HARDING CABIN – BELLE MEADE PLANTATION SITE DOCUMENTATION and HISTORY April 2015
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HARDING CABIN – BELLE MEADE PLANTATION SITE DOCUMENTATION AND HISTORY April 2015 1 SITE DOCUMENTATION AND HISTORY For HARDING CABIN – BELLE MEADE PLANTATION NASHVILLE, TENNESSSEE A Public Service of the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area By Leigh Ann Gardner, Interpretive Specialist Noel Harris, Graduate Assistant April 2015 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Methodology 1 History 2 Architectural Description 24 Landscape 52 Appendices 61 A: Deed of John Harding’s purchase of Belle Meade in 1807 61 B: Last Will of Bob Green 62 C: Death Certificate for Robert Green 64 D: Death Certificate for Ellen Green 65 E: Hyder Ali, “Showing the Thoroughbreds” 66 F: State of Tennessee Site Survey Record, Tennessee 67 Division of Archaeology 3 METHODOLOGY This Site History and Documentation Report is the result of a project partnership between the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (TCWNHA), a program of MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation and Belle Meade Plantation, governed by the Nashville Chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities (APTA). In March 2014, John Lamb, Curator at Belle Meade Plantation, requested this report from the Dr. Carroll Van West. On June 16, 2014, Dr. Carroll Van West, Director of the TCWNHA, Leigh Ann Gardner, Interpretive Specialist for the TCWNHA and John Lamb met to tour the site and discuss the contents of the report. Gardner and Noel Harris, graduate assistant with the TCWNHA, documented the site and performed the fieldwork. Gardner researched the history of the cabin while Harris documented the building and created the measured drawings. Thanks to John Lamb of Belle Meade and the staff at Belle Meade for their assistance during the report. 1 HISTORY Prehistory Archaeological evidence suggests there was not permanent prehistoric occupation of the cabin site. Excavations undertaken in 1982 found no features associated with aboriginal occupation at the site, and anthropologist Jane Hinshaw speculated, “Probably the area was an open habitation site, made attractive to Indians by the same topographic elements which the later settlers enjoyed – higher ground in close proximity to a creek, a spring, and a well traveled trail or trace.”1 Hinshaw went on to conclude that the site was a temporary stopping place spanning the possible Middle Woodland period (1000 BC-1000 AD) through Mississippian period (800 AD-1600 AD).2 Hinshaw’s report concluded that the earliest period of occupation for the cabin site is the late eighteenth century.3 Dunham Family Daniel Dunham received a 640 acre preemption grant from the state of North Carolina in 1786, and this grant included the site of the cabin. Dunham first arrived in Davidson County in 1780 as part of John Donelson’s settlement party. Once he received the property on Richland Creek, Dunham built a small station, possibly where the cabin is now located.4 American Indians allegedly killed Dunham on his property in 1789, and later burned the cabin, known as Dunham’s Station, in 1792. Daniel Dunham’s son, Daniel A. Dunham, rebuilt a cabin in 1792. Historians for years believed that the Harding cabin was very possibly the cabin Dunham built in 1792. Herschel Gower stated, “This is the double log cabin, with its connecting dog-trot, which presently stands at the edge of the Belle Meade lawn and symbolizes the early era of the hard- pressed but valiant Dunhams.”5 However, dendrochronolgical testing conducted in 2014 indicates that the cabin was built as two separate pens, from logs cut in the spring/summer of 1807, and joined together at a later date.6 Between 1795 and 1800, Dunham’s Station was operated by Colonel Benjamin Joslin.7 Archaeological research at the site in 1982 gave a beginning occupation date for the site as 1789, suggesting that Harding built his cabin at the same site as the cabin built by the Dunham family.8 It is not clear what happened to the 1792 Dunham cabin. Harding family (1807-1820s) 1 Jane Hinshaw, “Archaeological Investigations at Belle Meade Historic Site 1982 Season” (1982), 92. 2 Hinshaw, “Archaeological Investigations,” 93. 3 Hinshaw, 97. 4 Ridley Wills II, The History of Belle Meade: Mansion, Plantation and Stud (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1991), 5. 5 Herschel Gower, “Belle Meade: Queen of Tennessee Plantations,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 22, no. 3 (September 1963), 204. 6 Email correspondence from John Lamb, September 16, 2014. 7 Herschel Gower, “Belle Meade: Queen of Tennessee Plantations,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 22, no. 3 (September 1963), 205. 8 Hinshaw, “Archaeological Investigations,” 97. 