HGB Ep. 556 - Nashville's Belmont Mansion

Moment in Oddity - Three Stags Head Pub (Suggested by: Lyn Beasley)

There is a pub called Three Stags Heads located in Wardlow Mires, just outside of Derbyshire, England. The structure is a longhouse that was built in the mid to late 18th century with a simple whitewashed exterior. The facade is adorned with three stag skulls, hence the name, while the interior harkens back to days gone by where it is said that modern phones and such are not allowed. There are various versions of lurcher dog art to be seen as well as consumed. It is said that their Dark Lurcher beer is quite strong. They serve other local brews and food as well. One item within the pub however is quite unique, at least to modern times. Within a glass case in a corner, sits a mummified cat. The animal was found inside the chimney and is said to have been placed there to ward off evil spirits. There are some European cultures that would often place a deceased cat within a building's walls. This was done because of the belief that cats were thought to bring good luck to the people residing in a building and that the cats could ward off bad luck. Most accounts have shown that this practice proved to have used felines that had previously passed away before being concealed within a buildings' structure. Regardless, finding a mummified cat within the walls of a building, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Attica Correctional Facility Riot

In the month of September, on the 13th, in 1971, New York State Police stormed Attica Correctional Facility. A riot of inmates began on the 9th in the overcrowded prison with 1,281 inmates at the maximum security institution, taking over a large portion of the facility. The rioters were seeking to negotiate to improve conditions and treatment at the prison. The police were able to retake most of the facility on the 9th, however, the rioters moved to an exercise field called D yard and there they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. Prior to that, one guard was beaten to death. Eventually negotiations stagnated and the New York Governor issued a mandate to regain control of the prison by force. On the morning of September 13th, a final notice was read to the inmates by police, ordering a surrender. The convicts responded by holding knives to their hostages' throats. Shortly thereafter, helicopters flew overhead and dropped tear gas. During the melee, officers fired 3,000 shots killing 29 of the inmates and 10 of the hostages while wounding 89 others. Many of the deaths and injuries happened during the initial gunfire, however some inmates were shot and killed after they surrendered. The resulting deaths of both prisoners and hostages caused condemnation by the public and prompted a Congressional investigation. It was not until January 2000, that New York State settled a 26 year old class-action lawsuit that had been filed by the Attica inmates against prison and state officials. The payout totaled 8 million dollars that was then given to former and current inmates.

Belmont Mansion

The Belmont Mansion is haunted by a woman who knew devastating loss, Adelicia (Add ah lish ah) Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham. That's a lot of surnames because there were a lot of marriages. The mansion is located in Nashville and is now a part of the Belmont University Campus. This is an elaborate antebellum villa that served as a summer respite from the Louisiana heat. And it just might be a respite for Adelicia in the afterlife. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Belmont Mansion.

The story of Belmont Mansion begins and ends with Adelicia Acklen. Her parents were lawyer and minister Oliver Bliss and Sarah Hightower Hayes and she was born on March 15, 1817 in Nashville. This early Nashville was a couple years from the first steamboat arriving, which would bring the town out of isolation and starts its build into a big city. Adelicia was raised in Nashville and attended the Nashville Female Academy. It would be after her graduation that tragedy would begin in her life. She met a man named Alfonso Gibbs and the two became engaged. Gibbs never made it to the altar, dying before the wedding. A new love would come into her life in 1839, when she was twenty-two. This was a wealthy slave trader and planter named Isaac Franklin. The slave trade he owned was one of the largest in the south. He was twenty-eight years Adelicia's senior and the couple had four children: Victoria, Adelicia, Julius and Emma. Tragedy struck again as Julius lost his life in 1844 at birth. Two years later, Adelicia senior would lose Victoria to croup, Adelicia Jr. to bronchitis and her husband Isaac. She wasn't yet thirty years of age and she would now be the wealthiest woman in Tennessee. Isaac Franklin passed onto her the Fairvue Plantation in Tennessee, four cotton plantations in Louisiana, some land in Texas, stocks, bonds and hundreds of enslaved people.

