For The Inter-Mountain
FRANKLIN — William Boggs Anderson built the impressive Queen Anne style home on his 300-acre farm overlooking the town of Franklin in 1900 at a cost of $1,900.
“Tradition has it, that it was a wedding present for my grandmother,” said Dyer Anderson, the grandson of the couple.
A self-taught architect, William Boggs Anderson designed the house shortly after he married Kitty Dyer on Dec. 6, 1899. Taking three years to build, it was family-owned for 117 years until Dyer Anderson, who now lives in Annandale, Virginia, sold it to Future Generations University in 2017.
The house has multiple gables, elaborate porches and a polygonal tower with a cast-iron roof peak. A small windmill behind the house pumped water into a reservoir in the attic where gravity provided the town’s first indoor plumbing, Dyer Anderson said.