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In 1807 John Harding bought a 250 acre tract on Richland Creek a few miles southest of Nashville, and during the next thirty five years he built it it into a 3500 acre plantation known as Belle Meade, French for "Beautiful Meadow". On it he producted corn, barley, wheat, oats, hay and fine thoroughbred race horses. Structural evidence indicates that he began Belle Meade mansion, sometime prior to 1840.
This photograph of Belle Meade taken in the 1890s shows an expanse of meadowed upland in what is now Percy Warner Park. The main horse barn is larger than the stud farm's famous mansion, which appears on the far right in this photo.
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