In 1849, she met and married attorney Joseph A. S. Acklen who hailed from Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville had been founded by and named for his grandfather John Hunt. He was born a year after Adelicia and started at the University of Alabama at the age of fourteen. He went to fight in the Texas Revolution in 1835 and served under Colonel James W. Fannin, Jr. Nearly the entire company was executed at Goliad, Texas, on March 27, 1836, but Joseph had already left for home and escaped the massacre. He studied law in Huntsville and President Martin Van Buren appointed him the United States Attorney for the North Alabama Judicial District in 1840. He visited Nashville in April of 1847 and attended a ball where he met the recently widowed Adelicia Franklin. They started a long distance relationship and within two years, Joseph had moved to Nashville to marry Adelicia. And an interesting note here is that Adelicia bascially got him to sign a prenuptial agreement that stated she would retain ownership and control of all the property she brought to the marriage and Joseph agreed. 

The couple decided to build Belmont Mansion in Nashville and began construction in 1850 on 175 acres. The mansion was originally called Belle Monte or "beautiful mountain" and sat on a hilltop. This would take ten years and when it was finished, it was the largest home in Tennessee at the time. It was designed by architect Adolphus Heiman in the Italian villa style and included 36 rooms. The Grand Salon was really something and was designed to impress. The room was larger than most people's homes and featured a columned chamber that was filled with natural light from floor to ceiling windows and the barrel-vaulted ceiling that rose 20 feet was adorned with a dramatic painted sky. A six foot cast iron fountain provided natural water sounds. The walls featured carved woodwork and painted finishes. All first floor rooms connected to the Grand Salon. A stairway connected the Grand Salon to the private bedrooms upstairs and the upper hall had access via another stairway to the cupola, which was a full on octagonal room that could be opened up in the summer months to cool the house and provided a view of the grounds. There was also a telescope in the room. 

The Central Parlor had an optical illusion on the ceiling to make people think they are sitting in a Roman palazzo. The original mirror and Cornelius and Company gas chandelier still remain in this room. The parlor still has eight of the twelve pieces of the Acklen’s parlor suit. The grounds themselves were beautiful with gardens and gazebos, a water tower, a two-hundred-foot long greenhouse and conservatory, bathhouse, bowling alley, art gallery and even a zoo. The Gardener’s Monthly featured an article about the greenhouse at Belmont in 1868 describing it as "built of iron, [was] truly a Crystal Palace, with its high dome and spacious wings." The greenhouse had plants from all around the world with a two-story conservatory in the center. A furnace under the greenhouse helped to control the temperatures. The heat from the furnace would rise through the vents in the floor providing climate control. The mansion really was a showplace and the family even opened the gardens and zoo up to the public.

The couple had six children, Joseph, William, Claude, Pauline and Laura and Corinne who were twins. The twins were named for her sister. Tragedy struck yet again in 1855 when the last surviving child from her first marriage, Emma, passed away from Diptheria. The Acklens commissioned a painting from the artist Gschwindt that was described in The Daily Picayune as, "The child is reclining on a sofa and seems to be just awaking from a pleasant dream, of which the last scene is just fading away. From the clouds, in the background, we see the vanishing form of an angel emerge, clasping the hand of the unconscious child, and pointing to the future. We need only to add that the child soon after died." This portrait was hung in the library of the mansion, but no longer exists. At this point, Adelicia has lost all four of her first children. But 1855 wasn't done with her. The twins, Laura and Corinne, died from Scarlet Fever at the age of three. So she has lost six children at this point. Adelicia would take a trip to Europe after the Civil War and bought a sculpture featuring two little girls cuddling each other and she had inscribed with "Laura and Corinne."

As we mentioned, there was an art gallery on the property and Adelicia and Joseph amassed quite the art collection. This was the first major art collection in Nashville and the couple loaned their collection to various exhibitions. Adelicia was even appointed by the Governor in 1875 to serve on a committee that decided what art pieces would represent Tennessee at an exhibit held in Philadelphia for the United States Centennial. She became very involved in charity work and was elected Treasurer for the Ladies Soldier's Friend Society in 1861. The Nashville Refugee Clothing Association was an organization that supported refugees of the Civil War and Adelicia served on its board in 1864. She donated to orphanages, purchased city bonds for post-war redevelopment in Nashville, invested in the Maxwell House Hotel and in the 1880s, served on the Board of Directors for the Working Women Exchange. Adelicia loved to entertain. There were cotillions and galas and balls and most were held out in the gardens under the full moon. She would pick different themes for the parties and use exotic decor like Japanese lanterns to light the festivities. 

