Carnton

In this part of the McGavock family cemetery are buried some of the people who were once enslaved here, former slaves, and perhaps African Americans who labored at Carnton in the decades following the Civil War. These individuals were an integrated part of the site's history and in large part made Carnton what it became in the 19th century: a large and successful farm. Though they were interred near the McGavock family section, the line separating the two remains obvious today. The only marked graves in the African American section are those of Mariah and Bolen Reddick's twin sons, who were stillborn in 1877. Mariah Reddick had once been enslaved by the McGavock family; she lived until 1922 and is buried next to her husband at Toussaint L’Ouverture Cemetery in downtown Franklin. Formal family cemeteries such as this were far from typical, and most people in the 18th and 19th centuries, whatever their race or background, were buried in crude graves with wooden markers and were thus lost to time. Now a place of rest and remembrance, this cemetery also holds the story of lives marked by hardship, perseverance, and legacy, and some buried here may have lived to see freedom arrive even as equality remained distant.

Franklin, Tennessee · United States