I agree that this restoration is important for those very reasons - the Forrests were part of that migration from North Carolina and Virginia that filled up states like Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, and were among the first families into Tennessee after the Indian cessions. (No hard feelings!) It's amazing the old house is even there. I saw a picture of it in Mathes bio of Forrest - it looked like one more winter would make it firewood and that was 1888! And, of all the Forrest homes, it's the only one left. The house on Adams Street was torn down, the one in Salem was burned by Sherman, the one in Hernando was burned by some Unionist guerrillas, the one at the undeveloped plantation of Roderick was worse than the slave cabins and fell down of its own, the one from Green Grove was bought by Forrest from the people who then owned his plantation and brought to President's Island - it was just a couple nice log cabins held together by a breezeway - and it burned down. So, all in all, it's more than surprising this home is even around! I'll be opening my pocketbook for this particular enterprise sometime soon, and not just because I'm Forrest's number one fan - OW! Ok, Nathanb1, number two...
Larry, has anyone done an archaeological survey of the property and house? I know they've worked on Jeb Stuart's old family home, which burned up, but they did find a few things that could be directly connected to Stuart because of their mention in letters and diaries. (One was an interesting little child's soap bubble pipe - somehow that fits perfectly!) There's also a dig at Grant's father-in-law's old farm, which is yielding some pretty interesting stuff. I just wondered if this had been done with the old Forrest home - I know many different families lived there but it would be very neat if something turned up that could be connected directly with Forrest or his people. It would be fascinating just to see how they lived there in that day and time. Archaeology teams don't come cheap - I've worked with several on tribal sites - but maybe some extra money could go toward it if none is set aside as yet?
Have they gotten to the outbuildings? The last pictures I saw it seemed there had been a good deal more work done very recently but I didn't see anything about those.