Event: Christmas home tour, including home of former slave with ties to Limestone County.

Time: 1-4:45 p.m. Sunday, with concert at 5:15 p.m.

Place: Elkton, Tenn.

Tickets: $10 for adults; three for $25; children ages 15 and under admitted free with ticket holder. Available the day of the tour at the Elkton Community Room on Main Street or any tour location.

Map: Map provided with tickets or go online to www.elktonhistory.net for printable map.

For more information: Leave a message with the Elkton Historical Society at (931) 468-0674.





Slave home to be part of Christmas tour in Elkton





The home of a slave with ties to Limestone County will be part of Sunday’s annual Christmas home tour in Elkton, Tenn.

Matt Gardner was born into slavery in 1847, owned by a Limestone County merchant, bought land, built a homestead, launched the first school for blacks in Elkton and served as a minister and businessman.

A museum commemorating his life will open in September 2009. His house is one of six stops on the tour.

The event, which begins at 1 p.m. and ends at 4:45 p.m., shows visitors 200 years of architectural styles in southern Giles County. A fee concert of carols will follow the tour. The tour, hosted by the Elkton Historical Society and the City of Elkton, is the final celebration of the town’s 200th anniversary.



Dunmovin farm



The first stop on the tour is the Dunmovin farm at 9596 Bethel Road built in the late 1700s and bought by Robert and Angeta Andersen in the 1960s after he retired from the Air Force. Andersen named the property “Dunmovin” because after moving 20 times as a pilot, he decided he was done moving. The property includes a home and a cabin. Six front rooms were added to the house in the 1890s. The Andersens took about five years to renovate the property, including the dogtrot-style cabin. They used materials from area homes and buildings being torn down, such as the back stairs of the Hendrickson Funeral Home and bricks and slate from Giles County High School.



Liberty United Methodist Church



The second stop is Liberty United Methodist Church, built in 1845 of hand-hewn logs. The old log building was replaced in 1886 with a large frame building.



Gardner home



The third stop is the home of Gardner, who was born into slavery in 1847. In 1862, Limestone County merchant Richard Whitehead Vasser sold Gardner, his family and 74 other slaves to Richard C. Gardner, a Nashville merchant and Elkton plantation owner. After the Civil War, E.W. Copeland sold Gardner and John Dixon 106 acres. Gardner built his two-story saddlebag-style house in 1896 to display his prosperity and increasing prominence in the community.

As a black man in Giles County, Gardner owned nearly 300 acres of the most prime land located on and around the banks of the Elk River. He was one of the few African-Americans in Tennessee to build and sustain a large farming operation on land bought after the Civil War. When he died in 1943, more than 1,000 people of all races attended his funeral. The homestead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 and is scheduled to open as a museum in late 2009.



Miz Lossie’s house



The fourth and fifth stops on the tour are the Thompson home and the 1998 home of Charles and Carolyn Thompson, which was inspired by designer William E. Poole’s Miz Lossie’s House in Natchez, Miss. The home sits on a bluff overlooking the Elk River. The rear has tiered gardens with stone walls. The interior is of Georgian and Federal styles, featuring arches, columns and large Palladian windows.



Grigsby-Walden house



The sixth stop on the tour is the antebellum home of John and Melissa Walden. Built in 1840 as a one-story colonial called the Grigsby-Walden house, it featured three rooms, two halls and a front porch facing the Elk River. The square columns of the original front porch were left in place when the Grigsby family, who lived there for more than 100 years, added the second floor and porticos in 1895. Massive floor joists cut from single trees support the house. The servants cooked all of the food in the basement fireplace and sent it upstairs to the dining room in a dumb waiter. The deep baseboards throughout the house are original and the ceilings in the parlor, front foyer, hall on the second floor, and all the bedrooms are pressed tin. Most of the wood floors are original and nailed with hand-wrought square nails. The property has been home to two Tennessee state legislators who served prior to the Civil War, a physician who served with the South during the Civil War and was captured twice, several farmers, older residents and young professionals.



Elkton United Methodist Church



After the tour, a free carols concert will be held at 5:15 p.m. by Martin Methodist College Choir in Elkton United Methodist Church. The iconic building looks just as it did when it was built in 1917 replacing an earlier log structure, which stood just across the street. Visitors will see the rotunda, original woodwork throughout and 57 stained-glass windows. The concert will feature carols of many different types and time periods.