| Ashwood Hall | |
|---|---|
 | |
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| General information | |
| Status | Demolished |
| Coordinates | 35°34′23″N87°08′13″W / 35.57294°N 87.13703°W Coordinates: 35°34′23″N87°08′13″W / 35.57294°N 87.13703°W |
| Client | Leonidas Polk |
Ashwood Hall was a Southern plantation in Maury County, Tennessee.
The plantation was located in Ashwood, a small town near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee.
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 Van Leer, an heiress to an iron fortune and member of the Van Leer family, 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 Van Leer Polk grew up at the mansion. [1]
On July 5, 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War, 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]
James Knox Polk was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy. Polk is chiefly known for extending the territory of the United States through the Mexican–American War; during his presidency, the United States expanded significantly with the annexation of the Republic of Texas, the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican Cession following American victory in the Mexican–American War.
Maury County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Middle Tennessee region. As of the 2020 census, the population was 100,974. Its county seat is Columbia. Maury County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee. The population was 41,690 as of the 2020 United States census. Columbia is included in the Nashville metropolitan area.
The Hermitage is a historical museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Nashville. The 1,000-acre (400 ha)+ site was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, from 1804 until his death at the Hermitage in 1845. It also serves as his final resting place. Jackson lived at the property intermittently until he retired from public life in 1837.
Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk was a bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana and founder of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, which separated from the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. He was a slaveholding planter in Maury County, Tennessee, and a second cousin of President James K. Polk. He resigned his ecclesiastical position to become a major-general in the Confederate States Army, when he was called "Sewanee's Fighting Bishop". His official portrait at the University of the South depicts him dressed as a bishop with his army uniform hanging nearby. He is often erroneously referred to as "Leonidas K. Polk," but he had no middle name and never signed any documents as such.
James Hervey Otey, Christian educator, author, slaveowner and the first Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, having established the Anglican church in the state, including its first parish churches and what became the University of the South.
OaklandsMansion is an historic house museum located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. Oaklands is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a local landmark known for its unique Italianate design.
Rattle and Snap is a plantation estate at 1522 North Main Street in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee. The centerpiece of the estate is a mid-1840s mansion that is one of grandest expressions of the Greek Revival in Tennessee. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its architecture, and for its association with the Polk family, once one of eastern Tennessee's largest landowners. The house is privately owned, but may be viewed by appointment.
St. John's Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church in Ashwood, Maury County, Tennessee, United States. Built from 1839 to 1842 by Bishop Leonidas Polk, it was an active church in the Antebellum South. It was ransacked and later used as a hospital for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. Services resumed after the war, but they were discontinued due to low attendance in 1915. It is now closed, except for an annual pilgrimage.
Brigadier-General Lucius Eugene Polk was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded infantry in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. He was a nephew of Leonidas Polk.
St. Peter's Episcopal Church is a historic church located at 311 W. 7th Street in Columbia, Tennessee.
William Frierson Cooper was a lawyer, planter and politician. He was nominated to the Supreme Court of the Confederate States of America by President Jefferson Davis, but the court never sat because of the American Civil War. After the war, he served as the Dean of the Vanderbilt University Law School from 1874 to 1875. He was a judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1878 to 1886.
Hamilton Place is an antebellum plantation house in Maury County, Tennessee, near Columbia.
Riverwood is a privately owned historic house located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. At 9,200 square-feet it sits on 8 acres of its original 2,500 acres. It has been a wedding and event facility since 1997.
Ashwood is an unincorporated community in Maury County, Tennessee, in the United States. Most of the community has been annexed by the city of Mount Pleasant.
Lucius Junius Polk (1802–1870) was an American politician and planter from Tennessee.
VanLeer Polk was an American politician and diplomat from Tennessee. He served in the Tennessee Senate as a representative for Maury County in the 1890s. He was appointed Consul-General in Calcutta, India, and was one of six representatives of the United States at the 1906 Pan-American Conference. He was a member of the influential Van Leer family.
Antoinette Van Leer Polk, Baroness de Charette was an American Southern belle in the Antebellum South and French aristocrat in the Gilded Age. She was born into the planter elite, the great-niece of the 11th President of the United States James K. Polk and a member of the influential Van Leer family through her mother. She was an heiress to plantations in Tennessee and a "Southern heroine" who warned Confederate soldiers of advancing Union troops during the American Civil War. After the war, she moved to Europe, where she took to foxhunting in the Roman Campagna of Italy and the English countryside, and later became a baroness and socialite in Paris and Brittany.
Skipwith Hall, also known as Skipwith Place, Oakwood Farm, Skipwith Harlan Hill, and Oakwood Hall, is a former plantation and plantation house located in Maury County, Tennessee. It was initially built by Edward Brinley Littlefield and Cornelia Lott Skipwith as their residence.
The Van Leer family, originally spelled Von Lohr, is an influential German-American family that emigrated to the Province of Pennsylvania in the 17th century from the Electorate of Hesse near Isenberg, Germany. The family made their fortune in the United States through the ironworks business.
