Lairdland Farm

Lairdland is a small part of a 5,000 acre tract of land that belonged to John Laird. An Irish immigrant, Laird served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and was gifted this tract of lack by the state of North Carolina. At the time of the gift, this property on Lynn Creek, and Tennessee itself, was still Indian Territory. In 1831, Thomas J. Lane built a house on a property in the Brick Church community an, in 1857, Robert H. Laird, John’s son and Thomas’s brother-in-law, purchased the property, which was then called the Lairdland Farm. The Lairdland Farm is closely associated with the Civil War narrative. During the Civil War, the Laird family took in and nursed Confederate soldiers, even burying one who passed on the land. Captain James Knox Polk Blackburn of Terry’s Texas Rangers (8th Texas Cavalry) recuperated at the farm after one battle and, after the war, returned to Lairdland to marry a daughter of the Laird family. The Lairdland property stayed in the Blackburn family until 2002 and today holds an extensive collection of Civil War artifacts.