Construction on Hundred Oaks Castle began in 1830, though it was not so-named at the time. It was originally built as a plantation farm house by Benjamin Decherd, the railroad tycoon for whom the town of Decherd, Tennessee, is named. The property was purchased in the 1860's by Albert Marks, the 21st governor of Tennessee and a relative to Thomas Jefferson. It is said that Albert's son Arthur counted the gracious oak trees that dotted the plantation land and came to the sum of 100, hence the name "Hundred Oaks."
Arthur traveled abroad as a diplomat and met his lovely bride, Nashvillian Mary Hunt, overseas. They married in Scotland where Arthur fell in love with castle architecture. And so, upon their return to Winchester and Hundred Oaks in 1889, they began the arduous task of renovating Arthur's childhood plantation home into a sprawling work of art, appropriately to be christened Hundred Oaks Castle...