2 John Harding was born in Goochland, Virginia in 1777 to Giles and Amidia Harding. Prior to his birth, the Hardings had lived in Goochland County at least fifty years as tobacco farmers and small-scale slave owners. During the Revolutionary War, the British ransacked Giles Harding’s farm in 1781; Harding could not recover from this economic setback, and the family moved to Tennessee in 1798.9 Giles Harding settled on a 100-acre farm north of the confluence of the Little and Big Harpeth Rivers, and John worked with his father farming the land and overseeing other farming ventures.10 Later biographers of John Harding described him as “a warm friend of education, a member of the Christian Church, a prosperous farmer and stock raiser, a large land and slaveholder, and a man of energy, industry, and versatility of talents.”11 Portrait of John Harding (1777-1865) painted by Washington B. Cooper in 1846. Image courtesy Colonial Dames Portrait Project. John Harding purchased two hundred and fifty acres of land from Daniel A. Dunham in February 1807, land which became known as Belle Meade Plantation.12 Located on Richland Creek, the property was six miles from Nashville and adjacent to the old buffalo trail known as the Natchez Road.13 In 1887, an article in the Atlanta Constitution described how, for early travelers, “It was their custom to stop at the house of John Harding as they passed, and by him they were always welcomed.” He was also described as, [A] tall man, six feet high, and of very gentle presence, mild in expression, careful of speech, never going above the 9 Wills, The History of Belle Meade, 5. 10 Wills, The History of Belle Meade, 3. 11 William S. Speer, ed. Sketches of Prominent Tennesseans (Nashville: Albert B. Tavel, 1888), 3. 12 Davidson County Deed Book G, Page 192. 13 Wills, The History of Belle Meade, 5. 3 mark in assertion. His motto was, "If you had tried a little harder, don't you think you could have got a little further?" He was possessed of indomitable will, and had an iron constitution.14 Deed showing John Harding’s purchase of the property from Daniel Dunham in 1807. Davidson County Deed Book G, Page 192. Although John Harding did not fight in the War of 1812, the site does have an association with the war. William G. Harding, son of John Harding and born at the cabin, recalled later in life, “Over this road Gen. Harding saw Gen. Jackson move his troops to the defense of New Orleans, large numbers of his cavalry stopping at his father's noted blacksmith's shed to have their horses shod.”15 14 Jay Pea, “Belle Meade: A Visit to the Great Stock Farm of General Harding,” Atlanta Constitution, December 18, 1887. 15 W.W. Clayton, History of Davidson County, Tennessee (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1880), 425. 4 Susannah Shute Harding (1785-1845) married John Harding in 1806 and lived in the cabin until 1820. Image courtesy Colonial Dames Portrait Project. Harding married Susannah Shute in August 1806 in Davidson County. Susannah, born in Pennsylvania in 1785, moved as a child to Davidson County with her parents, Philip and Elizabeth Shute, in 1790.16 This may be the same Shute family that Harriette Simpson Arnow stated built a frontier station three miles west of Nashville in 1790.17 Philip Shute died in 1811, and was buried in a family cemetery. That cemetery, now lost, was believed to have been located near the present day vicinity of Nevada Avenue and 40th Avenue North in Nashville. Also buried there was his daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Tennessee Stump.18 It is believed that Harding and his wife, Susannah, lived in the cabin from 1807- 1820.19 Records of this early period of occupation, however, are quite scarce.20 However, records that do exist show Harding prospered during his time in the cabin. The 1812 tax list for Davidson County records that Harding owned 3,500 acres of land 16 Susannah Harding Shute note, Colonial Dames Tennessee Portrait Project, http://tnportraits.org/harding-susannah-bm.htm. 17 Harriette Simpson Arnow, Flowering of the Cumberland (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 250. 18 “Shute-Stump (Lost) Cemetery,” Davidson County Cemetery Survey Project, http://www.davidsoncocemeterysurvey.com/home/cemeteries-s-u/shute-stump-lost-cemetery. 19 Sherill Jane Kilgore, “Brief History of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee’s Antiquities and Its Belle Meade Mansion Historic Site Museum,” (Master’s Thesis, Middle Tennessee State University, 1981), 11. 20 The earliest record in the “Harding-Jackson Papers, 1819-1911” at the Tennessee State Library and Archives is a ledger of John Harding dating to 1819. To date, no correspondence or other documentary evidence has come to light regarding Harding’s first years at Belle Meade. 5 and was taxed for owning 31 slaves.21 Little is known about the identity of Harding’s slaves during this early period. His father Giles sold him a slave woman, Dicy, in October 1806, a few months after his marriage to Susannah.22 In September 1807, a few days after he purchased his land, Harding purchased four slaves from his father, Giles.23 Bills of Sale where John Harding purchased slaves from his father, Giles Harding.