The Hermitage --- The One in Nashville

 

    In 1804, Andrew Jackson purchased a 420-acre farm two miles from the Cumberland and Stones Rivers, and he and his wife Rachel moved into the existing two-story log blockhouse.  Over the next 17 years, he acquired more land and more slaves and named the plantation The Hermitage.  In 1821, he and Rachel moved into a two-story Federal-style mansion on the property, with four rooms on each floor.  While Rachel died in 1828, Andrew lived in the mansion intermittently until 1837, when he retired from the presidency and lived there until his death in 1845.  A fire destroyed much of the mansion in 1834, and it was rebuilt and additions were made over the years. Family occupied the home until 1893, but it had already been turned into a museum, at least partially, a few years earlier, making it the second oldest presidential home museum in the country, after Washington's Mount Vernon.  Because the family controlled it for so long, the mansion is unique because so many of the furnishings, include wallpaper, are original to the house.  

    I last visited over 15 years ago, so when we were in Nashville for the Southern Festival of Books, we had to return.

    Visitors first enter a museum which tells the Jackson and Hermitage stories, including a nod to the lives of the enslaved people who made the stories possible.  

     From the museum, visitors walk to the house for the guided interior tour.  Outside, visitors can see reconstructed slave cabins and outbuildings or explore the garden next to the house which also contains the family cemetery and the final resting place of Andrew and Rachel under a gazebo-like structure.

    The Hermitage is a required stop for history lovers visiting Nashville.

Southern Festival of Books 2025

 

    My wife and I both enjoy author events and book festivals.  We've been to almost every Savannah Book Festival.  This October, we decided to attend the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville Tennessee.  (website https://www.sofestofbooks.org/ )  It's a two-day downtown affair in middle October, with sessions held in the Tennessee State Museum and the Tennessee State Library and Archives, with vendors, book signings, and performance stages held in the middle, on the beautiful grounds of a huge park called the Bicentennial Mall, and it's been going since 1989.  All genres are represented, including children's, fiction, and non-fiction, but the books and authors generally reflect southern themes, as one might expect from the name of the festival.  Most of the sessions are devoted to a single book and author.  In most cases, the authors do approximately half-hour long presentations or interviews with a moderator, followed by questions from the audience.  There are also a few sessions with 2 or three authors and a moderator, and it was obvious that the panels are assembled with great thought and consideration; the authors and books mesh well with each other.  Following their presentations, all authors go to the signing tent for one-on-one interactions with readers.  At first, I was worried because my chosen sessions were often back to back, and I thought that I would have to miss out on signings, but my fears were unfounded, and things worked out so that I really didn't have to make the most difficult decisions.  

      My chosen sessions were all excellent, and the authors were very gracious.  Several of the authors were even kind of enough to pretend to remember past interactions at book events or through Histocrats social media.

Morgan Bolling and Toni Tipton-Martin.  I haven't read this, but it fits right in to my loves of southern and food history.  Tipton-Martin is one of the leading journalists/writers in culinary history today, famous for The Jemima Code among others.

Sam Kean us a favorite podcaster and author who has a real knack for combining science and history and making it really entertaining.  I love all of his work.  Dinner With King Tut is one of my favorite reads this year.  In it, he learns about, and re-creates various ancient activities.  In the photo, he displays the fish that he personally mummified, using ancient Egyptian techniques, in his guest bathroom (where he performed all sorts of experiments, enough to make me worry about his home's re-sale value).  In 2022, he kindly replied to my "7 Questions."  ( Here ) Read my review.

Andrew Lawler, A Perfect Frenzy.  I've enjoyed several other of his books, and this one was a great read as well.  He also replied to my "7 Questions." ( Here ) ( Review )

John T. Edge is a journalist and author who has devoted his professional life to tell the story of the South through foodways, especially the stories of those individuals and groups that might otherwise be overlooked.  One of his most well-known books, The Potlikker Papers, relates the story of the civil rights movement through the lens of food.  He founded the Southern Foodways Alliance, led it for years, and currently produces and hosts the TV show "True South."  House of Smoke is his powerful memoir.  ( Review )

Stacia Pelletier and James Wade write southern historical fiction.  I haven't read any of their work yet, but I have now added them to my list.

