Historic Oaklawn Plantation, where General Hood had his headquarters the night before marching north into Franklin and local history, fared about as well after the War of Northern Aggression as Johnny Reb did during it.
But eventually it was restored, repaired and stands as a piece of living history. Originally sitting on 3,000 acres of fertile Tennessee farmland, piece by piece has been sold off for other development over the last 100 years.
Soon it might be down to 16.5 acres.
Oaklawn has been in the news lately, with a proposed plan to subdivide and build homes on a majority of its remaining 82 acres going before the Spring Hill Historic Commission on Thursday night. The plan would leave 16.5 acres of open space, where the historic buildings sit, while using the remaining for 50 acres of residential and 8 acres of commercial use.
As the present and near future of the historic-register site may be somewhat uncertain, its past becomes all the more important.
The early history of Oaklawn is the most known.
A man named Absalam Thompson built his brick home there in 1835. The Reverend owned up to 150 slaves, who worked the fields surrounding the property.
He had three sons, by the time the Civil War struck, and they all served the Confederacy. One of them, Dr. James T.S. Thompson, was the staff physician for General John Bell Hood, with his Army of Tennessee.
The younger Thompson, when the Army found itself near the home of his youth, invited General Hood to make it his headquarters.
Hood stayed there on the night of November 29, 1864. The battle of Franklin happened the next day, with the march north.
After the war, Dr. Thompson lived there, and began a slow and steady decline. When he died in 1911, with his children all gone or moved away, the plantation was up for sale. Pieces were broken off and sold.
The house was not of much interest but various people bought the land- for the purpose of farming the land out or renting to sharecroppers. Between 1911 and the 1940s and 50s the home fell into disuse.
“In the 1940s the house was pretty much dilapidated,” said Jimmy Campbell, who is the property manager for Ron Shuff, the current owner of the 82 acres that is the Oaklawn Plantation today. “It was being used for hay storage. And then the Sloan family from Columbia purchased it.”
The Sloans set about putting the house back into a livable condition, adding plumbing and electricity.
After the Sloan’s came others.
“Glen Robert and his family lived there for a while,” Campbell, who has been managing Oaklawn for 25 years, said. “They lived there for a while, and are the ones who sold it to George Jones in the early ’70s.”
Oaklawn is somewhat famous locally as the house that George Jones and Tammy Wynette, the so-called first couple of country music, lived for a few years.
At that time, the plantation measured about 350 acres, down from its original 3,000. It was put on the National Register of Historic Sites in 1979.
The next owner died, and his widow sold off more of the property until in 1989 Marvin Parker bought what remained.
Parker worked with a singular obsession at upgrading, renovating and restoring the house.
“The whole 10 years he lived here he worked on the house,” said Campbell. “It was constant. Even added a raised roof. After he did everything he possibly could he auctioned it off.”
That was when Ron Shuff, of Shuff’s Music in Franklin, bought it. It was 82 acres then.
“The property itself in 2001 was subdivided and closed into various tracts for auction,” Jonathan Duda, of the Spring Hill Historic Commission and a Spring Hill Alderman, said. “The 160 or so acres of property was divided into 20 tracts, and Shuff bought 5-13.”
Now Shuff has put forward a plan that will further reduce the property surrounding the house.
The plan, according to Duda, retains the plantation home but little else.
“It arguably does alter the property,” he said. “It significantly impacts the property because of the 82 acres, because all but 16.5 will be developed into residential or commercial real estate.”
Shuff and Campbell, who opposed the development across the way of what will be Southern Springs, are tired of fighting.
“I wonder where all these people were when we needed help,” Campbell said. “We fought against Southern Springs, to keep it out. We fought against zoning across the road, to preserve the area. We succeeded with that but not Southern Springs.”
“Where was this concern 8 or 10 months ago when it would have really mattered. We are just tired of fighting. It has been hard, and a lot of hard decisions have been made. It affects the area and us personally. I don’t like what I see going on around here. I barely recognize it.”
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