The land on which much of Inglewood is located was composed of large plantations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable among the early land tracts were Riverwood Plantation and Maplewood Farms, the residence of Jere Baxter. Another large land tract was a 640 acre plantation granted by the State of North Carolina to John Evans in the 1780’s. The Williams family purchased the land from Evans about 1810 and the family lived there for approximately 100 years.

Located on the west bluff overlooking the Cumberland River is a small, but historically significant, portion of Inglewood. The historic town of Hayesborough was settled by Colonel Robert Hays, who was married to Jane Donelson, sister of Mrs. Andrew Jackson. In 1785, Thomas Craighead, the first preacher to settle permanently in Davidson County, established a church at Haysborough called the Spring Hill Presbyterian Church. The next year he founded and was the first president of Davidson Academy, the school that would later become Peabody College. For awhile, no one could say whether Nashville or Haysborough would become the “Great City on the Cumberland,” but the town eventually failed. Reasons for its failure included transportation routes bypassing the community, Davidson Academy moving its location, and a controversy in the Spring Hill Church.

In 1908, a group of investors with a capital fund of $200,000 purchased a tract of land on the east side of Gallatin Road and subdivided it into lots. “Inglewood” was the name chosen for their newly-formed land company. The original Inglewood subdivision included Kirkland, Shelton, Greenfield, Howard, McChesney, and Stratford. Most of the streets were about three blocks long, running back to Oxford Avenue. Until 1963, when the Davidson County and Nashville city governments consolidated, Inglewood was its own municipality serviced by its own police and fire departments.