Tennessee, Sumner County, Castalian Springs
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Revolutionary War veteran Major William Hall settled in this area in 1785 and built a station, 1 1/4 miles northeast. He and two sons were massacred a few years later. Born in North Carolina in 1775, General William Hall, his son, served in the Indian Wars of 1787-95, the War of 1812, and as governor, state legislator, and U.S. Congressman. He died in 1856 and is buried with his father near Hall's Station.
(War, French and Indian) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Revolutionary War veteran Major William Hall settled in this area in 1785 and built a station, 1 1/4 miles northeast. He and two sons were massacred a few years later. Born in North Carolina in 1775, General William Hall, his son, served in the Indian Wars of 1787-95, the War of 1812, and as governor, state legislator, and U.S. Congressman. He died in 1856 and is buried with his father near Hall's Station.(War, French and Indian) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
1/10 mile N.W. is Bledsoe monument, marking gravesites of Revolutionary War veterans Anthony and brother Isaac, long hunters and early explorers in this area. Among early settlers in this region both were active in the civil and military life of the early south-west. About 200 yards west was is site of Isaac's fort, known Bledsoe's built in 1783,used by nearby families during Indian attacks. Both were slain by Indians in the fort vicinity.
The spring to the north was a rendezvous for salt-seeking game in the pre-pioneer days. First settlers came in 1779. In 1787, Isaac and Anthony Bledsoe and their families settled here. The two brothers were killed by Indians and are buried in the family plot 500 yards northwest. Bledsoe Female Academy also near here.
This is the home of four brothers who served in the Confederate army, as did many of Sumner County’s young men. Their father, William F. Clark, a Protestant minister, died in 1847 at the age of forty-one, leaving his wife, Emma Douglass Clark, to rear the boys. Emma Clark, the daughter of Reuben and Elizabeth Edwards Douglass, was the granddaughter of Col. Edward and Sarah George Douglass who came to Sumner County in the late 1700s. 
Among the first ex-slaves in the Union Army were 200 local volunteers who enlisted here on the Public Square in July, 1863. They became a part of the Thirteenth United States Colored Infantry at Nashville. Two months later the army recruited additional ex-slaves at Gallatin, Nashville, and Murfreesboro to form the Fourteenth Colored Infantry here.
Col. Alfred Royal Wynne (1800-1893) was as trader and merchant in Castalian Springs. In 1828, he built this stagecoach inn along the Knoxville road. Although Wynne was a slaveholder and a Democrat, he also was a staunch Unionist and strongly opposed secession. When Tennessee left the Union, however, Wynne ended his former allegiance and supported the Confederacy.
Cragfont was the home of Confederate Maj. George W. Winchester (1822-1878), his mother, Susan Winchester, his wife, Malvina H. Gaines, and their children. Their surviving letters and diaries describe life during Union occupation.
On the morning of December 7, 1862, the Confederates attacked the Union garrison camped on a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River two miles south of here. Under cover of darkness and falling snow, Morgan and 1,300 men had crossed the icy Cumberland River the night before. In what has been called “the most successful cavalry raid of the Civil War,” Morgan captured almost 1,800 soldiers, two cannons, and wagons full of much-needed supplies after a brief two-hour long battle.
William Brimage Bate was born here in 1826, and during the Civil War he rose to the rank of major general. He left home at the age of sixteen to be a clerk on a steamboat. During the Mexican War, he served as a lieutenant, then became a journalist, a lawyer, and a state legislature. As the Civil War approached, he raised a militia company in Castalian Springs and was soon elected colonel of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry. Arriving in Virginia with his regiment in time for the First Battle of Manassas, he captured a Congressman from New York who had come out to see the action. In February 1862, he and his men reenlisted and returned to Tennessee. In the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, he received a severe leg wound that incapacitated him for several months. Commissioned brigadier general in October 1862 and major general in February 1864, he led a brigade and then a division in the Army of Tennessee in all of the major battles in the western theater, including Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, and Nashville. Bate declined the offer of a nomination for Tennessee governor, saying “I would feel dishonored in this hour of trial to quit the field”---a commitment to duty that voters later remembered. Bate surrendered with his old regiment at Greensboro, North Carolina, in April 1865.
The historic Training school for Negroes was constructed in 1926 with $2,500 required donations from the Milan Negro citizens, $16,000 of public school funds, and $1,500 from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Tuskegee Institute Principal Booker T. Washington and Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald had partnered to help build public schools for southern Negro students. The building was a six teacher Rosenwald Fund plan with four large classrooms, office, industrial training room, and auditorium with bathrooms for grades 1-10. The 11th grade was added in 1928 and 12th grade in 1929. Gibson County Training School's first graduating class in May 1930 had Negro students from Milan and surrounding towns. Additions to the original building included; North wing in 1942, 1953, and by 1961; South wing 1942 and 1958; gymnasium 1951; 1955; building trades room 1960; band room 1964; and southeast wing in 1967 including a 15 acre parcel. Gibson County Training School was renamed Polk - Clark High School in 1961 and the last high school graduation was in May 1970. From August 1970 - February 1996, Polk - Clark School housed all Milan K - 2 elementary students. The GCTS / Polk - Clark High School Alumni Association, Inc. (chartered in October 1995) represents all former educators, students, graduates, and their heirs. On August 2, 1996, the Milan City Board Deeded the building and land to the GCTS / PCHS Alumni Association, Inc. The Association charted The Milan Polk - Clark Enrichment Center on April 1, 1998. On March 12, 2012, Gibson County Training School was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by The National Park Service of the U. S. Department of Interior.
Attacking the Federal 39th, (DuMont's) Brigade from south & west, a task force of 1300 cavalry & infantry under Maj. Gen. John Hunt Morgan, in a running fight, killed, wounded, or captured 2200 men. Confederate losses were 125 killed or wounded. Morgan withdrew south with booty on prisoners, beating off pursuit from Castalian Springs.
In Memory Of
Restored by the Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society and Museum, assisted by Beta Alpha Tau Honor Society-CCBC-Dundalk and B & B Welding Company.
