White's Mercantile

Holly Williams, Hank Williams Jr.’s daughter and Hank Williams’s granddaughter, runs this self-described “general store for the modern-day tastemaker.” She cut 3 Americana records of her own, ending with The Highway in 2013.

Its first home was an old gas station on 12th Avenue South. Williams opened the store there in 2013, partly to save the building and partly to fill a shopping gap in Nashville.

The name honors Williams’s maternal grandparents, Warren and June White, whose family ran a mercantile in Mer Rouge, Louisiana, in the late 1800s. Her mother Becky is from that town.

By July 2019 the 12 South store had grown into a 7-store chain, with outposts in Franklin, Green Hills, Charleston, New Orleans, Louisville, and Wilson, Arkansas.

News broke in September 2024 that the gas station would be demolished for a 2-story retail and restaurant building. Williams said she was heartbroken and looked for a way to stay in the neighborhood.

The last day at the gas station was June 15, 2025. The store reopened June 21 in the former Mafiaoza’s Pizzeria and Neighborhood Pub building, still on 12th Avenue South.

Williams also runs White’s Mercantile Room and Board, a guesthouse side venture launched in fall 2017 with an 1890s Victorian cottage in Leiper’s Fork and an 1862 farmhouse in Cornersville.