WILLIAMSON COUNTY

The Carnton Plantation
County Seat: Franklin
The Battle of Franklin was one of the last battles of the Civil War to occur in Tennessee, and the story of one house tells you something about just how awful it was. On November 30, 1864, a Confederate army under General John Bell Hood charged into a Union Army under General John Schofield just outside of Franklin. The Confederates are said to have made as many as 18 separate charges, but were repulsed each time. In only about six hours, an estimated 7,000 Confederates and 2,500 Union troops were killed and wounded. Most of them were left to die on the field, but some were hauled to the Carnton Plantation, a small field hospital where dead bodies were literally stacked on top of one another. At one point, the lifeless bodies of no less than four Confederate generals lay on the back porch of Carnton.

By the way, most of the land on which the Battle of Franklin occurred is being turned into suburban neighborhoods. A group called Save the Franklin Battlefield is trying to stop this development.

Here's another story with a Williamson County connection:

There was a time when the Tennessee River used to flood for part of the year and be so low at other parts of the year that it was hard for large boats to go up and down on it. This was a huge problem, and for about 100 years the U. S. government and private companies wrestled with it. But in the 1920s the government ordered an army engineer – Williamson County native Lewis Watkins – to come up with a plan to “tame” the river. Watkins spent years researching and writing a complicated document called Tennessee River and Tributaries. When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, that document became the plan for a new government agency that built huge dams along the river and used them for flood control and power production. That agency is called the Tennessee Valley Authority, and today most Tennesseans get their electrical power from TVA. You can visit these dams if you want; among them are Norris Dam, Watts Bar Dam and Pickwick Dam.

Here's a photo of the Williamson County Courthouse in Franklin.

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