Another old man claimed once in a while they would find an un-exploded one, and he said they had a special place in a pile of rocks for them in a fence row for them.
My gut feeling is the confederates had camps south of town at one point because of a spring fed creek and used the farm land for cannon shooting practice being their was no know fighting on the land as far as I know off.
If I were you, I’d go back and salvage those cannon balls. Then, I’d sell them to yankee collectors . . .
I was walking on a construction site south west of Franklin and found a cannon ball. It was “grape shot”, a small ball of about 3” across. They would put a number of them in the cannon at one time and shoot it off. However, I have no idea how it got where it was since it wasn’t in the area of the battle of Franklin, nor was it where the army traveled.