Rattle and Snap was the built for George Polk, a cousin of President James K. Polk, in 1845. He and his three brothers inherited land in Maury County that their father had supposedly one from the Governor of North Carolina. According to family tradition, Colonel William Polk one the land from the governor in a game of beans called Rattle and Snap. While all of the brothers built homes on the land that they divided amongst themselves, George’s home was the largest, most ornate, and carried a name to pay tribute to its acquisition.
Art historian John Kiser commented on Rattle and Snap saying, “most people of the time had four columns, Andrew Jackson managed to have six, but George Polk had ten.” George’s home was built on a scale and in a style unseen in the area at that time. Most of the labor was completed by skilled slaves owned by the Polk family, but George commissioned the columns from a factory in Cincinnati. These were floated down the Ohio River and then up the Cumberland River where they were unloaded in Nashville. There they were loaded onto oxcarts which carried the load to Maury County.
George and his family lived an extravagant planter lifestyle and flirted with financial disaster for many years. When the Civil War arrived, the Polk family sided with the Confederacy and suffered significant financial losses by the end of the war. In 1867 George Polk was bankrupt and sold his home to the Granberry family who renamed the home Oakwood Hall.
The Granberrys lived at Oakwood Hall for nearly fifty years, but after this the home had many owners. At one point it was inhabited by tenant farms who also used the home as a barn to store hay. For many years the home was empty and open to the elements. In the 1950s the Babcock family bought the house and began much needed restoration work. On November 11, 1972, the property was designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 1979, the Evans family bought the house and continued the tradition of renovations |
