Reverend Bill Barnes
Reverend William L. “Bill” Barnes, a pastor, civil rights leader and teacher, was often called the “conscience of Nashville.” Rev. Barnes passionately agitated for legislation that would help those marginalized by race, social class, sexual orientation, incarceration or homelessness. He also founded many organizations to bring attention to those issues including MANNA (1975), Project Return (1979) and the Organized Neighbors of Edgehill (O.N.E.) Barnes Scholarship (1995).
In 1966 Rev. Barnes founded Edgehill United Methodist Church, one of Nashville’s first intentionally integrated churches. His work, addressing issues like affordable housing, often centered in the Edgehill community. Barnes wanted his work to be carried into the future, believing, much like Saint Óscar Romero, that, “The temple shall remain unfinished until all are housed in dignity.” In 2013 The Barnes Housing Trust, the city’s affordable housing fund, was named in his honor.
Donated by friends and family of Bill Barnes
Location: 1502 Edgehill Ave.
Number 203
Erected 2019
Peter Bashaw 1763-1864
Private Peter Bashaw of Fauquier County, Va., son of James Bashaw, served three tours of service in the Virginia Militia during the Revolutionary War under Colonels Triplett and Edmonds. He fought at the battles of Cowpens and Yorktown in 1781 and served with armies under the command of Generals Lafayette and Washington in Richmond and Little York. In 1809, the French Huguenot Bashaw family moved to this area and established a working farm with a dogtrot-style cedar log cabin.
Bashaw owned nearly 200 acres of land and held at least eleven enslaved persons. Censuses record six men and two women in 1850 and three men and two women in 1860. Upon his death, sources noted Peter as the last surviving Revolutionary War soldier in Tennessee. Peter, his wife, Frances (1769-1851); daughter, Baheathelon (1786-1876); his brother, Benjamin (1771-1835); and relatives Elizabeth Dews (1831-1899) and Margaret P. Ulrich (1867-1890) are buried in the Bashaw Cemetery.
Location:
Number 258
Erected 2023
Dorothy Lavinia Brown, M.D. 1919-2004
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Dorothy Brown was born in 1919 in Philadelphia, Penn. She attended Meharry Medical College and studied under Dr. Matthew Walker, Sr., who admitted her as the first black woman to the surgery program. She was the first female African-American surgeon in the South, and the first to be made a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She was chief of surgery at Riverside Hospital from 1957-1983. In 1966, she became the first African-American woman to serve in the Tenn. Gen. Assembly.
Location: 800 Youngs Ln.
Number 167
Erected 2018
Neill S. Brown 1810-1886
Born in Giles County in 1810, Neill Smith Brown became a lawyer in 1834 and married Mary Ann Trimble (1816-1895) in 1839. At their nearby home, Idlewild, they raised eight children. Brown was a founder of the Whig Party in Tennessee and was elected governor in 1847, serving one term. His younger brother, John Calvin Brown (1827-1889), held the same position from 1871-75. Appointed U.S. Minister to Russia 1850-53, Neill Brown died in 1886 and is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
Location: Neill Ave. (side of Ramsey St. Church of Christ)
Number 49
Erected: 1971
Penny Campbell 1953-2014
An activist for LGBT rights and advocate for people with mental health and housing issues, Campbell co-organized Tennessee’s delegation to the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and Nashville's 1988 Pride parade at a time when many feared discrimination and violence. Daughter of civil rights activist Will Campbell, she was the lead plaintiff in Campbell v. Sundquist (1996), which overturned a law criminalizing private, consensual, sexual acts between same-sex adults.
Location: 1615 McEwen Ave
Number 161
Erected: 2017
Alice Thompson Collinsworth 1777-1828
Alice Thompson (1777-1828) married Revolutionary War veteran Edward Collinsworth (1759-1816) in Dec. 1795, after spending two years as a captive at the Muscogee (Creek) tribal town Kialegee, in present-day Alabama. Alice and Edward reared seven children on land deeded to Alice by her brother John (c.1765-1791). Their son James (1802-1838) signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Alice, Edward, daughter Parmelia and two more generations are buried at the nearby family cemetery.
