Springfield Plantation: First Grand Mansion of the Mississippi Valley

Built between seventeen eighty-six and seventeen ninety-one by Virginia planter Thomas Green Jr., Springfield was the first mansion in the Mississippi Valley to feature a full colonnade running across the entire facade, a design that would define Southern plantation architecture for generations. The whole structure was built by enslaved workers making bricks from local clay, with hardware forged at an on-site blacksmith shop.

Local tradition holds that Andrew Jackson married Rachel Donelson Robards here in the summer of seventeen ninety-one, in a ceremony said to have been performed by Green's father, though the date and place are disputed. The marriage was later found to be irregular, a complication that dogged Jackson throughout his political career. Springfield is on the National Register of Historic Places.