Rattle and Snap Plantation

The estate originally covered 5,648 acres, and enslaved people worked the land and built the mansion. George Washington Polk, a son of the Revolutionary surveyor-general William Polk, lived in it for fifteen years. A local legend says a Union officer who was a Freemason spared the house after noticing a Masonic ring in Polk's portrait. After the war the family went bankrupt, and in 1867 Joseph Granbery bought the estate, which his family held for more than fifty years and called Oakwood Hall. It is the largest, most extravagant mansion in Maury County.

What the plaque says

Rattle and Snap Plantation Designated a National Historic Landmark by the U. S. Department of the Interior in 1971, Rattle and Snap was built between 1842 and 1845 by George W. Polk and his wife, Sallie Hilliard. Restored to its original character and furnished with period antiques, many from area Polk homes, the grand mansion is among the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in American. The name derives from a game of chance popular in Colonial America.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• James K. Polk Home and Museum — 7.5 mi
  The 1816 brick house in Columbia where Polk practiced law and campaigned for the legislature, now a museum that also tells of the people the Polk family enslaved.
• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 7.7 mi
  Columbia's Black business and church district south of the courthouse square, where on the night of February 25, 1946 a white mob gathered and Black veterans stood guard.
• Gordon House and Ferry Site — 12 mi
  A brick house of 1818 beside the Duck River at milepost 407.7 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, where a Chickasaw partner and a Tennessee captain ran a ferry and an inn.
• Meriwether Lewis Site — 17 mi
  The place on the Natchez Trace Parkway where Meriwether Lewis died in October 1809, with his 1848 monument, a pioneer cemetery, a walk on the Old Trace and a free campground.

More markers nearby

• St. John's — 1.1 mi
• Zion — 3.3 mi
• Hood's Maneuver — 3.4 mi
• Thomas Hart Benton — 5.6 mi