Beersheba Springs Hotel

Beersheba Springs Hotel. Circa 1837 - Expanded 1857. Beersheba Springs was the first white settlement on the Plateau. A chalybeate spring was discovered there in 1833 by Beersheba Cain of McMinnville, after following a trail up the Mountain from Tarleton Valley. She had accompanied her husband on a business trip to visit William Dugan who lived at the base of the Mountain and had acquired ownership of that part of the Plateau. While her husband and Dugan conferred, she ventured up the Mountain., Believing the water to have medicinal value, a tavern was built in 1837 and several cabins were built on land deeded by Dugan to various McMinnville men, including John Cain, husband of Beersheba, Alfred Paine, Samuel Edmondson, George R. Smart and William (Buck) White. The cabins and tavern were patterned after the popular Virginia resorts. In 1839, the Beersheba Springs Company was incorporated, thus tourism on the Plateau was born., John Armfield, a retired slave trader, in 1854 purchased 1,000 acres, the original tavern, proprietor's room, a row of guest cottages and Buck White's residence. He proceeded to enlarge the tavern into a fashionable watering place hotel. He further built 20 cottages to the specifications of persons to whom he leased lots., Armfield had been the younger partner with Isaac Franklin in the slave trading firm of Franklin and Armfield. Fredric Bancroft in "Slave Trading in the Old South" comments: , "Isaac Franklin and John Armfield at the height of their success, from 1830 to 1836, were not only in the lead of other traders in Maryland, Virginia, and the District, but were, unequaled in the South. They had a positive genius for speculating in slaves.", In 1828, Franklin and Armfield had begun operations in Alexandria, Virginia, where Armfield's assignment was the buying of slaves and shipping them to the lower South, where they were received by Franklin and sold in Natchez, Mississippi. Armfield's position with a leading slave trade firm put him in contact with plantation owners in Mississippi and other parts of the lower South. When his partner died in 1846, Armfield became the executor of his estate that extended his relationships with plantation owners in the lower South where Franklin had owned several plantations., After Armfield had acquired the properties in Beersheba Springs, it was not difficult for him to find plantation owners to lease lots to construct cottages principally for use in the summer. Mississippi, Louisiana, and other parts of the plantation region were infested with malaria during the hot months of the year, whereas, the Plateau was malaria free. Beersheba Springs afforded the plantation owners the opportunity to move their families to the malaria-free cooler climate of the Plateau. A thriving summer community developed., Two of the cottages built by Armfield were given to Episcopal Bishops James Otey and Leonidas Polk in an effort to influence the selection of the Plateau as a site for the southern university envisioned by the bishops of the southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church. In this he was successful as well as in influencing Eugen Plumacher to recommend the Plateau as the site for a Swiss Colony at Gruetli., The Civil War interrupted the fortunes of the southern plantation owners and the cottages acquired by them at Beersheba Springs were taken back by Armfield. Several of the cottages were later acquired by successful merchants and professionals from Nashville and other places in middle Tennessee. Many of their descendants own the cottages today. The hotel struggled after the Civil War and in 1941 was acquired by the Methodist Conference of Middle Tennessee, which operates it as a conference and retreat center., Today, Beersheba Springs continues to be a major tourist destination. It has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.