Carnton

We visited the Carnton house in Franklin Tennessee. Constructed in 1826, it has a basement and three floors above ground. It's constructed of red brick but in the restoration process they've painted the front of the house white. The baseboards are of marble throughout the house, and the third floor contains the ballroom and the gentlemen's smoking parlor. The front of the house faces north and you will notice in the picture how the front porch extends some little distance beyond the west side of the house. That was so the family, sitting on the porch to catch the evening breezes, could catch a breeze even if it came from the south by sitting on that end of the porch.

On the back of the house you can see two dormer windows for the third floor. There are also two windows in each end of the third floor. During the Civil War battle of Franklin Carnton served as the hospital for the Confederate army. The battle of Franklin was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and the floors of Carnton are stained ebony with, the blood of the wounded from the surgery performed in the house.

After the battle the Union having been victorious, gathered their wounded and dead, but the fields were covered with the Confederate dead. The owner of Carnton set aside a portion of the plantation as a cemetery, and they gathered and buried 1,496 soldiers there. At first they marked the graves with wooden markers, but later collected enough money to replace these with stone. To this day the cemetery is well maintained with a wrought iron fence surrounding it. You can read a bit more about Carnton and the battle of Franklin here... http://www.carnton.org/history.htm