Today we packed up and set off to collect our car from the Airport so we can start the Road part of this Road Trip, after a slight mis-communication with the hire company where I thought they had given us a complimentary upgrade that was actually going to cost us $310 – needless to say we quickly declined that – we loaded our stuff into the car, loaded the sat nav then started the journey south west to Memphis. On route I had picked out a couple of places to stop, the first one, Travellers Rest, was only about 20 minutes from Nashville. This is one of the oldest houses in the state, Judge Overton acquired the land in 1796 and began building the house 3 years later, unlike the other houses we have visited, he didn’t bother building a log cabin he went straight for the brick house and lived in lodgings before it was ready. At the outbreak of the civil war the Judge had died but his widow, Mary and their son John Junior and his wife Harriet lived there with their children. The farm consisted of 1,050 acres and the main crop was tobacco with a yield of 20,000 pounds. Early in the war Nashville was abandoned by the Confederate Army and occupied by Union troops, later in the war the confederates launched the Battle of Nashville which lasted 38 days and was planned in Travellers Rest. The only way to view the house is on a guided tour which didn’t start until 11:00 so we went and watched a film that explained a bit of the background and the life of Judge Overton, the lives of all of the men associated with the houses we have visited in Nashville seem to have been interlinked. Overton was a friend of President Jackson and they had even lodged in the same boarding house when they both first moved to Nashville. We went to the porch in time for the tour to start at 11:00 and it turned out that we were the only people to have turned up today so we had a private tour which was great as it meant we could ask loads of questions and spend as long or as little time as we wanted in each of the rooms in the house. Originally a 4 room house it was extended over the years, during the civil war the enslaved women and children joined the women and children of the house in the cellar to avoid the bombardment, apparently a shell actually came though the wall of the kitchen which was where some of the enslaved men were sheltering but they had moved just before it landed so they were ok. There were about 100 servants that lived in the house before the civil war, it didn’t say how many stayed after they gained their freedom, it was interesting talking to the guide who said that the children of the family were all given a ‘black friend’ who was a child of the same age that grew up with them but taught them that they were boss and encouraged them to give the servant orders from a very early age. After we finished looking round the house we were left to wander around the grounds on our own, again this house had a smoke house and what could have been slave quarters but they weren’t quite sure, what it did have was an exhibition of how the slaves were brought and sold which was quite disturbing especially when you realise that children as young as 18 months were brought and sold. They had some family records that suggested that some of the slaves made it more difficult to sell them as one piece of correspondence was someone asking Overton to take his slave back and refund the money as he didn’t seem to want to move and was being very lazy and unhelpful. I think it might have been that he didn’t like being a slave but they didn’t seem to consider that! Our next stop should have been another house but we decided to miss that out as the main reason for visiting was that it was on the site of the civil war battle of Franklin so after a quick stop at the supermarket to pick up coffee for tomorrow and lunch for today we continued driving south. We still had about 3 hours to go so although we swapped driving at Cuba Landing we didn’t bother having an explore as there didn’t seem to be much to see anyway. Our final stop before heading to the Hotel was Casey Jones House and Museum, unfortunately by the time we got there the museum was shut but we could look at the house and the old general store as well as the steam engine and railway carriage that were on display. We called into Brooks Shaw’s Old Country Store which reflected the 1890s, there were things hanging from the ceiling as well as an old fashioned soda fountain, apparently only a few were made and one of them was in this store. We stopped and had an ice cream which was lovely then set off for the final part of our journey. We are staying in the Peabody in Memphis which is famous for the parade of ducks that happens every day at 11:00, to us it is a lovely historic hotel that is in the right location in downtown Memphis! We checked in and decided that as we were not hungry we would head down to the bar for a drink which was quite entertaining as we were actually asked for ID to prove our age – lovely, either the lighting is very flattering or the servers have been told to check the ID for everyone! Having successfully proved we were over 21 the drinks arrived and we settled in for a relax before we set off around Memphis tomorrow.