Location: 5429 Mount View Road
Number 244
Erected 2022
Timothy Demonbreun
Jacques-Timothe’ De Montbrun, born on Mar. 23, 1747, in Boucherville, Quebec, was the first white man to live in the Nashville area. Beginning in 1769, he spent several winters here trading for furs. He served as Lieut. Gov. of Illinois country, 1783-86. He became permanent resident of Nashville in 1790, operating store and tavern. Died at home on this site, Oct. 30, 1826.
Location: Broadway and 3rd Av N (wall marker)
Number 44
Erected: 1971
Jesse Shelton DeMoss 1819-1895
Jesse Shelton DeMoss was the grandson of Bellevue co-founder James DeMoss and the son of prosperous farmer Thomas DeMoss, of the Davidson County 14th District. Between 1866 and 1870, Jesse moved with his family from the 14th to the 12th District. In 1868, following his wife Delilah’s death, he established the family cemetery. Jesse, his sons and his grandsons were farmers along River Road for 90 years. From 1800 until 1957, the DeMoss family operated farms in the Bellevue area.
Location: 6999 River Road Pike
Number 231
Erected 2021
Mrs. John Donelson
After Col. John Donelson was killed in 1785, his widow and family continued to live here in a log house. In 1789 lawyers Andrew Jackson and John Overton boarded with the Donelsons. Here Jackson met Rachel, the Donelson’s youngest daughter. They married in 1791 and lived here until they acquired there own home across the Cumberland in 1792.
Location:1787 Gallatin Pike N.
Number 13
Erected: 1969
Elizabeth Atchison Eakin 1858-1936
Elizabeth Rhodes Atchison, born in Nashville on Feb. 26, 1858, married prominent banker John H. Eakin in 1882. Active in many civic causes, in 1917 she became the first woman to join the Nashville City School Board. After her death in 1936, a new school on Fairfax Ave., built with funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was named in her honor. In 2006, Eakin School moved to the adjacent Cavert School. The Eakin Building became the Martin Center for teacher training.
Location: 2500 Fairfax Ave.
Number 191
Erected 2019
Captain Alexander “Devil Alex” Ewing 1752-1822
Lt. Alexander Ewing was commissioned in the Continental Army in Sept. 1777 and promoted to Capt. in 1781. That year, while serving as aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Greene, he was wounded at Guilford Courthouse. Ewing moved to Davidson Co. c. 1786 and married Sarah Smith c. 1788. Initially granted 2,666 acres, by 1798 Ewing had increased his land holdings across Middle Tenn. and owned 13 enslaved persons. This early Federal-style house was completed just before his death in 1822.
Location: 5101 Buena Vista Pike
Number 95
Erected 1995
Tolbert Fanning 1810-1874
In 1844, noted educator, evangelist, and agriculturalist Tolbert Fanning started Franklin College, a liberal arts school near this site where boys farmed to cover tuition. In 1855 he co-founded the Gospel Advocate, a religious journal. Fanning’s wife, Charlotte Fall, began Fanning Orphan School for girls here in 1884. Their aim was to put education within the “reach of every youth.”
Location: Briley Parkway and Vultee Boulevard
Number 113
Erected: 2003
Major Wilbur Fisk Foster 1834-1922
Chief Engr. army of Tenn. C. S. A.; Construction Engineer on first R.R. Bridge in Nashville; City Engineer of Nashville and member of American Society of Civil Engineers; Director of Works at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition and Co-Founder of Foster and Creighton Co.; Elder, First Presbyterian Church; 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Mason.
Location: Centennial Park by Lake Wautauga
Number 52
Erected: 1975
William Gower
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On April 24, 1780, William Gower, age 3½, arrived with his family at the Bluffs settlements, now Nashville. In 1800 he settled near Overall Creek and in 1802 married Charlotte Garland. They had fifteen children, many of whom became prominent community leaders. A Methodist minister for over a half century, William founded Gower’s Chapel on his own farmland. Gower Cemetery was established in 1816, with the burial of William’s mother, Obedience Blakeley Gower.
Location: 6811 Gower Rd.
