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 Adelicia Acklen
N 36° 08.889 W 086° 44.077
16S E 523873 N 4000413
Adelicia Acklen was once known as the first lady of American Soceity. She built the Belmont Mansion in Nashville, which today stands on the grounds of Belmont University.
Waymark Code: WM321T
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 01/27/2008
Views: 92
Adelicia Acklen was on of America’s richest women when she an her second husband, Joseph Acklen, began construction their mansion that would be known as Belmont. The elaborate antebellum home, with it 36-rooms an 19,000 square feet is one of the largest and most beautiful homes in the south. Joseph died during the Civil War leaving Adelicia a widow for the second time. Her first husband, Issac Franklin after just 7-years of marriage. He death left Adelicia very wealthy and very independent. In 1884, while she was married to her third husband, Dr. William Cheatham, she has a mausoleum built at Nashville’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery. When the mausoleum was complete she had the remains of her first an second husbands reinterred inside. Adelicia Acklen died in 1887 and rests in the mausoleum along with two of her three husbands, five of her six children and a grandchild.
Source/Credit: A Walking Tour of Mt. Olivet Cemetery Booklet by W. Ridley Wills
Description:
Adelicia Acklen was born on March 15, 1817, to an affluent Nashville family. She grew to become one of the souths most elegant and wealthy women. At the age of twenty-two, Adelicia married Isaac Franklin, a wealthy bachelor twenty-eight years older than she. The marriage produced four children, but unfortunately all died before the age of twelve. Seven years after they married, Franklin died, leaving Adelicia one of the wealthiest women in America.
In 1849 Adelicia married Joseph Acklen, a young attorney from Alabama, and they immediately began construction on Belle Monte (Belmont.) An Italianate-style villa, it was a summer home escape from the heat at her 8,400-acre Louisiana cotton plantation. The Acklens built, furnished, and landscaped one of the most elaborate antebellum homes in the South, with 36 rooms and 19,000 sq. ft. The estate contained an art gallery, conservatories, lavish gardens, aviary, lake and zoo.
Joseph and Adelicia had six children, but the twins died of scarlet fever. Later, Joseph died in Louisiana during the Civil War. Left alone, Adelicia secretly negotiated agreements with both sides to allow 2,800 bales of her cotton to be shipped to England and sold for $960,000.
Immediately following the war, Adelicia and her four children traveled to Europe. While there, she continued amassing her large art collection, including five major marble statues by America's most important sculptors working in Rome. Four of these pieces remain in the mansion today.
Today the gilt frame mirrors hanging over original marble mantels still reflect the elaborate gasoliers and elegantly furnished parlors. The Grand Salon is considered by architectural historians to be the most elaborate domestic interior built in antebellum Tennessee. The gardens, now maintained as part of the college campus, contain marble statuary and the largest collection of 19th century cast iron garden ornaments in the United States, including five cast iron gazebos.
Belmont Mansion is located on the campus of Belmont University and is open for public tours. Adelicia Acklen died in 1887 and is entombed in the family mausoleum in Nashville’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Date of birth: 03/15/1817
Date of death: 05/04/1887
Area of notoriety: Other
Marker Type: Tomb (above ground)
Setting: Outdoor
Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Daily - During Daylight Hours
Fee required?: No
Web site: [Web Link]
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