Ashwood Hall

Ashwood Hall
General information
Status Demolished
Client Leonidas Polk

Ashwood Hall was a Southern plantation in Maury County, Tennessee.

Location

The plantation was located in Ashwood, a small town near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee.

History

The land belonged to Colonel William Polk.[1] The mansion was built for one of his sons, Bishop Leonidas Polk, from 1833 to 1837.[1][2] Opposite the mansion, Leonidas Polk built St. John's Episcopal Church from 1839 to 1842.[1][3]

In 1847, Leonidas Polk sold the mansion to Rebecca Vanleer, an heiress to an iron fortune, who had married one of his brothers, Andrew Jackson Polk, in 1846, for US$35,000.[1] Andrew and his wife spent another US$35,000 on expansions and refurbishments.[1] Their son Vanleer Polk and their daughter Antoinette Polk grew up at the mansion.[1]

On July 5, 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Andrew Jackson Polk, who was elected Captain,[4] organized the Maury County Braves in a grove on the grounds of Ashwood Hall.[1]

In 1862, Antoinette Polk saved Confederate personnel stationed at Ashwood Hall by warning them that Northern forces were coming their way.[5] As a result, she became known as a "Southern heroine."[5]

It burned down in 1874.[2]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ashwood Hall.
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Garrett, Jill K. (Spring 1970). "St. John's Church, Ashwood". Tennessee Historical Quarterly 29 (1): 3–23. Retrieved 1 July 2015 – via JSTOR. (registration required (help)).
  2. 1 2 Tennessee: A Guide to the State, US History Publishers: Federal Writers' Project, 1949, p. 389
  3. ↑ James Patrick, Architecture in Tennessee, 1768-1897, Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1990, p. 111
  4. ↑ William Bruce Turner, History of Maury County, Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee: The Parthenon Press, 1955, p. 376
  5. 1 2 "Valorous Acts of American Women in War: A Few Instances of Personal Heroism at the Front". The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. 3 June 1917. p. 2. Retrieved July 10, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.

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