Adelicia acklen biography of abraham lincoln
Home / Historical Figures / Adelicia acklen biography of abraham lincoln
This output, verified through plantation ledgers and census data, positioned Acklen's enterprises as exemplars of Southern agribusiness, though sustained by coerced labor's expendability rather than innovation alone.
Pre-War Prosperity
Adelicia Acklen's pre-war prosperity stemmed primarily from the lucrative operations of her cotton plantations in Louisiana, supplemented by the diversified Fairvue estate in Tennessee.Adelicia actively participated in operations, particularly after Franklin's death, assuming direct control amid the era's reliance on overseers to enforce labor quotas under threat of punishment, though specific records of her personal directives remain limited. After Joseph's death on February 14, 1863, Acklen personally traveled to Louisiana on January 1, 1864, accompanied by her cousin Sarah Ewing Sims Carter, to oversee operations amid escalating threats.
Together, they built the Belmont Mansion in Nashville.
They had six children: Joseph H. (1850-1938) who served as United States.
Following the Union capture of Nashville in February 1862, she advised her husband Joseph Acklen to relocate to the Louisiana plantations, which remained under Confederate control until the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 shifted regional dynamics toward Union dominance. This inheritance included seven cotton plantations in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, encompassing thousands of acres; over 750 enslaved individuals; and additional land holdings such as more than 50,000 acres in Texas, along with the 2,000-acre Fairvue Plantation in Sumner County, Tennessee, which Franklin had developed since 1832 as a center for cattle raising and thoroughbred horse breeding.[1][3]Franklin's will imposed conditions on Fairvue, stipulating that if Adelicia remarried, the property would be converted into a school funded by proceeds from the Louisiana holdings.
The couple had six children, two of whom died young. A prenuptial agreement ensured her property remained separate, mirroring contracts from earlier marriages and underscoring her insistence on financial autonomy amid familial expansion. Her father was Oliver Bliss Hayes (1783-1858), a lawyer and later Presbyterian minister from South Hadley, Massachusetts who was related to Rutherford B.
Hayes (1822–1893), the 19th President of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Franklin's unexpected death on December 16, 1846, after seven years of marriage, left the 29-year-old Acklen widowed with inherited plantations, over 1,000 enslaved people, and no surviving offspring, compelling her to navigate estate management amid grief.[5][31]Remarrying on December 18, 1849, to lawyer and planter Joseph Alexander Smith Acklen (1816–1863), she bore six children: Joseph Hayes (b.
The Confederate threat to burn the bales directly jeopardized her economic base, as destruction would have eliminated her liquid assets amid disrupted trade; similarly, Union occupation of Belmont Mansion during the Battle of Nashville on December 15–16, 1864, exposed her Tennessee residence to artillery fire and looting, though the main structure survived with only minor outbuilding damage.
Acklen, a superb businessman and plantation manager, had tripled his wife’s fortune by 1860.
After her husband died during the Civil War, Acklen faced financial ruin when the Confederate army threatened to burn 2,800 bales of her cotton to keep it from falling into Union possession. She was buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.
One of the wealthiest women of the antebellum South, Adelicia Acklen was born March 15, 1817, the daughter of Oliver Bliss Hayes, a prominent Nashville lawyer, judge, Presbyterian minister, land speculator, and cousin to President Rutherford B.
Hayes.
At age twenty-two she married Isaac Franklin of Sumner County, a wealthy cotton planter and slave trader, who was twenty-eight years her senior. 1852, d. Her mother, Sarah Clements (Hightower) Hayes (1795-1871). After her marriage to Joseph Acklen on December 25, 1849, she contested the will's distribution in Louisiana courts, arguing against its restrictive terms; the Louisiana Supreme Court ultimately declared the contested provisions void, affirming her control over the estate.[20][1] Fairvue itself, however, remained under estate administration until 1869, when Adelicia purchased the 2,000-acre property outright from John Armfield, Franklin's nephew and the executor of his estate, securing permanent ownership amid ongoing family and legal entanglements.[20]Joseph Acklen, a former lawyer who relocated from Louisiana to Tennessee upon marriage, assumed active management of the plantations, relinquishing his legal practice to oversee operations across Tennessee and Louisiana.
The couple was married twenty years, spending most of their time at Belmont in Nashville. Her Louisiana estates, numbering six or seven plantations exceeding 8,700 acres in West Feliciana Parish, formed the core of production, supported by a workforce drawn from the family's total of approximately 750 enslaved people, placing the Acklens among the top ten largest slaveholders in the United States by 1860.[3]Joseph Acklen, Adelicia's second husband from 1849 until his death in 1863, directed day-to-day management, emphasizing structured oversight as detailed in his 1856 pamphlet "Rules in the Management of a Southern Estate," published in De Bow's Review, which prescribed routines for task allocation, discipline, and efficiency to maximize output from enslaved labor.
Later, married Doctor William Archer Cheatham (1820-1900), a physician and head of the State Insane Asylum whose father, Richard Cheatham (1799-1845), served as United States Representative from Tennessee from 1837 to 1839.
However, she soon grew dissatisfied with this marriage and moved to 1776 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, District of Columbia
In 1887, she sold the Belmont Mansion, which was later used for Ward–Belmont College, followed by Belmont University.
Cheatham also signed a prenuptial agreement. Three weeks after Robert E. Lee’s surrender in 1865, Acklen and her children left for Europe to retrieve the money made from this cotton sale.
In 1867 the fifty-year-old Acklen married Dr. William Archer Cheatham, a respected Nashville physician.