Located just 5 minutes east of downtown Franklin, Tennessee, the Carnton Plantation has a blood-soaked history. In 1826, Randall McGavock, a politician who immigrated from Virginia, built the house with enslaved labor. One of the most famous houses in Tennessee, Carnton Plantation received visits from people who shaped American and Tennessee history, including President Andrew Jackson. On the night of November 30, 1864, war erupted in the fields surrounding Carnton Plantation.
In the grey light of a winter dawn, four Civil War generals and one colonel lay dead on the wide rear veranda at Carnton Plantation, following a brutal frontal attack during the Battle of Franklin. They included Patrick R. Cleburne, Hiram B. Granbury, John Adams, Otho F. Strahl, and Colonel Robert B. Young. A mile away, 8,500 dead or wounded lay scattered in front of the Union breastworks, in the trampled cotton fields, and brush splintered by cannon fire. Ambulances carried 300 wounded men to the plantations. Doctors set up a field hospital in the house, tossing severed arms and legs out of the upstairs window, as they worked to save lives. Despite their efforts, 150 soldiers died on the grounds. Caroline Winder McGavock comforted dying men, collected belongings, identified bodies, and wrote letters home to the men’s families who would have had no idea what happened to their loved ones.
With the family’s permission, over 1,500 officers and soldiers, hastily shoveled into mass graves on the battlefield, were buried in two acres across the property in 1866. The plantation remained in the family until 1911, when Winder McGavock’s wife sold the property. In 1977, the last owner donated it to the Carnton Association which restored the mansion.
Heavy bloodstains still mark the floorboards in an upstairs bedroom that served as an operating room. Some people claim to hear leather boots creaking loudly across the back porch in late autumn. One paranormal historian believes this is the spirit of General Cleburne haunting the place where his body lay for several days.In the early 2000s, a tour guide’s daughter spotted a dark-haired woman, wearing a white dress, standing on the balcony and staring down at the cemetery. Civil War ghosts aren’t the only ones to haunt this place. Most ghosts appear at dusk and in the autumn after summer heat fades. Native American spirits rise from the ground. At dusk, the ghost of a young girl, murdered by a jealous man that she rejected before the war, sweeps the floors. Meanwhile, the disembodied head of an enslaved cook floats around the kitchen. One visitor, whose ancestor survived Franklin, arrived to find the place closed. Walking around the mansion as dusk closed in, he saw a man mounting a horse. Suddenly, the horse evaporated. Looking up, the visitor spotted another man watching him from the porch. When he asked why the horse disappeared, the man said that the horse died in the battle, like his horse was shot out from under him earlier. Restless spirits, ghostly stallions, and haunted men continue to drift around the plantation as reminders the house’s bloody past. Just how haunted is Carnton Plantation? It’s up to you to decide.
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