McNair's Stand

McNair's Stand in 1930. From left to right are Robert Bruce Ross (a Cherokee from Oklahoma), Judge Charles Lusk, Mr. and Mrs. John Carroll Jones and Mrs. Buster Jones.

Captain David McNair (1774–1836) was an early colonial son who later married Chief James Vann's daughter Delilah in 1801. Captain McNair earned the rank of captain fighting in the War of 1812. He also fought beside Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend while being mustered in Colonel Morgan's Regiment between January and April of 1814.

Captain McNair was a successful businessman and plantation owner and in 1827 hired Robert Howell to build a large red brick home with ornate white wooden columns built in Polk County, Tennessee, right across the Georgia border along the Conasauga River. McNair's home was the first brick home ever built in Polk County and certainly one of the nicest. His home and plantation became known as McNair's Stand.

The two-story home was filled with intricate woodwork along the interior door frames and on the mantel above the fireplace. Two of the rooms on the lower floor had additional fireplaces and wooden mantels. Above all the rooms were a series of interlocking pieces of pine for rafters.

Another view of the house.

McNair operated a boatyard on the river for years and amassed a great deal of wealth. In fact. his 1827 book of boatyard dealings enumerated 12,000 gallons of liquor having passed through his port in one year. David built a brick smokehouse and brick slave quarters with the money he earned.

The other side of the house when it still had fences on it and the columns were in place.

When Spring Place, the Moravian mission site located near the Vann House in Georgia was shut down, David provided housing to the missionary Mr. Clauder and the mission schoolteacher Ms. Ruede to live at his property. They preached and taught at McNair's Stand until 1836.

David died in 1836 and Delilah passed in 1838. Their Cherokee children were forced west to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears. Just prior to their exile, the discoverer of Georgia Marble, Henry Fitzsimmons made the monument for their graves. There it remains in a field beside where McNair's Stand once proudly stood.

The McNair graves of David and Delilah (Vann) McNair and a monument made in 1838 that was made for $150 by none other than Henry Fitzsimmons, the discoverer of Georgia Marble.

SACRED to the memory of David and Deliah A. McNair- who departed this life - the former Aug 15,1836 the latter Nov 31 1838. Their children being natives of the Cherokee nation, and having to go with their people to the west, leave this monument not only to tell of their regards for their parents, but to guard their ashes from unhallowed intrusion of the white man.

In 1932, a tornado destroyed most of the home, but the most ornate fireplace mantelpiece was removed from the home and remained missing for decades. Then in 1999, the mantel reappeared as a donation to the Vann House visitor center. Mr. and Mrs. W.I. "Buster" Davis stored it in their barn for nearly 50 years before making the donation.

This mantel was removed from McNair's stand and kept in a barn for nearly 50 years before being donated to the Vann House in 1999.