John McGavock

John McGavock was a Tennessee planter who inherited Carnton, the family estate near Franklin, and married Carrie Winder in 1848. By the eve of the Civil War the household controlled a large agricultural property worked by enslaved people, although McGavock himself was reportedly sceptical of secession and did not serve in the Confederate army.

After the Battle of Franklin in November 1864 Carnton became a major field hospital for Confederate wounded. John and Carrie later provided land for the reburial of nearly 1,500 Confederate dead and helped maintain the cemetery beside their home for the rest of their lives.

In Robert Hicks’ The Widow of the South, Carrie McGavock’s home at Carnton is taken over as a Confederate field hospital when John Bell Hood sends the Army of Tennessee against entrenched Union troops.