 When his father died in late 1889, 16-year-old Edmondson refused to continue to tirelessly work on the plantation and left to Nashville for work.He got a good job working at the expansive new Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad shops.After an injury sustained at the Railway shops in 1907, Edmondson took a job as a custodian at the Nashville Women's Hospital, where he worked until the hospital closed in 1931.