After two years abroad, the Tates returned to the United States in 1930. During two months in New York Tate secured a publisher for a symposium on the South and agrarianism that he and John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Andrew Lytle, and others had been planning. In Tennessee, the Tates took up residence at Benfolly (Clarksville, Tennessee)| an antebellum mansion with a 185-acre estate attached, that had been bought for them by Allen's brother Ben, "who had made a lot of northern money out of coal." House guests at Benfolly were frequent: Ford Madox Ford, Edmund Wilson, Louise Bogan, Phelps Putnam, Stark Young, the Howard Bakers, the Malcolm Cowleys, the Ransoms, the Warrens.