Belle Meade Plantation

William Hicks Jackson's marriage into Belle Meade made its stud famous, but it could not keep the estate whole. Money troubles began with the Panic of 1893. Jackson died in 1903, and his son and heir, William Harding Jackson, died of typhoid the same year. In 1906 the estate's trustee sold Belle Meade in parcels, and much of the old plantation became the City of Belle Meade, incorporated in 1938. Five more families lived in the mansion before the State of Tennessee bought it with eight outbuildings in 1953 and deeded it to a preservation association.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 5.4 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Fort Negley — 5.7 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 6.0 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 6.1 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Belle Meade Plantation — steps away
• Belle Meade Deer Park — 0.4 mi
• Richland Creek Bridge — 0.4 mi
• West Meade — 1.0 mi