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History of Old
Sumner
Fairvue, Part Three – Grasslands
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After the Reeds
Fairvue went through a succession of owners, some of whom even lived
in the old place for a brief time. Then, in 1929, it regained its
national and international status in a way most locals found
dazzlingly unbelievable.
The late 20s were a
time of great excitement and growth in America. Fortunes were made
in the stock market and every kind of speculative and leveraged
venture. Tennessee shared in this boom, with the Great War hero Luke
Lea, who almost captured the Kaiser, and his associate, Rogers
Caldwell, bringing Tennessee back to a prominence unknown since
before the devastation of the War Between the States and
Reconstruction.
Caldwell was nothing
if not bold, brokering State bonds to fund much of this Southern
renaissance. The proceeds he deposited in his investment banking
firm, paying no interest on them, until they were disbursed to
another of his companies for materials to construct the highways and
schools of the New South. His investment banking contacts in New
York, Chicago, Cincinnati and other financial centers brought him
into contact with the richest and most powerful magnates in America,
including the Duponts, Mellons, Whitneys, Fleischmanns, and
McCormicks. In addition to money and political power, these men
shared another passion – fine blooded horses.
How natural that these
riches sought sport in the place which had been the nursery of the
finest race horses in America – Old Sumner, in Middle Tennessee.
Here General Jackson had come to raise and race his horses, when he
was not warring or dueling. Here stood that most expensive of studs,
St. Blaise, who fetched $100,000 at a time the average racehorse
sold for $5,000.
Grasslands - Bill Puryear - 12"x24" - Oil on panel - 2004
Foxhunting, in which
riders jump gates or wooden fences in pursuit of the game, offered
amateur riders the heroic rush of racing. This sport originated in
England and Europe where the gentry cooperated with the peasants to
control the foxes which raided their henhouses. As hunters organized
impromptu races between steeples of parish churches in rural England
the term steeplechasing arose.
The farmers of Sumner
County, not regarding themselves as peasants and not depending upon
poultry as a major cash crop, did not welcome groups of mounted
trespassers on their land. Worse, they preferred barbed wire fences
to the old stone or chestnut rail fences, which did not turn cattle
any better than horses. Virtually invisible to an excited mount and
rider, barbed wire fences were a lethal hazard no rider dared.
Enter John Branham,
owner of a Chicago Advertising Agency. Seeking his roots, he moved
with his wife, Laura, to Gallatin and acquired the old Baber place,
one of the Franklin houses across Station Camp Creek from Fairvue, a
site which legend holds was once occupied by the King’s Indian
Agent. He improved it, renamed it Foxland Hall, and bought an
interest in the area newspaper, The Nashville Tennessean.
Foxland Hall
So taken were the
Branhams and Rogers Caldwell with their new hunters’ paradise, they
enlisted the help of the New York Architect, Joseph B. Thomas,
author of the 1928 book Hounds and Hunting Through The Ages.
Thomas immediately saw the possibility of a vast hunting reserve and
sportsmen’s’ club in the park-like land near Gallatin bounded on
three sides by water – the Cumberland River, Drake’s Creek, and East
Station Camp Creek- and on the north by the paved Nashville-Gallatin
Pike, a boundary no fox would cross.
In October of 1929
Rogers Caldwell, Mason Houghland and John Branham formed the Sumner
County Land Company and bought Fairview with 632 acres for $74,000.
Two weeks later the stock market crashed, but the effect was not
immediately felt in Sumner County, where wealth was still measured
in land.
The founders allowed a
select group of their eastern millionaire friends membership for
$10,000 and soon acquired or leased eighty adjacent farms comprising
28 square miles. Local farmers, sensing the opportunity of a
lifetime, only too were happy to part with their land for cash down
and the promise more.
Thomas’s enthusiasm
and literary skills, backed by Branham’s ad copy capability and
Caldwell’s money resulted in a prospectus for Grasslands rarely
matched in its expansive hyperbole:
This Founders group
chosen from the elite of the sporting, social, and financial world
of North America will have the unique satisfaction of being
instrumental in creating an island of sport to remain a beauty spot
in future years when many sections of America will have been
swallowed in the maw of industrialism. The names of these fifty
Founders will be handed down to posterity, emblazoned as it were in
the hall of sporting fame as those who had the initiative and vision
to develop a hunting domain such as has never been created since
William the Conqueror inaugurated the New Forest nearly a thousand
years ago.
Deer shooting at Grasslands
The founders
celebrated their conquest by ripping out the barbed wire and
installing miles of post and rail fences. Nor would the members be
limited to hunting of the fox or steeplechasing. Every imaginable
sport was either provided for or planned, including:
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Beagling
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Polo
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Dove and quail
shooting
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Pheasant hunting
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Duck shooting
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Horse breeding stables
and programs
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Fishing
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Boating
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Swimming
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Golf privileges at
Belle Meade and other nearby clubs
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Tennis
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Restaurants, featuring
Southern fare
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Residential
accommodations, including Avondale and several other houses acquired
as part of the purchase. The old Fairvue plantation house was slated
for remodeling to serve as the Foundation’s headquarters.
