The Natchez Trace

By 1742, a European settler recorded travel on the Natchez Trace, the earliest known account of a route that included a portion on the site of Belle Meade Plantation. The trace began as a well-worn footpath made by bison traveling north to the Nashville area for salt licks, and Native Americans followed it, creating a route of roughly 440 miles from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi. Linking the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers, it quickly became the main road settlers used to travel south from Nashville to sell goods, and it was also used by Native American tribes including the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw to enter Nashville for trade in furs, pelts, and other goods. Today, travelers can still use the Old Trace as the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway, which follows the approximate path of the old route where original sections remain accessible and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On land that later became Belle Meade Plantation, Old Dunham’s Station stood on a 640-acre preemption grant made by North Carolina to Daniel Dunham in 1786; in 1788, Indians scalped, killed, and chopped Dunham and later burned his cabin, after which his son rebuilt it and the family stayed until selling the farm to John Harding in 1807. Richland Creek, flowing through the middle of the property, formed part of the trace, and the steady movement of travelers brought business to Harding at Belle Meade. John Harding’s sawmill and blacksmith shop were important sources of income, and Ben, an enslaved blacksmith purchased in Richmond in 1806, was the only documented runaway enslaved person owned by the Harding family. In 1814, troops under General John Coffee stopped at Harding’s blacksmith shop to have their horses shod while on the way to aid General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, and in 1815 William Giles Harding later recalled that, at six years old, he watched Andrew Jackson ride past the family cabin leading his victorious men back from the Battle of New Orleans.

Belle Meade, Tennessee · United States