Dixona is a historic house in

Smith County, Tennessee Smith County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 19,166. Smith County is located in the region of the state known as Middle Tennessee. Its county seat is Carthage. The county was organized in ...

, near Dixon Springs. It is one of the oldest homes in

Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the s ...

. The house was built in 1787–88 by

Tilman Dixon Tilman is both a masculine given name and a surname. The German version of the surname is Tillmann. Other variants include Tillman and Dillman. Notable people with the name include: People with the given name * Tilman Fertitta (1957), Amer ...

, the Revolutionary War soldier who was Dixon Springs' first settler and namesake. His land holdings, received as a Revolutionary War land grant, totaled . In 1797,

Louis Philippe Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France. As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary War ...

, then Duke of Orleans and later King of France, stayed in Dixona together with his brothers, the

Duke of Montpensier The French lordship A lordship is a territory held by a lord. It was a landed estate that served as the lowest administrative and judicial unit in rural areas. It originated as a unit under the feudal system during the Middle Ages. In a lordshi ...

and Count of Beaujolais, during their travels in America. The house was Smith County's first

tavern A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern that h ...

and

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

; in 1799 it was used as the site for the county's first

county court A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more counties, which are administrative divisions (subnational entities) within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of ''county courts'' held by the high ...

meeting. The original house was an eight-room

log building Log buildings and structures can be categorized as historic and modern. A diverse selection of their forms and styles with examples of architectural elements is discussed in the following articles: *Log cabin – a rustic dwelling *Log house – a ...

. A major expansion in 1858 added a pair of

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

brick wings and

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

-style porches with columns, converting it to a two-story "piano box" and increasing its size to more than . The original log structure still forms the core of the house. Dixona was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1973. Since 2007, Dixona Farm, the tract on which Dixona is located, has been protected by a

conservation easement In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenant, conservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a "land trust") or gove ...

held by the Land Trust for Tennessee.

References

{{reflist

External links

Major Tilman Dixon, Patriot, Soldier, Explorer, and Pioneer
(Scott K. Williams, 1998)

Houses in Smith County, Tennessee Houses completed in 1788 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee 1788 establishments in North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Smith County, Tennessee

See also

References

External links