Rippavilla Plantation

Rippavilla ran on enslaved labor. The Cheairs family held 46 enslaved people around 1840 and as many as 75 by 1860, according to the National Register nomination, on a farm that began at 1,500 acres. The house, begun in 1851, was remodeled between 1928 and 1932, after William McKissack Cheairs sold it in 1920 to John Whitfield, an Alabama coal tycoon, and the Colonial Revival changes now sit over its Greek Revival core. The plantation suffered little damage in the war. The National Register listed it in 1996.

What the plaque says

Rippavilla Plantation In 1811, the Cheairs family settled at this site. Nathaniel and Susan McKissack Cheairs began construction of this home, Rippavilla, in 1851. Cheairs raised two companies for the Confederate Army in 1861. In February of 1862, Maj. Cheairs carried Gen. Grant's "unconditional surrender" demanded to Gen. Buckner at Fort Donelson. Gen. Hood's command had a rancorous breakfast at Rippavilla the morning of the Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. The Saturn Corporation, the Union Auto Workers, and the Maury County Government restored the home in 1997.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 9.3 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.
• James K. Polk Home and Museum — 9.4 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.
• Carnton — 13 mi
  The McGavock farm in Franklin, worked by 44 enslaved people in 1860, that became the largest field hospital of the Battle of Franklin.
• Gordon House and Ferry Site — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Hood's Command Post — 0.9 mi
• Confederate Attacks at Spring Hill — 1.7 mi
• Ewell Farm — 1.9 mi
• William Banks Caperton — 2.0 mi