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Near Castalian Springs in Sumner County, Tennessee — The American South (East South Central)
 

Cragfont

Union Occupation

 
 
Cragfont Marker image. Click for full size.
Photographed By Don Morfe, July 23, 2013
1. Cragfont Marker
Inscription. Cragfont was the home of Confederate Maj. George W. Winchester (1822-1878), his mother, Susan Winchester, his wife, Malvina H. Gaines, and their children. Their surviving letters and diaries describe life during Union occupation.

George Winchester remained at Cragfont after the war began. When his son, Pvt. Napoleon B. Winchester, 2nd Tennessee Infantry (CSA), was wounded at Shiloh in April 1862, Winchester visited him and decided to join the army. He served as Gen. Daniel S. Donelson’s brigade quartermaster and later as fellow Sumner County resident Gen. William B. Bates’s adjutant general.

Winchester’s family and slaves operated the plantation. In 1863, the 1st Kentucky Cavalry (U.S.) under Col. Frank Wolford occupied the house and grounds. A family member recalled: “I felt I should choke with restrained indignation, when I saw those men the implacable enemy… stretched upon the sofa, and lolling in the chairs which only a night before had been occupied by friends from (Gen. John Hunt) Morgan’s command.” Soldiers stripped the grounds to your right of oak, ash, hickory, and beech trees to build quarters between the house and main road, and confiscated horses, cattle, and crops. The slave quarters emptied, and Malvina Winchester was arrested and escorted to Nashville to take the Union oath of allegiance.

In
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1863, George Winchester was captured at Missionary Ridge and imprisoned, along with Napoleon Winchester, at Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie until the war ended. Susan Winchester died in December 1864. After the war, pressing financial obligations forced George Winchester to sell his ancestral home and move to Memphis, where he practiced law until his death in 1878.

(Side Bar) Gen. James Winchester, a hero of the American Revolution from Maryland, constructed Cragfont between 1798 and 1802. The late-Georgian-style house was considered the finest mansion on the Tennessee frontier at that time.

Photo of James Winchester-Courtesy, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

(Inscription under the photos in the lower left)
Col. Frank Wolford
-Courtesy Library of Congress.

Presbyterian chaplain William H. Honnell, who occupied the house
-Courtesy Eastham Tarrant, The Wild Riders of the First Kentucky Cavalry (1894)
 
Erected by Civil War Trails.
 
Topics and series. This memorial is listed in this topic list: War, US Civil. In addition, it is included in the Tennessee Civil War Trails series list. A significant historical month for this entry is April 1862.
 
Location. 36° 24.267′ N, 86° 20.517′ W. Marker is near Castalian Springs, Tennessee, in Sumner County
Cragfont Marker image. Click for full size.
Photographed By Don Morfe, July 23, 2013
2. Cragfont Marker
. Memorial is on Cragfont Road north of Hartsville Pike. Touch for map. Marker is in this post office area: Castalian Springs TN 37031, United States of America. Touch for directions.
 
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 2 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies. A different marker also named Cragfont (about 300 feet away, measured in a direct line); a different marker also named Cragfont (approx. half a mile away); James B. Jameson House (approx. 0.6 miles away); Isaac Bledsoe (approx. 1.2 miles away); Abraham “Abram” Bledsoe (approx. 1.2 miles away); Site of Bledsoe's Fort (approx. 1.2 miles away); Bill "Hoss" Allen (approx. 1.2 miles away); Bledsoe's Fort, 1783-1806 (approx. 1.2 miles away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Castalian Springs.
 
Cragfont Marker image. Click for full size.
Photographed By Don Morfe, July 23, 2013
3. Cragfont Marker
 
 
Credits. This page was last revised on June 16, 2016. It was originally submitted on September 6, 2013, by Don Morfe of Baltimore, Maryland. This page has been viewed 752 times since then and 20 times this year. Photos:   1, 2, 3. submitted on September 6, 2013, by Don Morfe of Baltimore, Maryland. • Al Wolf was the editor who published this page.

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Mar. 19, 2024