This comprehensive exploration of the Celtic-American McGavocks and their beautiful Franklin, Tennessee, home is a “must read” for anyone interested in not only Carnton Plantation, but in the American Civil War, the South, and Tennessee history. In The McGavocks of Carnton Plantation, Southern historian, former Carnton docent, McGavock relation, and bestselling author Lochlainn Seabrook digs deep into the history of the McGavocks, providing facts, material, and topics that you will not find in any other book or on any historical tour.

Included in this monumental 1,050-page work is a detailed history of Carnton Plantation and her occupants from 1700 to the present; a “you-are-there” tour of the grounds and the mansion, top to bottom, interior and exterior; an exhaustive discussion of Lincoln’s War, slavery, the Confederate States of America, and the Battles of Franklin II and Nashville, as the McGavocks and other loyal Confederates saw them; a complete McGavock family tree from their earliest known ancestor in Scotland; a complete Winder family tree from their earliest known ancestor in England; a royal European McGavock family tree back to Robert the Bruce King of Scotland; a brief history of Company H Twentieth Tennessee Infantry; well-researched citations with 1,700 footnotes, a 1,000-book bibliography, and an exhaustive index. The book also contains hundreds of illustrations, maps, photos, diagrams, and drawings, all chronicling the lives, customs, and beliefs of this fascinating Confederate clan.

The longest and most detailed book ever written on the McGavocks, most of this material has never been published before, and Mr. Seabrook’s insights into the Southern (as opposed to the Northern) perspective of the War for Southern Independence will provide readers with a new and illuminating view of Nineteenth-Century life at Carnton.

Penned from the traditional South’s point of view and written with a love for Dixie, reverence for the Confederacy, and respect for the McGavocks, this massive and important Civil War Sesquicentennial study is a one-of-a-kind book that is sure to become a classic. Seven years in the making, it is one that every true Southerner, every lover of liberty, and every student of history will want in their library. Introduction is by Dr. Michael R. Bradley, Chaplain SCV Camp #155, winner of the Jefferson Davis Medal in Southern History, and author of Tullahoma: The 1863 Campaign for the Control of Middle Tennessee. Foreword is by Sue A. Thompson, Master Curator and Decorative Arts Director, Lotz House Museum, Franklin, Tennessee.