Wesley Marshall on the Rescue of White Family Heirlooms

By Jason Zasky

"I grew up in Spring Hill but went to college at MTSU and lived in Murfreesboro for 15 years before moving back in 2016. Not long afterward, I got into metal detecting, which I was doing at places around town, including White Hall," begins Wesley Marshall, referring to the two-story historic mansion on Duplex Road, which was built for surgeon Dr. Aaron White in 1844. 

 "In 2018, I found a Civil War period belt buckle under the back porch of White Hall," he continues. This was Marshall's first connection to the famous residence, which sits on 30 acres and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since the spring of 1984. 

After the house changed ownership, Marshall, who works as a sales manager for Mt. Juliet-based Quality Roofing, Restoration & Construction, went back to see if he could get permission from the new owner to continue metal detecting on the property. 

He happened to pull up the driveway on a day in which the house was being renovated, and the construction crew was "throwing away Antebellum period items. They were tossing them into a dumpster," says Marshall, getting agitated at the thought, before noting that an 1850s piano would be next to get trashed—if he didn't intervene. 

"I said, 'Don't throw it away, I'll come get it,'" recalls Marshall, speaking of what turned out to be an 1855 Bradbury square grand. But that was just the first of many historical treasures that Marshall would rescue, as he offered to buy—sight unseen—all the White family heirlooms that the renovators had found in the house, which were stored in a half-dozen cardboard boxes.

"I could tell the boxes were really old, that the cardboard was from the early 1900s. When I got home, I started unpacking and could not believe what was in there, including a wedding dress from 1854, in the original box from Paris. Everything was labeled—identifying what it was and who it belonged to in the White family," says Marshall.

"There were five or six silk dresses, a couple silk shawls, and several bonnets, including a bonnet from the 1700s. There were also two samplers, one from the early 1800s and one by Margaret Fain White (Dr. Aaron White's wife) from November 1842," he adds, with samplers being a piece of embroidery or cross-stitching that demonstrates skill in needlework.

"It was something cherished for a young woman to have a sampler," explains Marshall, who calls the collection of heirlooms "priceless," at least to him, with a financial value of somewhere between twenty- and thirty-thousand dollars.

Marshall says he expects to hold onto the collection for the forseeable future, and has done his best to properly store the items, having re-wrapped everything in acid-free tissue paper. Yet he is not opposed to finding a new, permanent home for the collection. 

In the meantime, Marshall says he hopes his story reminds locals that there's a lot of history in Maury County—some of it waiting to be discovered, or re-discovered.

"It lets people know that Spring Hill still has history that hasn't been destroyed," he concludes.