[351] Overton County Farm Joins Ranks of State's Century Farms Program

For Release: Mar. 14, 2011
Contact: Caneta Hankins, Center for Historic Preservation 615-898-2947



OVERTON COUNTY FARM JOINS RANKS OF STATE’S CENTURY FARMS PROGRAM
Richardson-Holman Place Farm Recognized for Agricultural Contributions

(MURFREESBORO)— The Richardson-Holman Place Farm, located in Overton County, has been designated as a Tennessee Century Farm, reports Caneta S. Hankins, director of the Century Farms Program at the Center for Historic Preservation at MTSU.
The Century Farms Program recognizes the contributions of Tennessee residents who have owned and kept family land in continuous agricultural production for at least 100 years.
In 1859, David Richardson purchased 157 acres in the Ozone Community of Overton County, paying around $1.81 per acre. David and his wife, Sarah Sells Richardson, were the parents of 10 children. One of their sons, Peter, later acquired the 157 acres from his parents. Peter and his wife, Melvina Sells, were the parents of nine children. Their son, James Logan Richardson, purchased the farm from his parents in 1902, and for nearly 50 years “Uncle Jim” worked the farm.
In 1956, Jim Logan Richardson’s brother, David, purchased the property. He married Nannie Hensley, and the couple had seven children. David, Nannie and their family lived across the creek from her sister and brother-in-law, Lucy and Floyd Holman, and their eight children. The families were very close, and the first cousins attended Ozone School together.
In 1972, Lester C. Holman, a son of Lucy and Floyd Holman and a descendant of David Leander Sells, the brother of farm matriarch Sarah Sells Richardson, purchased the farm from the Richardson heirs, who were also his cousins. Lester and his wife, Willodean, and their sons, Ronnie and Donnie, worked hard to improve the farm, fence the land and raise cattle.
Donnie Holman purchased the farm in 2007 and added another 47 acres of land that originally belonged to founders David and Sarah Richardson in 2009. Donnie says he is particularly pleased to own this property because his great-grandmother, Rebecca Jane Sells Holman, and her three daughters moved to this parcel, called “The Ridge,” in 1915. Donnie’s father, Lester C. Holman, was born in the farmhouse where his grandmother and three aunts were living. Donnie recounts that his aunts were greatly admired by family and neighbors and were “humble and hardworking ladies” who “continually stressed the importance of family and clean living.” The last aunt, Estie, died in 2003 at age 102.
Donnie Holman, who is married to Paula Byerley, raises cattle and hay on this land that has been farmed by generations of the men and women of his family since before the Civil War. With the listing of the Richardson-Holman Place, Overton County has 19 certified Century Farms.
Since 1984, the Center for Historic Preservation at MTSU has been a leader in the important work of documenting Tennessee’s agricultural heritage and history through the Tennessee Century Farms Program.
For more information about the Century Farms Program, please visit www.tncenturyfarms.org. The Center for Historic Preservation also may be contacted at Box 80, MTSU, Murfreesboro, Tenn., 37132, or 615-898-2947.

• ATTENTION, MEDIA: To interview the farm’s owner or request jpegs of the farm for editorial use, please contact the CHP at 615-898-2947.




Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.