A Brief History Of Our Community's Storied Past
The Town of Stanton began with the coming of the Memphis & Ohio Railroad to the Stanton Depot in the 1830s on what had previously been Chickasaw land but was then owned by Joseph Stanton. The Town of Stanton originally had its first charter in the 1880s, but the charter was soon abolished. Stanton received a new charter in 1927 and is mostly a farming community today with a population of about 600 people.
The original town that became Stanton was called Wesley and was located 4 miles east of the current Town of Stanton. When Joseph Blackwell Stanton moved to this area, although he also owned land in Wesley, he negotiated for the emergence of the Memphis & Ohio Railroad on Stanton property where the town of Stanton now stands. The result was Stanton’s Depot, which began the movement of businesses from Wesley to Stanton.
The school, businesses, and churches in the village of Wesley moved to Stanton Depot, Tennessee, in 1856, turning the once thriving Wesley into a ghost town. The town of Stanton is named for Joseph Blackwell Stanton who moved to Stanton’s present location in the 1830s with his wife Lucy and their only child, Grace, who married Nathan Adams, a stockholder in the Nashville & Memphis Railroad.