Ashwood is a rural neighborhood and former plantation district between Mount Pleasant and Columbia, Tennessee. Colonel William Polk received a large land grant in what is now Columbia, Tennessee, for his Revolutionary War service. Local tradition adds that he won the tract from the Governor in a gambling game called "rattle and snap." Polk later divided the property among five sons, four of whom built distinguished houses within a one-mile radius. In 1832, Lucius Polk built Hamilton Place, the earliest of the four great houses, named for a brother who had died in 1830 while a student at Yale. The others followed; Ashwood Hall (1836) for Leonidas Polk, later lost to fire: Westbrook (c 1840) for Rufus King Polk, destroyed soon after the Civil War: and Rattle and Snap (1845) for George Polk, now a National Historic Landmark open for private tours. Amid these estates stood St John's Episcopal Church (1841), the plantation church built by the Polk brothers at the center of their Ashwood community. Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal Bishop and Confederate States of America General, built the church on his own plantation. - AsNotedIn