09/11/2020
Over two decades ago a decision was made to market Carnton as a plantation when a more accurate term was farm or livestock farm. Even 19th century census records delineated between farmers and planters. Plantations typically produce only one cash crop, most often cotton, sugar, rice, or to***co. Carnton’s yield was considerably more diverse. The 1850 census gives us a snapshot. In that year, twenty-eight enslaved persons produced 9,000 bushels of corn and 4,000 bushels of oats, totaling more than 125,000 pounds. These commodities, along with 200 bushels of wheat, 200 bushels of Irish potatoes, 1,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, and ten tons of hay were grown on 400 acres of land. There were also forty-one horses, three mules, sixty-three head of cattle, twenty-five sheep, and 250 pigs. At least some of the cattle were probably Ayershire cattle because John McGavock was on the committee for Ayershire at the National exhibition of cattle in October 1854 in Springfield, Ohio. John eventually had a sawmill built on the property, and by 1859 it was producing 2000 linear feet of lumber per day. In 1860, Carnton was chosen as the best farm in the county at the Williamson County Fair.
An article published in a Nashville newspaper on October 19, 1860, gives a vivid picture of the award-winning farm (the name of which they misspell). “Carnden—the premium place—is about one mile from Franklin, the county-town of Williamson. It consists of one thousand acres, handsomely and durably fenced with rock walls and plank. Its building improvements are after the fashion of the old English Farms—it crops are inferior to none that our state has this year produced—its fruit orchards are abundant in their yield—its meadows are thickly carpeted with rich and valuable grasses—from the variety of feed and the unfailing springs which so numerously gush out upon the hillsides, its stock of all kinds it appears are in most excellent condition—and the ample groves of lofty wood which embrace so many acres of the tract throw their shades over fields of perennial blue-grass.”
