Historical records matching Clay Faulkner
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About Clay Faulkner
https://falconrest.com/history/
The Faulkner house near McMinnville Tennessee is now a museum and tourist destination. The web page linked above includes some fascinating family history.
"In 1896, entrepreneur Clay Faulkner told his wife Mary he’d build her “the grandest mansion in Tennessee” if she would move next to their woolen mill, 2-1/2 miles from downtown McMinnville.
"...The first settlers in the area which would later be known as Faulkner Springs — indeed, some of the first in Warren County — were a physician, an educator and a manufacturer. Their aim in the early 1800s was to establish a utopia in the Tennessee wilderness.
"...Asa Faulkner, Clay’s father, worked for [the manufacturer, Henry] Briddleman as a lad, and in 1846 he purchased the mill. Asa eventually established the Annis Cotton Mill and a flouring mill, both on the Barren Fork of the Collins River near downtown McMinnville. A newspaper article shortly before his death in 1886 called Asa “the nestor of all Warren County’s manufacturing interests.”
"...More than any of Asa’s 19 children, Clay carried on his father’s tradition of commerce. Born in 1845, Clay was academically educated in New York and trained as a machinist. The 1870 census lists him as a farmer, but his milling career had actually begun four years earlier. In 1866, the 21-year-old Clay and his brother J.J. took charge of the Butler Flouring Mills on Charles Creek in Warren County.
"The mill that would become Clay’s primary focus — also on Charles Creek — came into the possession of Clay and his older brother T.H. in 1873. That was the same year Clay married Mary King Sanders of Carthage, Tenn. Clay and T.H. installed new machinery to upgrade the capacity of the facility, then known as Faulkner Woolen Mills.
"By 1877, Clay and T.H., along with the latter’s father-in-law Judge Robert Cantrell, were running both Asa’s original mill and the new one. Both partnerships were dissolved two years later, with T.H. and Cantrell taking possession of Asa’s mill and Clay becoming sole owner of the other.
"...Perhaps Clay’s most ambitious venture was the Falls City Cotton Mill, also known as the Great Falls Cotton Mill. It began in 1883 as a dream of his father Asa — then 81 years old — who purchased the land between the Collins River and the Caney Fork at the Great Falls of Rock Island, Tenn.
"...The elder Faulkner ["Asa", aka Honasa] died in 1886...
"...Newspaper accounts do show Clay making frequent trips to Washington during the late 1890s, so that may have been their purpose..."
"...In 1906, [Clay Faulkner] closed the mill and remodeled the building with verandas all around, on the artificial lake formed by his dam. He gave his own name to the business, calling it the “Faulkner Springs Hotel,” and to this day the community is still known as Faulkner Springs...
"The April 4, 1896, the Southern Standard reported that [Clay] Faulkner had purchased the farm adjoining his mill from brother T.H.’s widow to build “a large and handsome dwelling house” for his family. Faulkner closely supervised construction. It is said he told workmen to dig down to the bedrock before they started laying the foundation. (In the 1980s, the previous owner excavated eight feet next to one wall, and still did not reach its bottom.) Because the interior walls, as well as the exterior, are solid brick, every wall in the house rests on this solid bedrock foundation. Even though the house was virtually abandoned for 15 years from the late 1960s to early 1980s, the walls seem to be as plumb today as they were over 100 years ago.
"Clay carefully inspected everything that went into the house to make sure it was of the highest quality. One of the men who eventually witnessed Clay’s will told this story: Workmen were installing the tongue-and-groove boards in the veranda ceiling one day when Faulkner went into town on an errand. When he came back, he found that a board they had installed an hour before had a tiny knothole in it. Even though the carpenters protested that the hole would not show after painting, Faulkner had them remove the whole hour’s work, since he would not allow any materials of inferior quality in his home.
"This meticulous construction took time. It was almost a year to the day after the newspaper reported Clay’s purchase of the property, that an article noted Clay and his family had moved into their new home on the previous Saturday (March 28, 1897).
"...Indeed, the Standard attested that Faulkner’s house had “all the improvements and conveniences of a model city dwelling.
"Clay Faulkner died in 1916..."
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Clay Faulkner's Timeline
| 1845 |
April 11, 1845
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Faulkner Springs, Warren County, Tennessee, United States
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| 1916 |
August 26, 1916
Age 71
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Faulkner Springs, Warren County, Tennessee, United States
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1916
Age 70
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Riverside Cemetery, McMinnville, Warren County, Tennessee, United States
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