06/04/2026
Sarah Ewing Carter (1826-1912) spent her early years with her family on the Alexander C. Ewing farm at present-day 806 Murfreesboro Pike. Her parents having died while she was young, Randal and Sarah McGavock of Carnton agreed to keep her. She lived there for about three years. Sarah wed young and would be married three times. In May 1842, at age 15, she wed Boyd McNairy Sims (c. 1822–1849), a young lawyer in Franklin and had two daughters by him. Boyd died in 1849. In 1852, she wed Joseph Winlock Carter (c. 1822–1856), a widower, lawyer and state senator who lived in Wi******er, Tennessee. They resided there and had two sons. Joseph died in 1856. Sarah returned to Franklin with her four children and lived on the family farm until moving again in 1860 to a rental house at 118 3rd Avenue North where Shuff’s Music is today.
She had deep secessionist sentiments and did not conceal them. In 1861, she hung the first Confederate flag in town. Sarah gave medical supplies to the Confederate Army, and, in late December 1862, warned General Bragg at Murfreesboro of the coming Federal attack which would become the Battle of Stones River. Amazingly, in early to mid-1864, she led a six-month expedition to Louisiana to negotiate with both armies to help her cousin, Adelicia Acklen of the Belmont Mansion, ship through the Federal blockade a fortune in cotton for sale in England. Evidence of her closeness to Adelicia, who was about nine years older, is that Sarah and Boyd had named one of their daughters Adelicia (Addie) Franklin Sims. Little Addie died only three months of age.
After four months back in Franklin, she would find herself deeply involved in the Civil War. On November 30, Sarah, her family and servants took shelter in her basement on 3rd Avenue during the Battle of Franklin. The next day, she gave her house almost entirely to Confederate wounded as a hospital. She dressed wounds and fed the men. When Federal forces came through Franklin again in mid-December, they took her house as a hospital. Ms. Carter kept one soldier for more than a year and a Confederate doctor for 18 months. After the war, Sarah helped raise money to buy artificial limbs for wounded soldiers.
In 1875, after 19 years of widowhood, Mrs. Carter married Judge John C. Gaut (1813–1895), a widower and prominent Nashville lawyer. They resided in Nashville. There, she was director of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association for 18 years. After Mr. Gaut passed, Sarah moved back to 3rd Avenue and spent her last years there. She was instrumental in organizing the Franklin Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Mrs. Gaut died in 1912 at age 86 and is buried in Franklin.
This information is from In the Shadow of My Enemy – Civil War Life in Occupied Franklin, Tennessee, by Walter Green. The book is available at www.walterrgreenauthor.com.