Number 178
Erected 2019
Alex Little Page Green
In 1829, The Rev. Alex Green joined the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Nashville Conference. Elected vice-president of the TN Conference’s Temperance Society in 1835, Green was instrumental in the Southern Methodist Publishing House’s move to Nashville in 1854, and helped establish Shelby Medical College (1857) and Vanderbilt University (1875). By private venture, he opened Union St. from College St. to Market St. c. 1870. This area’s first school was renamed Alex Green Academy in 1887.
Location: 3921 Lloyd Rd.
Number 169
Erected 2018
Julia McClung Green 1873-1961
Dedicated educator who served Davidson County public schools 57 years as a teacher, the first Supervisor of Elementary Education 1911-1944 and Director of Character Education, Miss Julia oversaw schools countywide. A progressive, she pioneered school hot lunch and health programs for children, local affiliation with national education organizations, and the local PTA movement.
Location: 3500 Hobbs Road
Number 103
Erected: 1999
Joseph “Yusef” Harris 1955-2022
Born and reared in Washington, D.C., Joseph “Yusef” Harris graduated from Morehouse College and moved to Nashville in 1977 to pursue his doctorate at Vanderbilt University. Inspired by the Black Studies/Psychology movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Harris founded Alkebu-Lan Images Bookstore on April 1, 1986. With the mantra "Power Now, Reading Is How," his work fostered pride in heritage and culture among African American communities in Nashville and beyond.
Location: 2721 Jefferson Street
Number 269
Erected 2023
Adolphus Heiman 1809-1862
Born in Potsdam, Prussia. Came to Nashville 1838. Lived in home on this site, Architect, Engineer and Builder. Designed Univ. of Nash. Main Bldg., Central State Hosp. Main Bldg., Suspension Bridge over Cumberland River Masonic Leader; Adj. U.S. Army Mexican War; Col. 10th Tenn. Inf. Reg. C.S.A. Civil War. Buried in Confederate Circle, Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Location: 900 Jefferson Street
Number 64
Erected: 1976
Josephine Groves Holloway
{double-sided}
Josephine Holloway graduated from Fisk Univ. with a degree in sociology in 1923. She worked at Bethlehem Center as a case worker, where she began organizing the first African-American Girl Scouts troops in Middle Tenn. In 1924 Holloway trained with Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low. From 1944-63 she worked as the GS Council’s first black professional. In 1951 her efforts were central to establishing Camp Holloway, in Millersville, Tenn., for African-American girls.
Location: Battery Ln. at Granny White Pike
Number 200
Erected 2019
Randall Jarrell 1914-1965
A graduate of Hume-Fogg and Vanderbilt University, Randall Jarrell was a distinguished poet, critic, novelist, essayist, and teacher. Jarrell joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942, serving as a celestial navigation tower operator during World War II. His poetry often addressed childhood innocence, with later works also focusing on the wartime experiences of young soldiers. He was the 11th U.S. Poet Laureate (1956-58) and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960.
Location: Hume-Fogg High School, 700 Broadway
Number 120
Erected: 2005
Alfred Z. Kelley
Nashville barber Alfred Z. Kelley was lead plaintiff in Kelley v. Board of Education, a federal lawsuit filed Sept. 23, 1955, on behalf of his son Robert and 20 other African American children. In December, the suit was amended to include two white children turned away from city schools. They lived in majority African American neighborhoods. Kelley sought compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown ruling. Tenn.’s longest desegregation case, it was settled in April 1998.
Location: 5834 Pettus Rd.
Number 207
Erected 2019
Kurdish Americans in Nashville
In 1976 Kurdish immigrants began arriving in Nashville and continued to emigrate here, fleeing persecutions in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey where they were ethnic minorities following the Treaty of Lausanne. In 2022, around 20,000 Kurds lived in Nashville, the largest Kurdish community in America. One of the first Kurdish mosques in America, the Salahadeen Center of Nashville was founded in 1998 and provides religious, educational and social services to the local Muslim community.
