Elm Springs is a Greek revival mansion built in 1837 by Maury County’s master builder, Nathan Vaught.  It faces the Mooresville Pike, which was the old stage road from Franklin to Pulaski.  The name Elm Springs comes from the number of springs on the original farm.  At each spring, an elm tree had been planted.  Also, at one time an avenue of Elms extended from the house to the road.  Dutch Elm disease has killed most of these trees in recent decades.  The four Doric columns across the front of the house are unfluted.  They are made of rounded brick covered with plaster.  A number of bullet holes may still be found, reminders of Civil War Skirmishes that took place uncomfortably close to the house.  The house retains its original interior features, including original mantels, the broad main staircase, rear service stairs, pocket doors and other trim.  Most of the floors in the house are original, made of poplar.  Some of the furniture in the house today is original to the Looney family, such as the rectangular, marble-topped “petticoat table.”

 

James Dick had Elm Springs built as a gift for his only sister, Sarah, on 1837.  James and his brother, Nathaniel both or Ireland, had established a lucrative brokerage business in New Orleans by the name of N & J Dick Company which flourished and both amassed great fortunes after relocating to Louisiana in about 1809.  James Dick, a bachelor, had traveled in Europe, and it is said that he had Elm Springs built to the same specifications as one particular Italian Villa that he had admired.  Never to settle for half measures, after he built the house for Sarah, he had all fourteen rooms furnished with the finest imported pieces a healthy and generous purse could buy.  Sarah & her children inherited much of James Dick’s wealth when he died.  She was married to Christopher Todd who had settled in Maury County about 1827 and was a native of Virginia where they had married when Sarah was 23.  Christopher was born 1781,  Sarah in 1784 and had the following children:  Margaret G., Mary R., Ann Jane, Bernard, Sarah D., James Dick, and Susan K.  By the time of the 1836 tax list Christopher Todd owned 208 acres, 4 slaves, and had a $300 carriage.  Active in public life, Todd will be found as a subscriber to Jackson College in 1843, one of the underwriters for the construction of a new Presbyterian Church in 1848, and a charter member of the Duck River Slackwater Navigation Company.  They had four daughters and one son, who died at age 21 and was the first person buried in the small family cemetery near the house.  Six of the Todd grandchildren were living here in 1850.  The boys were attending Jackson College. A granddaughter, Eliza Calhoun, had graduated from the Columbia Institute in 1844.  After Sarah Todd’s death in 1853, one of the daughters, Susan, who had married Abram McClelland Looney, and her family came to live at Elm Springs to live with her father who died in 1868.

From this time on, the house was identified with the Looneys. The Looney family were Christians of the Presbyterian faith.  Abram Looney was a prominent local attorney, a gifted and eloquent speaker, a member of the State Senate, and also a horticulturist.   He was once selected to make a nominating speech for Isham G. Harris’ re-election to the U. S. Senate.  At this time Looney was in the state legislature, which chose our U.S. Senators.  (The people of Tennessee were not able to vote in senatorial races until a new law was passed in 1913.)  His stirring & enthusiastic speech assured the Harris election and was delivered without any notes.  Later he said he had not known what he was going to say until he began talking.  He was very active in the Democratic party and was a delegate to the Chicago National Convention which nominated Grover Cleveland in 1884.  Col. Looney died in 1904 at the age of 84.  When the Civil War began, Abram Looney became a captain in Company H., 1^st Tennessee Infantry—The Maury Grays and was later promoted to Colonel & kept a diary of his experiences.

 

     The painting is entitled “Defending Elm Springs” by artist Marvin Stalnaker was commissioned y the SCV to depict the events of November 27, 1864.  The Federal troops occupying Columbia were anticipating a great battle with Confederate General John B. Hood’s rapidly approaching army from Florence, Al. as the line of battle was to extend from the Mooresville Pike to the Pulaski, to the Campbellsville and Mt. Pleasant Pikes, all large structures along this line had to be removed, and the quickest way was by fire.  It was considered a “military necessity”.  Many fine homes were burned that day.  Some fine homes were burned that day- Col. Trotter, John G. Hughes, W. S. Fleming, Col. William A. Sanford, and Peter R. Booker’s.  Elm Springs was also on the list, and in the thick of some skirmishing, a Union soldier placed a lighted broom in a closet under the rear service stairwell.  Fortunately, a trusted female slave removed the burning broom before extensive damage could be done.  The Union soldiers had already stolen the furniture and fixtures for the house, but the family’s 18^th century silver service was hidden in a cistern on the property.  As this painting depicts, Mrs. Abram Looney appealed to General Frank C. Armstrong to protect the home from possible destruction, and he place soldiers here, making Elm Springs his headquarters.  The Looney’s 9^th child, a boy, was just a baby at this time, and family members say his mother took him out into the yard because of the great amount of smoke inside the house.  Mrs. Looney later traveled with this baby to the Confederate lines in Northern Alabama so that her husband could see this newest child, born in his absence.  The boy, named Edmund, grew to become a county judge in Maury County.  The other children were as follows:  Sara T., Elizabeth G., James D., Abraham M. II, Christopher T., Susan T. Mary L., and Anna Jane W.

 

            The hall closet beneath the back stairs is still charred in the back from the burning broom.  These stairs were used by the slaves and the children & are quite worn from all the foot traffic over the years.  It was the custom of the day for children to use the back stairs until they “came of age”.  One marked innovation for that day and time was the placement of a two story ell, or extension, at one end of the house rather than at the rear.  Instead of a separate smokehouse, meat was hung in a room on the upstairs floor of this ell to be simultaneously cured by the daily rising smoke from the kitchen below.  According to record, at one point during the war, Colonel Abram Looney returned home long enough to kill hogs and left 1600 pounds of meat for the family’s provision.

 

     The family at Elm Springs and the family of Fairmount just across Mooresville Pike were close friends and it is said that on still evenings they could call across to each other by only slightly raising their voices.  Elm Springs farmed commercial daffodils in the 1950’s shipping 1,500 dozen picked blooms to the Chicago market each year.  The farm had largely been grown in tobacco and had a dairy operation.