Ashwood Hall

Ashwood Hall
General information
Status	Demolished
Client	Leonidas Polk

Ashwood Hall was a Southern plantation in Maury County, Tennessee.

The plantation was located in Ashwood, a small town near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee.

The land belonged to Colonel William Polk. The mansion was built for one of his sons, Bishop Leonidas Polk, from 1833 to 1837. Opposite the mansion, Leonidas Polk built St. John's Episcopal Church from 1839 to 1842.

In 1847, Leonidas Polk sold the mansion to Rebecca Vanleer, an heiress to an iron fortune, who had married one of his brothers, Andrew Jackson Polk, in 1846, for US$35,000. Andrew and his wife spent another US$35,000 on expansions and refurbishments. Their son Vanleer Polk and their daughter Antoinette Polk grew up at the mansion.

On July 5, 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Andrew Jackson Polk, who was elected Captain, organized the Maury County Braves in a grove on the grounds of Ashwood Hall.

In 1862, Antoinette Polk saved Confederate personnel stationed at Ashwood Hall by warning them that Northern forces were coming their way. As a result, she became known as a "Southern heroine."

It burned down in 1874.

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