The Civil War brought change for the Acklens and strife. Tennessee seceded from the Union in June of 1861. Joseph paid to get a Tennessee militia armed and in uniforms. He got little thanks for that when the nearby Fort Donelson fell and the Confederate army decided not to defend Nashville. Adelicia stayed at Belmont, but Joseph ran to Louisiana to run the plantations they had there. About a third of Nashville's population left. Now before you think Joseph ran off scared, he actually went to a worse situation. One of the plantations was on the Mississippi River and this area was controlled by Federal gunboats. The Confederates liked to cross here though, so skirmishes happened often. On top of that, both sides wanted to burn the cotton on the plantation because they didn't want either side to benefit from it. Joseph was trying to protect around 8,500 bales of cotton. The Union came to him and offered to protect the cotton, but Joseph didn't want the Confederates to retaliate against him. The Union did eventually provide protection against his will. Despite being only 45, Joseph was sick, tired and so arthritic he couldn't write by 1863. He asked a friend to write a letter for him to Adelicia that the South was going to lose the war and slavery would be over and he was happy that this was going to be the case. Joseph then died of malaria and Adelicia had lost her second husband. 

This left Adelicia in a quandary. The cotton down in Louisiana was worth a lot of money. A story told about her is that she traveled secretly down to Louisiana and used her beauty and charm to get both sides of the war to help her with the cotton. She convinced a Confederate General she was friendly with, not to burn the bales of cotton and then she contracted with a Yankee wagon train to transport the cotton to a New Orleans port. This was with the help of a Union Admiral she was friendly with. The only problem was getting the cotton from the plantation to that port without having rebels rob the train. Somehow she managed to convince some Confederate soldiers to escort the cotton on the train. Neither side knew that she was working both sides. The cotton made it to New Orleans and was sold to the Rothschilds in London for nearly a million dollars in gold. That would be worth nearly 17 million today. 

The couple's eldest son Joseph was off at military school during much of the Civil War. He then went overseas to colleges in France and Switzerland and returned to Tennessee to finish his law degree in 1871 at Cumberland College, School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee. He set up shop in Memphis and married a woman there named Hattie Bethell and then moved to her sugar plantation in Patternsonville St. Mary Parish Louisiana. Hattie became pregnant shortly thereafter and died in childbirth. The baby also passed. Joseph, Jr. stayed on at the plantation until 1884 and served in politics in Louisiana. He moved back to Nashville in 1884 to practice law again and lived at Belmont until it was sold in 1887. He married again and had eight children and passed away in 1938.

Adelicia would marry for a third time in 1867 to a doctor named William Archer Cheatham. He was a medical reformer and ran the Tennessee Insane Asylum. While there, he implemented the most advanced theories of moral treatment for the mentally ill that had been developed during the 19th century. Dorothea Dix considered the Tennessee hospital the most superior for mental health and it really was one of the best in the nation. Cheatham first wife had passed in 1864 and he brought two children into the marriage, Martha and Richard. He established a private practice in Nashville and worked at that until his death in 1900. Adelicia remained at Belmont Mansion until 1884 when she left for Florida with her three other adult children. The following spring they went to Washington D.C. and this is where Adelicia died in May 1887. Before her death, she sold Belmont Mansion to a developer who sold 15 acres of the land and the mansion to two women from Philadelphia. They opened a school for young women called Belmont College in 1890. This merged with Ward Seminary in 1913 and became a junior college named Ward-Belmont. Minnie Pearl graduated from here as did Mary Martin. In 1951, the school changed ownership and is today Belmont University, which reopened as a coeducational, liberal arts school offering bachelor and graduate degrees.

Today, Belmont Mansion is open as a museum and conducts tours under the care of the Belmont Mansion Association. For years they have painstakingly restored and refurbished the mansion and it is gorgeous. Many pieces of furniture belonged to Adelicia's family. The Rose Garden remains, although it is only about a quarter of the size it had once been. There were roses of every color here and many were show-worthy. A Freedom Fountain has been installed where some of the enslaved cabins would have been at one time. Some of those people included Brutus Jackson, Frances Jackson, Aggie, Fred, Ben Gant, George, Rena Gibbs, Julia Ann, Mortimer, Randolph, Rose, Salley, Manuela and her two children, Betsy and her children: Alexander, Amanda, Harriet, Ivey, James, and Joseph; and Maria and her children: Ezekiel or Zeke, Mary Ann, and William. They've done a great job at the mansion with digging into the history of the enslaved who were here. There are names of other enslaved people who had been at the other Acklen plantations on the fountain as well: John Baker, Betsy or Bettie Baker, Ruffin, Georgina, Eva Snowden Baker, and London.

