Cedar Grove, Tennessee — A Carroll County Community's Early History

Cedar Grove is a small, unincorporated Carroll County community whose name traces directly to its earliest church. Most of its first settlers came from North Carolina, and a Southern Methodist congregation built its church in a large grove of cedar trees, giving the settlement the name it still carries. Rev. Jimmy Woodard served as the church's early pastor.

Early civic life in Cedar Grove centered on a handful of families. W. G. Parker, son of a settler who had come from North Carolina, became the community's postmaster, while John W. Roberts built the town's first store, which Parker later took over and ran himself. Dr. Tobe Herron and Dr. Jim Clark served as two of the community's earliest doctors.

Education followed the subscription-school model common to rural Tennessee at the time: students attended for roughly three months each winter, and the schoolhouse doubled as a gathering place for the wider community. Cotton became Cedar Grove's leading cash crop, and a mule-and-treadmill-powered gin was built at Parker's Store to process it. A water mill south of McCanney Creek ground grain for the surrounding farms and doubled as a popular picnic spot.