Andrew Jackson lived from time to time here, but mostly during his Presidency he was in Washington whereas his wife Rachel died shortly before Jackson’s Inauguration as President in 1829. There had been a major controversy over his marriage to Rachel— was she a bigamist? She had been previously married, and there was an issue about whether she had been properly divorced or not. Rachel thought her first husband from Nashville had secured the proper divorce papers, and so she... Read more
A recent article in the NY Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/opinion/poetry-christianity-faith.html) by Tish Warren, an Anglican priest, has an interesting dialogue with her former poetry teacher…. Here’s a helpful excerpt… Your next book is about the connection between faith and poetry, and you have quoted the poet and former head of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia, saying, “It is impossible to understand the full glory of Christianity without understanding its poetry.” What does that mean to you? There’s poetry all over... Read more
Unlike, for instance The Belmont Mansion, the Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson, sits on hundreds of acres to this very day. Jackson who was from N.C. was hero of the battle of New Orleans in 1812 who helped the U.S. win the second war against the British. But he was also the man who killed off many Indians, such as the Creek, and deported the Cherokee from N.C. on the trail of tears to Oklahoma. On top of... Read more
At Belmont University in Nashville there is an historic mansion which is perhaps one of the most ornate 19th centuries houses I’ve ever seen in America. But it also has an interesting history. This was the largest house in Tennessee and was built between 1849 and 1860, just before the Civil War. When the Union Army showed up in Nashville it used this mansion as a headquarters and lookout point by climbing up to the cupola and spying out the... Read more
In the basement of Nashville’s Parthenon is a small art museum with some nice landscapes, still lifes, and one painting by Winslow Homer, the most famous American artist included in the gallery. Here are some examples starting with Winslow Homer…. Here’s an interesting and atypical European painting of a woman … This very fine painting from Venice is by an unknown artist. Read more
There were reports the day we visited the Parthenon in Nashville (constructed to give that city a reason to call itself the Athens of the South) that the Parthenon in Athens had been shut down due to extreme heat because people were passing out on the top. It could not have been more hot and humid than at the Parthenon in Nashville— 100F in the shade with high humidity. Yikes! This Parthenon was first constructed in 1897 for the Exposition... Read more
Before the age of the auto, carriages were all the rage in the East and South. And some companies made a fortune off of designing various kinds, often modelled on British carriages, including royal ones…. so not surprisingly, since rich Americans like to imitate British royalty… we find the Victoria— modelled on Queen Victoria’s own fancy carriage…. My personal favorite is the pie wagon! Some of these buggies were fancy enough to have brakes…. In the winter one wanted a... Read more
Belle Meade Mansion is a very interesting place to visit if you like late 19th century mansions and want to see how the other half lived. What set’s this house apart is that unlike nearby mansions where they grew crops like cotton, this was a house with a major horse farm, where people would come from miles away to appraise and buy horses. And of course one of the things you do when you are horse people is you show... Read more
You never know what you will find at a gift shop, in this case at Belle Meade Mansion in Nashville. For instance, how about a cello wine rack? Or some towel wisdom? Ah yes, Southern gift shops, where all things tacky go to die. Read more
Kevin Belmonte, A Journey Through the Life of William Wilberforce, (New Leaf Press, 2007), 122 pp. Kevin Belmonte has made a writing career out of doing biographies of famous Evangelical and Catholic figures of various eras including Dwight L. Moody, A.J. Gordon, G.K. Chesterton, John Bunyan, and two biographies of William Wilberforce. In this post I am dealing with the smaller Wilberforce book, that accompanied the release of the movie about John Newton. For a movie basically aimed... Read more
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