Isaac Franklin’s Home “Fairvue”

This is the main house of Fairvue plantation near Gallatin, Tennessee, the home of Isaac Franklin, a co-partner of Franklin and Armfield, a prosperous slave-trading firm based in Alexandria.The original section of the house was built in 1832, and a south wing was added to the mansion in 1839, the year he married Adelicia Hayes Franklin. Fairvue, a working plantation of 2,000 acres, primarily dealt in cattle and horses. In a 1971 report, the Historic American Buildings Survey noted that "the estate originally included flower gardens, greenhouses, stables for breeding fine horses, a racetrack, granary, slavehouses, the [family] mausoleum, smokehouses and other less important structures, few of which remain." Franklin invested heavily in Louisiana plantations and made a vast fortune by using enslaved laborers.