Joseph Grayson Waldrop was born on June 11, 1847 in what is now Polk County. By the time he was four years old his father, Samuel, had moved the family to the outskirts of Hendersonville, where Joseph soon became a student in a small school conducted by Mrs. Valentine Ripley. Sometime later Samuel moved the family back to Polk County, where he held several government jobs such as Register of Deeds and jailer.

When feelings between the North and the South began heating up, we have evidence that Samuel Waldrop sided with the Union and that Grayson, when he was conscripted by the Rebels as soon as he reached seventeen, six months before the Civil War was over, soon found a way to get behind Union lines for the remainder of the war.

There is no clear record of all that happened in the years after the war, but it is known that Joseph Grayson and his two brothers, Jim and Samuel, lived together in Hendersonville and engaged in one or two businesses, including a mercantile business and a pharmacy. His daughter, Dorothy W. Baines told me that her father worked in Kentucky for awhile to earn money to go to medical school. Sadie Smathers Patton in her book on the history of Henderson County stated that Dr. Waldrop studied medicine at the University of Maryland, but I discovered evidence that it might actually have been Emery and Henry Colleges, which later became part of the University of Maryland. Mrs. Patton also stated he studied at the College of Charleston and in New York.

A year or two before he married Nancy Ann Carpenter of Mill Spring in March, 1881, Dr. Waldrop began his practice of medicine in Hendersonville. His office was in the middle of the 200 block of Washington Street, just north of Maple Grove. His telephone, 15-J, was one of the first in Hendersonville. He has been called a typical horse and buggy doctor who went into all parts of the county to deliver babies and treat the sick. He kept his own financial records, which showed payment by “a dozen ears of corn”, “tomatoes”, or, for something major, “a ham”.

Dr. Waldrop served as Chief Surgeon of the Southern Railway for many years and took his turn as superintendent of the Henderson County Medical Society. He was very active in the First United Methodist Church and, according to his daughters, Gladys and Dot, served as Superintendent of Sunday School for twenty-five years. The middle stained-glass window on the north side of the sanctuary was given in memory of Dr. and Mrs. Waldrop.

Nancy Ann Carpenter was born on October 10, 1863 to James and Nancy Edwards Carpenter, the eighth of their nine children. Her family lived in a large house a few miles from Mill Spring in Polk County.

Little has been recorded of her earliest years. Her daughters passed down the story that while their 16-year-old mother was sitting with Dr. Joseph Grayson Waldrop on the Carpenter’s front porch in 1880, he proposed marriage, and that their mother was so startled she jumped off the front porch. A year later, in March 1881, the two were married.

For the next 31 years Nancy Waldrop’s life was that of doctor’s wife and mother to eventually eleven children. According to her daughters she managed her large household well and lived by the maxim “Everything in its place and a place for everything”. They also said there was always another place at their mother’s dining table for visiting clergy and other guests. She was an active member of First United Methodist Church.

Life was not all work for Mrs. Waldrop. As the children came, adequate help was hired, and at one time a woman helper lived in the household. She and her husband were able to socialize occasionally and even travel a bit. Probably the most exciting trip was to Washington, D. C. in 1906 where they went to a reception given by President Theodore Roosevelt. According to my aunts, when their father told the president he and his wife had eleven children, Roosevelt blessed Mrs. Waldrop--but she remained a staunch Democrat all her life.