My Genealogy Hound

John Harding McGavock (deceased). A glance at the genealogy of Mr. McGavock’s family will show that both his paternal and maternal ancestors have been extensive real estate owners, and great men of prominence. The McGavocks are of Scotch-Irish descent, and came to America before the Revolutionary War, settling in Virginia. About 1796, one of them, David, having married a Miss McDowel, moved with his family to Davidson County, Tenn., and purchased a large tract of land, upon a part of which the city of Nashville now stands. One of his sons, Frank Preston McGavock, married a Miss Amanda Harding, a daughter of John Harding, and a sister of Gen. William G. Harding, the owner of “Belle Meade,” a noted stock farm near Nashville. This couple became the parents of John Harding, the subject of this sketch. He was reared in Nashville and educated in the State College in that city, receiving a diploma signed by Gen. Andrew Jackson and other notables of the State. After graduating in Nashville he went to Harvard, where he again received a diploma signed by Edward Everett, Greenleaf, Kent, and others. Upon his return to his home, his grandfather Harding, who some years before had come down the Cumberland, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in a skiff, and had made large purchases in Mississippi County, induced him to leave Nashville, and try the wilds of Arkansas. After this, although still claiming Nashville as his home, he spent a part of each year in Mississippi County, adding by purchase and entry to the already valuable tract given him by his grandfather, dividing his time between business and bear-hunting, in both of which he was eminently successful. In 1853 he married Miss Georgia Moore, a daughter of Joseph I. Moore, of Columbus. Miss., she being a young lady of culture and refinement, and of one of the first families of the State. He died in 1861, just at the outbreak of the Civil War, at his father’s house, near Nashville. Of the four children born to him, only one remains, Mrs. Sue McGavock Grider, wife of Henry Grider. After the death of J. H. McGavock, his widow married, in 1868, William A. Erwin, of Jackson, Miss., he belonging to a prominent family of that State, and who died in 1882, leaving one daughter, Georgia, now at school. Mrs. Erwin makes her home with her daughter, Mrs. Grider, at the old homestead “Sans-Souci,” near Osceola, Ark. During the Civil War the house was used by Gen. Pope as a hospital, the yard as a cemetery; though, since, the bodies have been removed and placed in a National cemetery, The fleet when it first came down the river to attack Fort Pillow, which is a few miles below Sans-Souci, was anchored in the river opposite the house. This house, which was built by John H. McGavock, has a broad piazza, 12x74 feet in front, the pillars of which are of swamp cypress, in their natural state, except having the bark stripped off, and being painted. They are fluted in the most beautiful and artistic manner, having the appearance of the work of a skillful artist, and are the admiration of every beholder. Mrs. Grider preserves as an heirloom the cradle in which all of her mother’s children and her own have been rocked. This is a turtle shell, measuring four feet two and one-half inches by three feet seven inches, polished and varnished on the outside, and mounted upon rockers of mahogany, and wadded and lined on the inside with quilted blue satin. The turtle was caught by Mr. McGavock, out of the Mississippi River at his own landing.