{"id":2021,"slug":"carnton-franklin-tennessee","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Carnton is the house that became a hospital and never stopped being one. Randal McGavock built the Greek Revival plantation in 1826; his son John ran it with 44 enslaved people and 700 acres. On the evening of November 30, 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee made its frontal assault on Franklin — larger than Pickett's Charge, fought mostly in the dark, 9,500 casualties in five hours, nearly 7,000 of them Southern — and Carnton became the largest field hospital in the area. The McGavocks' children's bedroom became an operating room; the bloodstains are still in the floors.","The morning after, four Confederate generals — Cleburne, Granbury, Adams, Strahl — lay dead on the back porch, and 150 men had died in the house that first night. In 1866 John and Carrie McGavock gave two acres beside their family cemetery for the reburial of nearly 1,500 Confederate dead whose wooden battlefield markers were fading — the largest privately owned military cemetery in the nation, tended by the family until their deaths.","The legend keeps its register — Carrie McGavock, 'the Widow of the South,' reportedly still tending the wounded; soldiers in the rooms where the surgeons worked; the generals on the porch. The file holds the house's own testimony: the blood in the floorboards that no restoration removed, the cemetery the family dug themselves, and the five hours that turned a plantation into a permanent field hospital.","Carnton is the archive's field-hospital file — the McGavock plantation where the Battle of Franklin's wounded filled the children's bedroom, four generals lay on the porch, and 1,500 Confederates were reburied in the family cemetery."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Carnton is the archive's blood-in-the-floor file — the plantation house that became Franklin's largest field hospital, its floors still stained, its cemetery the largest private military burial ground in America, tended by the Widow of the South.","A house that kept its blood keeps its wounded — the file's suggestion being that Carnton's hold is the stain: the floors that never came clean, the porch where the generals lay, and the cemetery the family made from their own fields."]}],"name":"Carnton","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","type_label":"Historic House","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","BATTLEFIELD","HISTORIC_HOUSE"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"Plantation house turned field hospital—bloodstains remain on the floors.","full_desc":"A historic house in Franklin, Tennessee, built in 1826, Carnton is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Plantation house turned field hospital—bloodstains remain on the floors. HauntHunt files it with dark history, battlefields and historic houses. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Franklin","county":null,"state":"Tennessee","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":35.9036,"lon":-86.8587,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1826,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1237,"type":"REPORTED_ANOMALIES","description":"Staff and visitors report voices, footsteps and figures in the house and cemetery. A house with Franklin's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. The reports are anecdotal — consistent enough to record, thin enough to stay unproven. The account appears in 'Carnton'. The pattern of small anomalies is itself the claim — none dramatic alone, persistent together.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Carnton","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnton","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"On November 30, 1864 the house became a field hospital; four generals’ bodies were laid on the porch and bloodstains remain on the floors. The record dates it to 1864-11-30. The house's past is on record — this entry belongs to the verified layer of the site's file. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'Carnton' carry the record. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1864-11-30","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Carnton","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnton","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Field hospital","type":"WAR","date_start":"1864-11-30","date_end":null,"description":"As the Battle of Franklin raged on November 30, 1864, Carnton became the largest Confederate field hospital on the field — 300 wounded filling every room while the McGavock family gave over their home. Four Confederate generals' bodies were laid out on the back porch; the bloodstains on the floorboards are still visible — literally.","evidence":"WAR","source":{"name":"Carnton","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnton","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic house museum or private residence; verify tour availability before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Carnton","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnton","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Carnton","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnton","desc":"Historic house in Tennessee, United States","extract":"Carnton is a historic plantation home built in 1826 in Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. The property, comprising 1,420 acres (5.7 km2), played an important role during and immediately after the Battle of Franklin during the American Civil War. Carnton was situated less than one mile (1.6 km) from the location of the 1864 battle's Union Army eastern flank, and it became the principal temporary field hospital for tending the wounded. More than 1,750 Confederate soldiers lost their lives at Franklin, and on Carnton's back porch four deceased Confederate generals' bodies were laid out for a few hours after the battle. The life of Carrie McGavock, who lived at Carnton during","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Carnton_Front_Exterior.jpg/330px-Carnton_Front_Exterior.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":108,"lat":35.90309,"lon":-86.85834},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}