Belle Meade Plantation
5025 Harding Road
Nashville, Tennessee 37205
 The
"Queen of Tennessee Plantations" began in 1807 when Virginian
John Harding bought Dunham's Station log cabin and 250 acres on
the Natchez Trace. For the next 100 years, the Harding family
prospered, building their domain into a 5,400 acre plantation
that was world renowned as a thoroughbred horse farm. In the early
years, Harding boarded horses for neighbors such as Andrew Jackson,
and he was breeding thoroughbreds by 1816. He shipped grain to
Charleston and New Orleans, and owned large tracts of land in
Arkansas and Louisiana. In 1853 John Harding’s son, William Giles
Harding, completed the mansion, doubling its size and adding the
front porch and columns, which are solid limestone. The Belle
Meade Plantation became a stunning example of the grandeur of
the South's Greek Revival Ante-Bellem architecture. Harding
was very wealthy, very pro-secession and donated $500,000 to the
Southern cause. When the Federals occupied Nashville in February
1862, Harding was arrested and sent north to be imprisoned in
Fort Mackinac, Michigan. His wife, Elizabeth McGavock, was left
to tend the plantation. In September, Harding was released on
parole and returned to Belle Meade. The Belle Meade Plantation
was headquarters for Confederate Gen. James R. Chalmers of Nathan
Bedford Forrest's cavalry command prior to the Battle of Nashville
(December 1864). On the first day of the battle, Union soldiers
burned the Rebel wagons parked at the racetrack while Chalmers
was elsewhere. Returning to Belle Meade, Chalmers' men charged
the Yankees and drove them back before running into an enemy infantry
camp. The Yankees fired as the cavalry galloped back past the
mansion, where Selene Harding, nineteen, waved a handerchief despite
the bullets flying around her. Bullet holes can still be seen
in the porch columns. After
the war, William Harding turned over control of the farm to his
son-in-law, William Jackson, a West Point graduate who had commanded
a cavalry division under Gen. S.D. Lee in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Under Jackson's tutelage, Belle Meade (French for "beautiful
meadow") became an internationally renown Thoroughbred farm
and showplace. The farm sold breeding stock of ponies, Alderney
cattle, Cotswold sheep, and Cashmere goats. The vast estate also
featured a 600-acre deer park. At its sale in 1904, Belle Meade
was the oldest and largest thoroughbred farm in the United States.
In 1953, Belle Meade Mansion and eight outbuildings on 30 acres
were deeded to the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee
Antiquities. Today, the Belle Meade Plantation is one Nashville's
most popular attractions and managed by the Nashville chapter
of the Association. Belle Mead Plantation highlights include the 1853 Mansion (restored to the sumptuous elegance of the Victorian era), the 1890 Carriage House and Stable, and the 1790 Log Cabin, one of the oldest housed in Tennessee. |
