Nashville History Corner

Adelicia Acklen and her troubled marriage to Dr. William Archer Cheatham

BY RIDLEY WILLS II

On a June evening in 1867, Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen married Dr. William Archer Cheatham, a physician descended from the prominent Cheatham and Washington families of Robertson County and a well educated and refined gentleman.

The brilliant reception, which was said to cost $10,000, was held at Belle Monte, Adelicia’s magnificent estate two miles south of Nashville. Fifteen hundred people attended the event. The bride, one of the richest women in the South, was 50 years old. She was dressed in a gown of heavy white silk with a veil of Brussels point lace flowing over her shoulders, a coronet given her by the Emperor and Empress of France, and a diamond clasp fastening the girdle encircling her waist. Standing next to Adelicia in the receiving line was her bridegroom wearing a black suit with a white waistcoat and tie. Three years younger than Adelicia, Dr. Cheatham was a widower with two young children. His first wife, the former Mary Ready, died April 27, 1864, of “rheumatism of the heart and painful spells.” Her sister, Martha, was married to the famous Confederate cavalry general John Hunt Morgan, who would be killed in Greeneville, Tenn., the following September.

From 1852 until June 1862, Dr. Cheatham’s leadership as CEO had improved the state asylum for the insane on the Murfreesboro Pike to point that it was considered one of the leading such institutions in the country. This ended on July 25, 1862, when Military Governor Andrew Johnson told Dr. Cheatham of his dismissal as superintendent. Cheatham was subsequently arrested, charged with treason and committed to the state penitentiary. After he was quickly pardoned because of his wife’s ill health, he was replaced as superintendent of the insane asylum by a Dr. Jones. Dr. Cheatham then entered private practice in Nashville, where he was considered the city's leading physician.

In the spring of 1863, a federal police chief accused Dr. and Mrs. Cheatham of housing a spy from General Morgan who, dressed in a Union uniform, was gathering information on the location of Union stores and Union troops in Nashville. Dr. and Mrs. Cheatham were convicted and ordered by General W. S. Rosecrans to be sent to Alton, Illinois federal prison, where they were to be confined until the end of the war, Dr. and Mrs. Cheatham got as far as Loiuisvlle where Mary Cheatham was so sick she could not travel further. Accordingly, they were put under house arrest in a Louisville hotel, where she was examined by a Union-approved physician. He confirmed that, where the Cheathems were to be sent on to Alton, it would endanger her life. Allowed to return to Nashville, Mary Cheatham lived for only 10 months. Dr. Cheatham and his children had to deal with a new way of life.

People have speculated on why Adelicia married Dr. Cheatham. A simple answer is that she needed a new consort. After her return from a trip to Europe, where she bought additional works of art for Belle Monte, Nashvillians realized that she and Dr. Cheatham were seeing each other. By the spring of 1867, it was common knowledge that they would marry. They shared a strong common interest in horticulture, greenhouses, fine paintings and sculpture. Dr. Cheatham had encouraged patients at the asylum who were able to do so to raise crops on asylum land and to cultivate flowers in greenhouses he had built. At this time, these were progressive steps proved helpful to the inmates.

The day before Presbyterian minister married Adelicia and Dr. Cheatham, they signed a prenuptial agreement conveying all her property in Tennessee, Louisiana and New York and a vast amount of jewelry, furniture, plate and paintings to George W. Shields, her brother-in-law. The contract gave Adelicia the right, at any time during her marriage to Dr. Cheatham, to sell and convey any of the property, and to invest and reinvest it. In the contract, Dr. Cheatham renounced his right to any community interest in her property.

After their auspicious wedding, Adelicias and Dr. Cheatham settled down at Belle Monte with her son Willie and her two little girls, Pauline and Claude. Cheatham’s daughter Mattie was then staying with her Ready grandfather in Murfreesboro. In the fall of 1868, Mattie was sent to Patapsco Boarding School in Maryland. Her brothers, Joseph and Richard remained at Belle Monte.

Adelicia and Dr. Cheatham spent the winter of 1868-69 in Louisiana, part of the time at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans and other times on her plantations in West Felicia Parrish. They returned to Belle Monte in the spring.

Until 1870, Adelicia’s son, Joseph had managed her properties in Louisiana, Tennessee and New York. That April Adelicia asked him to resign as trustee in favor of her husband, Willliam A. Cheatham. That materialized on April 19, 1870, in Davidson County’s Chancery Court. Dr. Cheatham was ordered to report to the court on Oct. 10 each year on his activities. Cheatham visited the Louisiana plantations in November 1871, and in January and April 1872.

In December 1871, Aelicia and Dr. Cheatham appeared before Chancellor E. E. East to receive the report of the clerk and master relative to the amount of compensation Dr. Cheatham should receive as trustee. After examining Cheatham’s report as well as the deposition of George Shields, the clerk and master decreed that Dr. Cheatham be paid $2,500 per annum, considerably less than the $4,000 that Shields had received.