The centerpiece of
these Elysian Fields was a four-and-one-half race course with
twenty-four obstacles or jumps, patterned after the famous Aintree
course, in England. Here on May 19, 1930, two days after the
Kentucky Derby, was held the Inaugural Steeplechase of Grasslands.
The glitterati of the East were joined by a few local notables from
Belle Meade and even Gallatin, such a Eleanor Allen Sullivan, Howard
Hitchcock, who participated in the pre-race pigeon shoot, Billy Dan
and Alice Calgy, Felice Ferrell, John Noel, Gideon Wade, and 8,000
locals who turned out for the spectacle.
Attendees of the Inaugural
Steeplechase of Grasslands
Vogue Magazine
covered the event, focusing on the social proceedings:
“The ball on Friday
night was a curiosity of the first order. The old hall at Fairview
has been whipped into dancing shape in about a week.... The room was
packed and jammed – silk knee breeches and white wigs. To me, the
whole interest lay in the contrast – a poor old house, only
fractionally reclaimed, seething with a riot of gay modern
foreigners from almost every section of this democratic land except
Tennessee.”
Perhaps the Vogue
reporter did not recognize Tennesseans in such outlandish costumes,
or know that Gallatin’s own Felice Ferrell had been given carte
blance to array Fairview in the best possible ante-bellum Southern
style, sparing no expense. The Nashville Tennessean in its
coverage was more explicit:
“She loaned or
otherwise acquired chandeliers, mirrors, and other furnishings for
the pleasure of some three hundred fifty guests. The invitation had
a card enclosed which read: ‘De rigueur: Masks to be worn until
midnight. Ladies will wear white wigs. Gentlemen full dress –
scarlet if qualified.... In lieu of curtains, beautiful silken flags
of the United States, England, Spain, and France, the nations
represented at the steeplechase, were draped fan-shaped over the
windows....The wall decoration, produced in panoramic effect, was
seen over a panel fence of glistening white, with familiar
buildings, such as Race Horse Tavern (Avondale, the R.C. Owen place,
now Leon Moore’s residence) Fairview Manor, Governor’s House (Foxland
Hall) Pilot Knob House (now Kennesaw, owned by Johnny McMahan) and
other home in the colony, pictured in the distance, and the figures
in action forming a frieze.... Supper was served throughout the
evening from long tables arranged in the candle-lighted supper hall.
Typical old Southern dishes featured the menu, such as turkey and
ham in massive platters of antique silver. The maids appeared in
gaily-colored calico costumes, with red bandannas, snowy white
kerchiefs and aprons, and gold-hooped ear-rings. The men servants
wore red frock coats and buff-colored breeches.”
The Tennessean’s
article on the Inaugural race three days later observed:
“Wagons, buggies and
broken down automobiles mixed with swank, shining, motors....
Eastern fashionables mingled with Nashville’s own smart set within
an enclosure set aside for visiting notables at Grasslands…among
whom were the Princess Respigliosi and Prince George of Russia….in a
setting never before equaled for color and brilliance in either the
social or sporting history of the city.
Crowd at the Inaugural Steeplechase of Grasslands
Byron Hilliard of
Louisville, riding his own Red Gold won the race, and his
step-father, Barry Bingham, owner of the Louisville Courier Journal,
give the race big coverage. The first introduction of the English
sport, replete with thrills from start to finish, was enough to send
the…witnesses away clamoring for another such event.”
Red Gold, winning racehorse of the Inaugural Steeplechase
They did not have long
to wait, for on December 6 that year the first a thrice-around four
mile steeplechase was held, an American counterpart to the English
Grand National . The King of Spain added a gold cup to the $5,000
first place.
The weather was
miserable and the grass track “greasy”. The Nashville Banner
estimated a turnout of 8,000 shivering persons. Each of the
seventeen entries fell or was pulled up, and only three finished the
race.
The economic climate
was even nastier. Just one month before the race, on November 8,
bank examiners declared Rogers Caldwell’s Bank of Tennessee
insolvent and in default on State deposits. Six days later Caldwell
and Company, largest investment house in the South, went into
receivership. Within two weeks 120 banks in seven Southern states
had closed. The Great Depression had reached Tennessee.
The following year
both Tennessee and Kentucky indicted Caldwell on several charges. He
was convicted of breach of trust in Tennessee but successfully
avoided extradition to Kentucky. His associate, Luke Lea, was not so
fortunate, and, waiving extradition to North Carolina, served a
prison term there. The Nashville Tennessean was placed into
receivership.
Weather for the
following year’s race on December 5, 1931, was good, but attendance
was down. Perhaps some sensed this was the last race, despite
assurances by Association officials that things were not so grave as
they might appear. Then, in March of 1932, Grasslands, unable to
continue payments on the land, filed for receivership.
The Eastern elite
vanished, returning to home to tend more pressing concerns and their
shrunken investments. John Branham, riding with his wife Laura,
stopped to drink from a spring on the place. Contracting typhoid
fever, he refused medical treatment for religious reason and died.
The bubble burst for
Sumner County. Merchants lost trade and collections. Worst hit were
those farm owners who had sold and reinvested in other farms who now
lost capital they had counted upon and now returned to farming their
old places in the bottom of a great depression. Ben. J. Franklin, no
relation to Isaac, took back Fairview, for the third time.
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Bill
Puryear, Artist