Sam Davis House – Smyrna, Tennessee
After seeing many signs on Highway 24 about the Sam Davis house and hearing about it at Cannonsburgh Village we had to check it out!
The drive up to the house is beautiful! You enter through stone wall gates.
Then drive up a tree lined driveway. (This is my dream driveway by the way!)
Then the trees break and you get a glimpse of the house.
The visitor center has a video explaining who Sam Davis is. In short Sam Davis is a Civil War hero. He was selected to run important documents during the civil war and was captured. They found the documents on him and tortured him to get info out of him and finally threatened him with death. He never told a single bit of info he knew and was later hanged as a spy because he refused to talk, at the age of just 21.
The little theater you sit in is just beautiful!
Then you get a tour of the house. We were one of the first tours of the day so it was just us! On the way out of the visitor center you come across a cotton gin. To see one up close was a treat you never really realize how BIG they really are until you see one in person.
On the outside we learned that the bricks used to build the house were made on site by the slaves of the property. You can tell they were made by hand because there is a footprint one of the brick on the chimney!
Another brick had a thumb or finger print.
The view from the front of porch is just as beautiful today as it was back when Sam Davis’s family lived here!
We visited in the ‘Month of Mourning’ We visited in October, which was the month Sam Davis was born. The house was set up how it was back when Sam Davis family was in mourning. Mirrors were covered and there was lots of black.
The first room we saw was the main sitting room, or formal sitting room, no children allowed!
When you walk in the entryway this show stopping stair case. The handrail was hand carved and it one continuous piece of wood.
Up this staircase was the boys room and the male guest room. One item seen in the boys room was this trunk with is ‘risque’ picture of a woman in it.
Heading to the back of the house you pass through mom and dad’s room to get to the dining room. Since the house was in grieving, they had one chair pulled out from the table with a black bow for the one who has passed.
Heading up the back set of stairs you enter the girls section of the upstairs, which is separate from the male section.
To get to the girls room you pass through grandma’s room which has one of the original quilts she had sewn on the bed.
Outside they have one of the outhouses displayed and the outdoor kitchen. In the kitchen they had one of the old pie shelf’s used for baking the pie along with other old cooking items. The tour guide explained how a lot of how it was used, which was great to talk about later with my kids when we made dinner about how different it is now.
Coming back from the tour we hit the museum, they have one of the only original pictures of Sam Davis. They keep it covered to preserve it.
They have a model of hose the property looked back in Sam Davis day.
There is a plaque that talks about the foot print and finger prints inside the bricks.