Inconsistently, the clerk and master stated that Dr. Cheatham had performed his services as trustee, “in a prudent and judicious manner.”

Five months later, Adelicia and Dr. Cheatham petitioned the court to accept the resignation of Dr. Cheatham as trustee and re-appoint Shields. No explanation was offered and the court approved the petition. We don’t know if Dr. Cheatham exercised more control over Adelicia’s properties than she liked or spent too lavishly. The latter seems doubtful as Dr. Cheatham had never lived or spent extravagantly. It may be that he found the work demanding, the travel so strenuous, and his compensation so meager that he simply decided to return to the practice of medicine in Nashville full time.

Mattie Cheatham who liked her stepmother, Adelicia, traveled to New Orleans in December 1871, where she boarded and studied with Madame L. E. Cenas. Her letters indicate that theirs was a harmonious family with one exception. There was animosity between Mattie and her stepbrother, Willie, who wanted to be the center of his mother’s attention, not Mattie.

Mattie solved the problem when she married a young lawyer Thomas S. Weaver at Belle Monte on May 21,1872.

For the rest of the decade and well into the 1880s, Adelicia pursued an active social life and traveled extensively. Dr. Cheatham’s residence continued to be listed “in the country” in the Nashville City Directory. He appeared to enjoy living at what was then called Belmont and co-hosting his wife’s elaborate parties. He also enjoyed practicing medicine. In 1874, he was listed in the City Directory as a partner in Lillard and Co., which dealt in drugs and medicine.

The situation changed in 1885 when Adelicia moved to Washington, D.C. with her daughter Pauline. Dr Cheatham did not go, preferring to practice medicine in Nashville. He continued to live in Belmont until 1986 when he moved to the Maxwell House, realizing that Adelicia intended to sell Belmont. She did so on Jan. 1, 1887, when she sold the mansion and 78 acres to Lewis T. Baxter for $54,000. She also sold Baxter all her other Nashville properties except for the house on Cherry Street where she and Joseph A. H. Acklen lived until they moved to Belle Monte.

Earlier in 1880, Adelicia sold her Angola Plantation in Louisiana to W. L. Jones, a former Confederate officer, for $100,000. He quickly leased hundreds of Louisiana State prisoners, mostly incarcerated Black men who were serving life sentences, to labor in his cotton fields.

In 1902, he sold Angola to the State of Louisiana, who owns the farm today where it has long been known as the Alcatraz of the South. It is not known if Adelicia knew what Jones intended to do with her plantation.

In Washington, Adelicia, who became 70 years old on March 15, 1887, began building a house at 1776 Massachusetts Avenue. She and Pauline traveled to New York in late April to buy furnishings for it. In March inclement weather caused Adelicia to become ill. A little later, on May 4, 1887, she died of pneumonia.

After Dr. Jere Witherspoon preached at her funeral at Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church, and she was buried in a handsome Gothic mausoleum in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. She had built the mausoleum in 1884 at a cost of $11,000. Before her death, Adelicia requested that her deceased children be buried there along with her, Isaac Franklin and Joseph A. H. Acklen, her first two husbands. Her wishes were granted. Adelicia, anticipating that Dr. Cheatham would also want to be buried there, had stonemasons carved above the entrance to the mausoleum the letters F, A & C standing for the last names of her three husbands.

In her last will and testament, dated Jan. 22,1884, Adelicia left the bulk of her estate to three children, William H., Claude A, and Pauline Acklen. She had already settled with her son, Joseph A H. Acklen Jr. in 1874, leaving him an 150-acre farm named Montvale, close to Belmont. Despite leaving nothing to her third husband, Dr. Cheatham, he did not contest the will.

On April 29, 1887, just days before her death, Adelicia executed in New York City a codicil bequeathing to her daughter Pauline, the house and furnishings on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, along with the funds to complete and furnish it.

Joseph A. H. Acklen Jr. did contest his mother’s will. He settled out of court for $46,000 in cash and a nullification of three promissory notes he owed his mother.

Dr. Cheatham remained healthy, practicing medicine with his son Richard and boarding downtown. In 1889, he moved to live with his daughter Martha and her husband, Thomas S. Weaver at their home, Seven Oaks, five miles from town on the Murfreesboro Pike, only a mile from the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane. Unlike Adelicia, he did not leave a will, which indicated that his estate was small. But he did make a significant contribution to the life of his community as a physician and as a public servant. He died June 9, 1900, at the age of 79. He chose to be buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery beside his first wife Mary Ready Cheatham.

Dr. Cheatham, who was my deceased wife, Irene’s great, great grandfather, considered his greatest achievement to have been the 10 productive years he spent as superintendent of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane.