Belle Meade Investigation
This blog post was written by Whitney Dankemeyer. Two Halves and Nicole would also like to explain that the purpose of this tour and investigation is the history of the slaves who resided at Belle Meade. We tried to keep it as brief as possible when explaining the history of the Harding family throughout this story as this blog post is solely about the slaves’ journey to freedom.
The Harding family was one of the wealthiest families of their time. Not only did they have an incredibly successful Thoroughbred stud business, they also had an operational Dairy and Engine house on their property by 1884. It all began in February 1807, after John Harding purchased 250 acres of land in Richland Creek (only several miles from Nashville). On this land, he built a two-story brick home that he later named Belle Meade (Beautiful Meadow). This mansion underwent countless renovations throughout the next fifty years, including adding an additional two stories, carriage house, and extra stables to display their racing silks.
Their stunning collection of stallions wasn’t the only factor that displayed their wealth. In Davidson County, William Giles Harding (John Harding’s son) is on the record for owning 136 slaves. As a man in the top 4.5% of slave-holding families, he owned 33 women, 41 men, and 62 children (all under the age of 10-years-old). The first three slaves to reside at Belle Meade were three John brought with him: Ben, purchased in Richmond, VA; Dicey, purchased from his father, and Patrick, inherited.
To put this into a little more perspective for you, less than 1% of slave owners owned more than 100 slaves. The Harding family had 136 slaves, and they lived in 28 houses across the property. Each family consisted of 3-10 people and would have to share a single room together. Some would sleep in the dirt with blankets, others would sleep on mattresses (filled with barley straw or wheat) in actual bed frames.
Before emancipation, slaves were responsible for growing their own crops and raising their own chickens. They planted and grew all of their crops besides their homes, despite the fact that Belle Meade was already divided up into pastures, woods, and fields of crops. In fact, 19% of the plantation was used for growing crops. The enslaved would grow potatoes, onions, and a variety of grains, such as: wheat, corn, and hay.
It is unknown how the Harding family treated their slaves, but Archaeologists did discover plates, cups, nails, and buttons from the 1850s on property. There were fragments of inexpensive crockery, but expensive ceramics were also present. It is believed the Harding family gave hand-me-down plateware to their enslaved guests, even though the furniture in the cabins seemed to be handcrafted by the slaves themselves.
The enslaved would do manual labor on the property at Belle Meade. Men were typically the dairymen, herdsmen, and farmers. The women at Belle Meade would work beside them, usually plowing and aiding with crops. The remaining women would work as servants in the home, where they were responsible for cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and tending to the Jersey Cows. In the slaves’ contracts with William Harding, the Belle Meade servants were promised fuel, quarters, sufficient rations of food, and pay. Their rations consisted of half a pound of bacon and 5 cups of corn meal daily for the whole family. The children were responsible for keeping flies off the table, collecting eggs from chickens, and polishing the family’s shoes. When they were 12-years-old, they joined the men in the fields.
In January of 1865, the 13th amendment was passed and by the end of the year had ended slavery for the whole United States. In the same year, the Civil War ended after General Lee’s surrender on April 10th. At this point, all of the 136 slaves on the Belle Meade property were given their right to freedom. While most of the slaves left, there were still 15 slaves living on their land by 1870. A lot of the slaves actually continued to work at Belle Meade, they just lived off the property. However, by 1880, there were no more African Americans working for the Harding family. In 1902, the Harding family suffered numerous deaths and debt on their estate, and they eventually sold both the stud business and their property.
In present time, Belle Meade is now a Historic Site and Winery that offers tours of the mansion and property. While they offer tours of the mansion and provide the history of the Harding family, Two Halves and Nicole suggest taking the “Journey to Jubilee” tour instead. This tour dives into the African Americans brought to and born at Belle Meade starting from 1807 until emancipation. The Belle Meade staff even underwent intensive training about African American history and dedicated a whole page on their official website to all of the slaves. There you can read about each one of the slave’s lives. (You can find the link to that specific page at the end of this post.)
In terms of paranormal activity, it is said there are plantation workers that can be seen at dusk. They are known to wander the property, and it is unknown whether or not they can be interacted with. You may also hear cries from the upstairs bedroom, followed by footsteps on the staircase. We believe the paranormal activity inside of the house could be the Harding family.
We arrived at Belle Meade around 10:00 am on Friday, April 28, 2023. Our tour began at 10:30 am, and we were advised to meet at the stables. We started the tour there, but a majority of the tour was outside. We walked around the home and stopped in front of the cabins the slaves lived in. Once we were educated on their lifestyle, we were given the opportunity to walk through their cabins ourselves.
We were shown a few other places around the property, such as the smokehouse and the greenhouse, but we finished the tour in one of the rooms off the right side of the mansion. This room was a form of breezeway, and unfortunately, we were unable to bring our cameras inside. In fact, we didn’t bring any equipment with us for this investigation at all. All we had was the iOvilus that we used while on the tour and when we were granted access to wander the property afterwards.
As said earlier, the paranormal activity at Belle Meade consists of plantation workers who are seen at dusk. We were not given the option to perform a dusk investigation, so we knew ahead of time we would be investigating earlier in the day. We didn’t get any words while we were with the group and tour guide (not surprised), and we did not actually start picking up on any words until we split off into our little group of three.
The first words we received were at the greenhouse. The iOvilus said “Way, Mark, This.” We interpreted this response as Mark telling us to follow him in a particular direction. The path we were already following was leading us to the Harding Mausoleum, so we believe Mark wanted to take us there. When we did research post investigation, we discovered a Marcus Harding under the African American Studies page on Belle Meade’s website. The iOvilus only has a 2,000 word word-bank, so it’s possible Marcus couldn’t find his name in the word-bank and used the next closest name to his he could find. There was no Mark or Marcus at the Mausoleum, so we are also unsure why Marcus Harding had the same last name as the rest of the Harding family.
As we approached the Mausoleum, the iOvilus said “Kept, Cousin.” Did Marcus have a cousin that also lived here? Belle Meade slave families did consist of 3-10, so it could very well be that Marcus has a cousin who also resided here.
Once at and peering into the Harding Mausoleum, the iOvilus spitfired “Hope, Gouge, Rock.” The Mausoleum did appear to be made of stone, so we believe this response was correlated to that. The other two words (and final words) we received were “Agent, Digital.” They were letting us know they were aware we were communicating through an electronic device. This also told us they were intelligent.
We were overall surprised with how well the spirits were able to communicate at such an early hour. We can only imagine how easily they would be able to interact at dusk. Not only would they be able to communicate via device, but it’s very possible they would be able to show themselves as well. Although we were unable to stick around to see that aspect of paranormal activity, we do believe spirits reside at Belle Meade.
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