The east campus entrance for the university had once been the service drive and entrance. Delivery vehicles would damage the oyster shell lined carriage drive, so this separate drive was created with an entrance on the east side of the house where the kitchen was located. A white Italian marble fountain is still located in the front of the mansion and was installed in 1857. And guess what? It actually still works and is said to be the oldest operational fountain in its original location in the American South. A water tower fed water via gravity to this fountain and two others. And there is also a cast and wrought iron gazebo that dates to 1853 that was bought out of the Janes, Beebe & Company of New York catalog. The center featured a large cast-iron outdoor aquarium filled with gold and silver fish. The original Aviary is still here and would have been filled with exotic birds that included a white owl Adelicia had received as a gift.

Unexplained things have happened in this house for a very long time. Adelicia herself claimed that she was haunted by the spirits of her twin daughters. She kept their room as it had been when they were alive and she would spend hours in there, running her hands over the furniture. She would tell friends that she sometimes heard their laughter. The main spirit here is thought to be Adelicia though. Faculty and students have both claimed to see her disembodied spirit. One employee claimed that she was walking down a hallway, cleaning up and checking things after an event, when she ran in the apparition of Adelicia who was wearing an elegant evening gown. On another occasion, a tour guide saw the spirit of Adelicia and as told that the furniture in one of the bedrooms was not in its proper place. 

Adelicia seems to gravitate towards holiday seasons and so is most often seen around Christmas. People believe this is because the university conducts an elaborate ceremony in which a massive tree is set up in the main hallway and a chorus descends the stairway dressed in period clothing and carrying lit candles. Adelicia would've loved this kind of pomp and circumstance. Thoughts as to why she would be here in spirit include her sadness over the loss of her children and possibly that she was greedy and unwilling to give up her earthly treasures. Haunted Nashville written by Frankie and Kim Meredith Harris in 2009 has some great ghost stories and this is one connected the Christmas hauntings. (pg. 84)

And they share these other stories as well. (pg. 86)

David Weatherly wrote on the Eerie Lights blog in 2019, "Susan, who shared her ghostly encounter with me, had spent a lot of time at Belmont in the early 2000's and it was during this period that she had her own run ins with the spirit of Adelicia. As she reports, 'I was friends with one of the security guards at the time, and he worked in the mansion and on its grounds. He would tell me quite often how the motion detectors would go off in the middle of the night when the building was completely empty. They would investigate of course, and find nothing, and they'd have to reset all the alarms. A friend of mine had sworn to me that she'd seen the ghost of the woman, Adelicia, right outside the building one night. A ghost that she swore vanished when she was looking at her. I was doubtful and thought maybe she'd just been up to many hours studying, or maybe she'd been drinking or something, but she always swore she'd had nothing to drink and wasn't tired. Then, one night I was in the main building myself. It really is a beautiful building and there are a lot of items that are original and belonged to the family like furniture and artwork. I was looking at some of the things when I heard what sounded like a child crying. I knew there were no kids in the building. It didn't sound like a baby, more like a little kid, maybe 5 to 7 years old, crying from being upset or hurt. I only heard it twice then it was as if there was silence beyond what's normal silence. I felt a chill and the hair went up on the back of my neck. It's like that feeling, you know someone is behind you and it was almost like slow motion, I turned around, and there she was, this woman in an old-fashioned dress. I know my jaw dropped and I felt frozen, just staring at her. It felt like a long time, but I know logically that it was only seconds. She was looking around like she'd heard that kid crying, and she had her left hand up to her face like she was upset. I saw her and then she just faded away! That made the whole thing even scarier! I knew right away that I'd seen Adelicia Hayes. Maybe she was looking for one of her kids who had died in the house. I never doubted my friend again, and in fact, we both had another sighting of the woman when we were together outside the mansion a few months later. We saw her out front and the same thing happened, she just faded away. I've been convinced since that time that ghost exists and that Adelicia Hayes still stays around the old mansion.'"

The Belmont Mansion is really something to see and that might be why Adelicia has returned in the afterlife. It must have been hard to leave and hard to sell, but now she has the freedom to come and go as she wishes, if it is indeed her haunting the place. Is Nashville's Belmont Mansion haunted? That is for you to decide!