Adelicia Hays Franklin Acklen Cheatham - Nashville, Tennessee
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 36° 08.891 W 086° 44.078
16S E 523872 N 4000416
Marker giving history of one of the south's wealthiest women locate in front of her mausoleum at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee.
Waymark Code: WMGF4J
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 02/24/2013
Views: 1
From historical marker:
Adelicia Hays Franklin Acklen Cheatham
March 15, 1817 - May 4, 1887
Owner of Belmont Mansion and Louisiana plantations
Adelicia Hays was the daughter of Oliver Bliss Hayes. At times Hayes was a lawyer, judge, Presbyterian minister and a land speculator. Adelicia married 50-year-old Isaac Franklin whenshe was 22. Franklin's home, Fairvue, still stands outside Gallatin. It became there home at the center of a 2,000-acre plantation. Franklin raised tobacco, cattle, and thoroughbred horses in Tennessee and also had six cotton plantations in Louisiana. Asaac and Adelicia had four children, one of whom died at birth. Franklin died after being married seven years.
Three years after Isaac Franklin's death, Adelicia married col. Joseph Acklen, a lawyer from Huntsville, Alabama. Adelicia's net worth was about one million dollars, which led her to ave Acklen sign aprenuptial contract. But Col. Acklen was a fine businesssman, tripling Adelicia's wealth. They built Belmont Mansion in 1853 to serve as their summer house. Six years later Adolphus Heinman was hired to enlarge and remodel the house. Heiman is buried under the Confederate monument behind you. The couple had had six children when Col. Acklen died in 1863.
Adelicia's most extordinary feat came in 1863; it was the negotiation of a million dollar cotton sale. When the war began the Confederate government halted cotton exports, hoping to leverage political benefits with European powers. Also,the U.S. Navy began a blockade of the Confederate coast, making exporting difficult. Cottonwas being gown on Adelicia's Louisiana land, but the Confederates threatened to burn it. Miraculously arrangements were made with them not to burn it, and with the U.S. forces to allow it to pass through the blockade. After the war Adelicia traveled to England and retrieved the proceeds in gold.
Postbellum days fould Adelicia one of the few Southerners whose wealth was not destroyed. Belmont was a centre of social activity. Adelicia even remarried in 1867, at age 50. Her final husband was 47-year old Dr. William Archer Cheatham, who also signed a prenuptial contract. When Tennessee constructed alunatic asylumin 1852, Cheatham was selected as superintendent. I was known as one of the finest mental hospitals anywhere when the U.S. Military Governor Andrew Johnson, arrested him. Cheatham had established a private medical practice when Adelicia married him. After 20 years of marriage they separated. Cheatham is the only one of her three husbands not burried in the mausoleum. Adelicia died on a shopping trip to New York City. She and nine of her ten children are in mausoleum.