Franklin, Daughters of Confederacy both say they own land surrounding monument

Emily R. West | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption There Are Still More Than 700 Confederate Monuments In The U.S. In cities all over the U.S. efforts to remove Confederate era monuments is becoming common place.

FRANKLIN — A proposal to add new markers depicting African-American history to Franklin's public square has reopened a debate over who owns the land surrounding a Confederate monument there.

Franklin alderman unanimously voted to ask the court to determine the property's owner after a lawyer representing the Daughters of the Confederacy threatened to sue the city if anything new was placed on the square without the consent of the Civil War group.

Both the city and the Daughters of Confederacy Chapter 14 of Franklin said they own the land on the public square.

The statue was erected nearly 120 years ago. A judge ruled in a 1997 lawsuit that the Daughters of the Confederacy owned the monument and the ground underneath. However, the ruling did not include dimensions.

The markers, proposed earlier this month by faith leaders and local historians including the Battle of Franklin Trust, would depict African American history on the square and throughout Williamson County. The square served as a slave market in the 1840s.

More: Franklin files suit to figure out who owns land on public square

More: Daughters of Confederacy want say in African-American history markers on Franklin Square

More: Franklin faith leaders want markers next to Confederate monument

The monument

The Daughters of the Confederacy placed the Confederate soldier statue on the square in 1899 to remember those who died in the Battle of Franklin.

Dubbed "Chip" for a piece of marble missing from his hat, the soldier stands at rest.

The monument is 37 feet tall, according to a records from former county historian Virginia Bowman. The base of the structure is 6 feet, 6 inches tall.

Tennessee Gov. Benton McMillin was in attendance for the dedication, according to an 1899 article in The Nashville American recapping the event.

"The largest crowd that has been seen in Williamson's Capital since the war has been on its streets to-day," the article stated. "The business quarter and majority of residences were profusely decorated. Confederate flags fluttered from every high point, and the colors of the Confederacy, red and white, lent color to every avenue leading to the Public Square."

In the 1980s, the monument was depicted on Franklin Police Department patches, as a symbol of the city. The Confederate and Tennessee state flag were also used on the patch.

As part of a lawsuit from 1997, Bowman, the county historian at the time, said the statue was never put up with "any racially discriminatory intent or motive."

The property

Minutes from the Williamson County quarterly court of 1899 said the Daughters of the Confederacy own the piece of land underneath the monument.

But throughout the years, the square has been developed into the roundabout it is today.

In 1990, architects updated the land around the square.Franklin later spent money on beautification of the public square in the 1990s during the Main Street revitalization project, known as Streetscape.

In 1997, a local ruling from Middle Tennessee District Court Judge Trice Nixon ruled that a piece of property on the Franklin square belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy.

"The city doesn't own the monument or the land on which it sits," Judge Nixon wrote in the ruling. However, no dimensions for the land were given in the ruling.

Daughters of the Confederacy attorney Douglas Jones said that ruling proves they own the public square.

However, the ruling's ambiguity has left Franklin leaders puzzled over the last decade. In 2010, city officials reached an agreement with the Daughters of the Confederacy for the monument's upkeep.

"There is not a deed," then-Mayor John Schroer said in 2010. "It is on city property. There are certainly some questions about ownership, but that is not really relevant. This is an important piece of the city of Franklin. They might have gifted it to the city. They don't know."

Property Assessor Brad Coleman added that the Daughters of the Confederacy don't pay property taxes for the land.

"No one pays taxes on this property," Coleman said. "The way that we have the square set up, we don’t have a separate parcel for the square. It was dedicated as open space previously. Typically with all of our open space properties we don’t have a value."

Franklin City Administrator Eric Stuckey said he contended that the public square was public right-of-way because of the intersection of two state highways.

The proposal

Earlier this month, a group of faith leaders and local historians proposed to adding four historical markers to the land around the monument.

Two markers would address the historical significance of the Williamson County Courthouse and Market House, where African-Americans were sold as slaves. Prior to the Civil War, around 12,000 slaves resided in the county.

One would discuss the Franklin riot of 1867, where political groups clashed and one man was killed and at least 27 members of the members of the Colored League were wounded. The last of the markers would address the Jim Crow Era and Reconstruction in Williamson County.

The markers would be next to the steps onto the public square.

This week, aldermen deferred support for the markers. They plan to revisit the issue at their meeting on Sept. 25.

Faith and historical leaders would also like to add a statue recognizing the U.S. Colored Troops from Williamson County who served in the Civil War. A location for that statue hasn't been identified.

The group wants to have the markers up by 2019 and unveil them on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Franklin history: Woman uncovers slaves turned soldiers

Reach Emily West at erwest@tennessean.com; at 615-613-1380; or on Twitter at @emwest22.