8 Exciting Kid-Friendly Things To Do In Franklin, TN

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Franklin, Tennessee is a city that’s rich in history and quaint, Southern hometown charm. It’s one of the wealthiest cities in the US, but there is nothing pretentious about it.

We visited this charming city on a road trip and we quickly discovered there were plenty of things to do in Franklin to make it worth stopping off at for a few days.

I knew it would be a cute Southern town full of charm, but I didn’t realize how much there was to see and do here.

In this guide, we’ve shared some of our favorite attractions in Franklin TN and what you can do on your visit there.

Things To Do In Franklin TN

1. Do a Civil War Home Tour at Carnton House

I highly recommend you start your day in the city of Franklin on a civil war tour at the Carnton House. My Dad is a major history buff, especially around Civil War battles (we worked in a visit to Gettysburg because of it), but he hadn’t heard of the battle at Franklin, one of the bloodiest of the Civil War.

The Carnton house was a federal style residence and the home the home of the wealthy McGavock’s. President Andrew Jackson was once a guest in the house.

The guided tour shared the life of the McGavock family, their house and the trauma they went through in attending to the wounded, cleaning up the horror, burying the dead, and then trying to survive after the war was over as they lost a large amount of their wealth.

We learned that on Nov 30th 1864, the community of 750 people were swept into the middle of a massive frontal attack on the Federal position by Gen John Bell. It was a charge bigger than Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, a fact my Dad couldn’t get over.

The right wing of the Southern army moved past Carnton. Can you imagine sitting in your living room and seeing thousands of soldiers suddenly marching past your window?

The area around the house was under heavy fire for five hours leaving nearly 10,000 casualties: 2,000 dead, 7,000 wounded and 1,000 missing.

Carnton House became a field hospital which housed the first of the wounded. There were 300 wounded soldiers inside the house and several hundred others spread across the grounds and bodies of confederate generals were laid out on the back porch.

Our passionate and informative guide took us up to the bedrooms, which had been recreated to show what it was like during the battle as…