For the Beaver Dam Plantation in North Carolina, see Beaver Dam Plantation House.The Beaver Dam Plantation, also known as the William Cannon Houston House, is a historic mansion on a Southern plantation in Woodbury, Tennessee, USA.HistoryA log building was first built c. 1810. The plantation was acquired and expanded by politician William C. Houston in 1873. Houston built the mansion in the early 1870s. His son, Frank K. Houston, later Chairman of Chemical Bank (now known as CITIBANK), was born on the plantation. A formal dining-room was added circa 1880, and a rear porch circa 1930.Beaver Dam began as a trading post. The name is born of the frustration of a fur trader named McFerrin, who disputed the claims of an unknown trapper, that one of his pelts was indeed, that of a beaver. Beaver Dam was also a stopping point along the infamous "Trail of Tears" along which the Cherokee Nation was forced to move to Oklahoma by then President Andrew Jackson.Beaver Dam was the Civil War encampment site of General Nathan Bedford Forrest's 4th Tennessee Cavalry, before its raid on Murfreesboro. Family lore speculates that Judge W.C. Houston met his future father-in-law, Col. William S. McLemore of the Starnes-McLemore Unit (TN 4th Cavalry). However, in keeping with other family lore, it is more probable that young Houston, then ten or eleven years old, was kept hidden in the caves of Doolittle the home of his mother Elizabeth Morgan Houston Fugitt, in order to avoid conscription into the Confederate Army.
