsville in honor of a railroad engineer named Sneed who helped complete the tracks under the orders of General Ulysses S. Grant. Various other sources also state that the city was at one point named Sneedsville. Other sources claim that the community was named Smeedsville rather than Sneedsville. One claim comes from a series of writings for the Dickson Free Press by former mayor Robert S. Clement From Mile Post 42… To City of Dickson 1980. In article 7 "Was it called Sneedsville or Smeedsville?" Clement writes about a 1867 Chancery Court decree that was brought to his attention by historian Henry Ragan that refers to the land as "Smeedsville, Dickson County, Tennessee.", and that Ragan interviewed various locals who remembered the town being named Smeedsville. Corlew claimed that he had found Chancery Court documents from the same year that incorporated the area as Sneedsville or Smeedsville, and that it's hard to interpret it being an "n" or an "m" due to the handwriting.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Dickson, Tennessee, revision 1378759598 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.