By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — Nashville has seen pivotal moments of Black influence, from the bustling Black blues and business center that was Jefferson Street, to the establishment of the legendary Fisk University. Music City has also seen hundreds of Black businesses throughout its years selling their soaps, art, food, and culture. Few can recall the first Black business to open its doors. Before owning his own business, he would spend his life enslaved, and while owning his first business he would do the same. Throughout it all he would continue to beat his odds.
Historical accounts first mention Bob when he took part in John Donelson’s epic river voyage, though his group left the Donelson party on April 12, 1780, at the Red River near present-day Clarksville. His then “master” Joseph Renfro was kin to Bob’s group leader Moses Renfro. Attacks from Native Americans would drive the party from what had then become known as Renfro Station probably in June 1780.
Accounts differ as to what happens next, though it is known Joseph Renfro was killed at what is now known as the Battle Creek Massacre near present-day Coopertown. Testimonies told in folk legend say that Black Bob saved his mistress and her children while others state only a Mrs. Jones escaped. Regardless, Bob’s mistress, Olive Renfro, arrived at Fort Nashborough where she petitioned for and was granted “letters of administration” for the estate of Joseph Renfro.
Robert “Black Bob ‘’ Renfro did not appear in the official record until August 8, 1792, upon which he was an enslaved man being sold by Olive Renfro (now Shaw) in an apparent three-party transaction. Bob would become the property of Josiah Love, who faced a series of financial troubles including lawsuits and a foreclosure in which Love would list Bob as his only asset. After this, Love would place Bob in the center of a complicated transaction involving two different people, prominent lawyers Robert Searcy and Elijah Robertson.
During the dispute, a surprising declaration would be made by the Davidson County Court on January 16, 1794. They would agree that “… a certain Negro called Bobb [sic] in the town of Nashville be permitted to sell Liquor and Victuals.”
Two things would happen shortly after this: the establishment that would become Nashville’s first Black business, “Black Bob’s Tavern,” was opened, and Searcy would win ownership over Bob in November 1795. A 1797 record lists an assault occurring at the “house of Black Bob,” an establishment that was probably located at what is now Third Avenue, south of the Public Square.
In an unusual turn of events, schoolmaster Anderson Lavender assaulted Bob in April 1800. A significant moment in legal history would occur, when Lavender was indicted by the Davidson County Grand Jury regarding the assault, in which he agreed to pay the court costs and the case would be dissolved, one of the rarer cases on record in which a white man would assault a slave and the case wasn’t outright dismissed.
Robert Searcy maintained ownership over Bob until 1801, at which time Searcy freed Bob citing that he had more than paid back his “investment.” However, though Searcy freed Bob, that didn’t mean Bob was emancipated, leading to 53 of Nashville’s most prominent and influential citizens, one who may have been a woman, signing a petition to the General Assembly requesting Bob’s emancipation. On November 10, 1801, Bob was emancipated and assumed the name Robert Renfro, after which he would open his new House of Entertainment in 1802.