Valerie J. Frey is an acquaintance from her former days as Education Coordinator at the Georgia State Archives.  Her book is a history of Georgia's historical cookbooks and recipes.

The highlight of the whole trip was Michael Twitty being interviewed by Sean Brock, a leading southern chef and restaurateur.  Twitty is a culinary historian specializing in southern food and especially how it was shaped by the African diaspora and slavery.  His books The Cooking Gene  and Koshersoul are two of the greatest food books I've ever read, but they're about much more than food.  His new book is a vast collection of classic southern recipes that I can't wait to get into.

Nature's Messenger is a great biography of Mark Catesby, the first trained naturalist to ever make a study of the flora and fauna of the American South.  His legacy is a big one, yet few have ever heard of him.  ( Review )

    Mega Kudos to the organizers of the Southern Festival of Books.  We plan to return next year and maybe make it an annual trip.  

Foxfire

 

 

    The best travel finds are often the unplanned discoveries that you just stumble on.  A perfect example was our discovery of the Foxfire Museum in the Appalachian foothills of northeast Georgia. On our drive back home from Asheville, we were stopping in Atlanta for a night.  Shortly after entering Georgia, we saw a sign for the Foxfire Museum, which was not at all on our radar.  ( Museum Website )

    Not familiar with Foxfire?  Many who don't have interests in education  or southern history probably aren't.  Foxfire was founded in 1966 at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private school that was also the public secondary school of Rabun County at the time.  A young English teacher named Eliot Wigginton had an innovative idea to engage his students in writing.  The idea was to publish a magazine consisting of interviews with their relatives and neighbors about Appalachian life and culture, specifically documenting traditions and stories that might otherwise have been lost as the world advanced into the region.  The students took photos and videos during interviews and demonstrations, and then they transcribed the interviews, documenting the language of the subjects, and wrote stories.  The resulting content is a mixture of how-to information, first-person narratives, oral history, and folklore. A rapidly disappearing culture was documented and preserved, older people felt heard and appreciated, and healthy young people showed their appreciation by helping out with a little labor every now and then.  

    A couple of hundred issues were published annually.  Around 1970, an issue somehow found its way into the hands of a publisher who proposed collecting articles into a single volume.  The original volume was published in 1972, and it became a bit of a surprise sensation.  Eleven more volumes of collected material and other books have followed.  In 1977, the project moved to the new public Rabun County High School, and it continues to operate to this day. A new class of students goes to work each year, collecting and publishing histories.

    Foxfire became well known as an example of "experiential education," decades before buzzwords like "project-based learning,"  "product-based," "applied learning," and "inquiry-based." I worked as a teaching assistant in the Georgia Southern University School of Education while completing my Masters degree, and one of the professors introduced me to the books, and I found copies in a local used book store.   The stories really resonated with me because could have been told by my ancestors.  Although my ancestors were farmers and sharecroppers in south Georgia and not Appalachian, the skills and traditions were the same. When we saw the sign for the museum, we knew we had to visit.

    The museum is an open air museum displaying dozens of authentic cabins, houses, and farm structures moved to one location from various locations in the area.  The structures are either furnished or filled with objects and displays.  There are often artisans at work demonstrating various crafts.  They also sell their works and conduct regular classes.  It was a wonderful way to spend half a day, and we were fortunate to have stumbled across it.  

 

One of the most affecting sites on the tour is a wagon shed housing this wagon, donated to the museum.  This wagon has a uniquely well-documented provenance.  Evidence shows that it was built in 1770 and used to move settlers to the area.  It was kept and maintained by the original family until the 1830s when it was requisitioned by the United States Army and used as a supply wagon on the Trail of Tears, accompanying the Cherokees on their forced march west.  It made its way back to the original family who maintained it for 150 years before donating it to Foxfire.

Les Barnett and Kelly Coldren are two of the artisans who demonstrate regularly and conduct classes at Foxfire.  Barnett makes banjos, guitars, and dulcimers out of found and discarded items.  (Facebook page )  Coldren is a fiber artist, spinning, dying, weaving and felt-crafting.