Spring Hill, Tenn., Battle Land Sold At Auction

By Ed Ballam SPRING HILL, Tenn. - Preservationists are pleased that a gentleman sympathetic to historic preservation efforts was successful bidder for Oaklawn Estate, an antebellum mansion and 83 acres around it.

The estate was once used by CSA Gen. John B. Hood as a field headquarters and played a pivotal role in the battles at Spring Hill and Franklin.

Preservationists are rejoicing a little less about an adjacent 154 acres that was also sold at auction on May 14, mostly because they don't know what will become of the rolling acreage. A "prominent citizen" from Nashville bought the property for slightly more than $1.3 million through an agent. It was expected that the owner would not become known until early June, 20 days after the sale.

Dave Stieghan, the director of Rappavilla Plantation, an adjacent historic site that preserves the plantation buildings and about 65 acres of the Spring Hill battlefield, said that he's pleased that the estate sold to someone who may be willing to preserve it as is.

The new owner is Ron Shuff, a Franklin businessman who has a reputation of buying historic properties and saving them from future development. Shuff paid $1.28 million for the building and land during bidding which last about an hour-and-a-half before the gavel was dropped on the property.

"It's just an inspirational place," Shuff told The Daily Herald of Columbia, Tenn., immediately after the auction. "I don't have a concept of what I'm going to do with it. The worst thing I could see was it all chopped up into subdivisions."
And that's exactly what was going to happen had the property not been bought by only two individuals.

The estate had been subdivided into 20 lots ranging in size from 5 to 35 acres, according to information from Furrow Auction Company which was retained to sell the mansion and land. The estate was sold on behalf of Marvin Parker, a developer from American Excavators in Columbia, Tenn., who decided to sell the property after owning it for 10 years.
Stieghan told The Civil War News after the auction that it's almost a certainty that something will be built on the 154 undeveloped acres. He's hoping it will be a single home which will mean more of the land will be preserved.

The sale of the Oaklawn Estate caught many, including Stieghan, by surprise. He spent hours on the telephone prior to the auction looking for someone who might be interested in purchasing and preserving the home and the surrounding property.

"I think we did it," Stieghan said, noting that he and associates were giving each other virtual congratulatory "high-fives" in email and telephone conversations following the auction.

Stieghan said that he hopes Shuff will open the estate to the public, at least occasionally, because it is one of the last unspoiled antebellum properties in an area that has seen double-digit growth for a sustained period. The house was built in 1835 by Col. Absalom Thompson and was a weekend home of country music stars George Jones and Tammy Wynette when they were married.

Oaklawn Estate is in much the same condition as it was during the war. It includes the original plantation pond, slave graves and original boundary markers. Because the viewshed and buildings are largely the same as they were during the war, the story of Spring Hill and Franklin makes sense to visitors, Stieghan said.

According to Stieghan, who has written about and led tours in the area, Hood used the estate as a field headquarters while his men camped in the area around it. The house was visited by such generals as Nathan Bedford Forrest, Benjamin Franklin Cheatham and Patrick R. Cleburne.

Hood's troops had left Atlanta and were heading for Nashville. In the late afternoon of Nov. 29, 1864, Federal troops led by Gen. John M. Schofield clashed with Hood's men at Spring Hill then moved north and entrenched at Franklin where the next day Hood suffered his worst defeat and the deaths of six generals.

It is said that the Federal troops slipped past Hood during the night while he slept in the mansion as they headed for Franklin.

A controversy exists over th e importance of Spring Hill and even whether or not a battle was fought there. Representatives of the American Battlefield Protection Program have declared it to be one of the top 10 endangered battlefields in the nation, while some local historians deny that there ever was a conflict at Spring Hill.

Stieghan said that although only a small portion of the land around Oaklawn might be considered battlefield - relic hunters have found smashed guns, belt buckles and buttons on a far corner of the property - the site is significant in that it puts the Franklin battle in perspective and it was a site visited by important Confederate generals.

In his mind, there are some sites that should be preserved because of their significance, not just because they've been soaked in blood.