Location: Nolensville Pike and Elysian Fields Court
Number 246
Erected 2022
John Robert Lewis 1940-2020
John Robert Lewis was born on Feb. 21, 1940 to sharecropper parents in Troy, Ala. He entered Nashville’s American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1957 and soon began attending non-violence workshops at Clark Memorial Methodist Church with the Rev. James Lawson. These workshops were the foundation of the Nashville Sit-Ins Movement. In late 1959, Lewis took part in “test” sit-ins at nearby Cain-Sloan and Harvey’s and was in the group of students arrested at Woolworth on Feb. 27, 1960.
Here, Lewis and nine other reinforcement Freedom Riders boarded a Greyhound bus to Ala. on May 17, 1961. In 1963, he was elected chair of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee and helped plan and was a keynote speaker at the March on Washington. He was attacked in Selma on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 as part of a voting rights campaign. A 1967 Fisk University graduate, Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986, serving 17 terms until his death on July 17, 2020.
Location: 611 Commerce Street
Number 232
Erected 2021
Robert Ellis Lillard 1907-1991
Robert Emmitt Lillard was a fireman at the city’s first African American fire station, Engine Co. 11, until 1950, when he began practicing law full-time. In 1951, Lillard and Z. A. Looby became the first African American City Council members elected since 1911. Lillard helped desegregate the Parthenon, worked to pass anti-discrimination laws, defended sit-in protesters, and was the first African American First Circuit Court judge. He lived and worked here from 1936 to 1972.
Location: 1062 2nd Avenue S
Number 263
Erected 2023
Albertine Maxwell
Regarded as the symbol of dance in her adopted hometown of Nashville, Ellen Albertine Chaiser Maxwell (1902-96) operated the Albertine School of the Dance (1936-80). She had danced with Chicago Opera, Adolf Baum Dance Co., and Ruth St. Denis Dance Co. Founder and director of the Les Ballets Intimes with Nashville Ballet Society (1945-80), Maxwell was also a founding member of the Southeastern Regional Ballet Assn. (1955). Her studio in her home, 3307 West End, no longer stands.
Location: 3307 West End Avenue
Number 122
Erected: 2005
Russ McCown 1929-1994 “Sir Cecil Creape”
“Did someone call?” With those words Russ McCown opened Creature Feature on WSM-TV from 1971-73, where he introduced late-night horror films as Sir Cecil Creape and instantly became a local celebrity. WSMV, where McCown was a film editor, started a Sir Cecil fan club, and the Boy Scouts of America offered a “Sir Cecil’s Ghoul Patrol” patch. McCown revived the Sir Cecil character at a national level from 1983-85 on The Nashville Network (TNN) on The Phantom of the Opry.
Location:
Number 271
Erected 2023
Reverend Nelson G. Merry
The Reverend Nelson G. Merry, born enslaved in 1824 in Kentucky, was brought to Tennessee by his master. At age 16, his widowed mistress willed him to the First Baptist Church. He was freed in 1845. Merry preached to the “colored” mission of First Baptist, which was established in 1843. When it became “First Colored Baptist Church” (now First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill) in 1865, Merry, an ordained minister, was named pastor. The Rev. Merry is buried in Mt. Ararat Cemetery.
Location: Frankie Pierce Park, Nelson Merry St. between 10th Ave N and 10th Cir N
Number 210
Erected 2019
John Trotwood Moore 1858-1929
Tennessee novelist, poet, co-author, four-volume history, “Tennessee, the Volunteer State”; publisher, “Trotwood monthly”; author of short stories; breeder and judge of livestock: teacher, lecturer; beloved companion and raconteur; President, Tennessee Historical Society; State Librarian and Archivist, 1919-1929; lived in his home Arden Place on this site.
Location: 4425 Granny White Pike
Number 38
Erected: 1971
James Carroll Napier 1845-1940
James C. Napier (1845-1940), Nashville Negro lawyer, educator, member of the city council, delegate to four Republican conventions, Register of U.S. Treasury, 1911-1915, was a trustee of Fisk, Howard, and Meharry, advocate of the public schools, and founder of the One-cent Savings Bank, later the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Co.
Location: 648 Claiborne Street
Number 40
Erected: 1971
Betty Chiles Nixon
Betty Nixon was a trailblazing woman in Nashville politics, an ardent preservationist, and a relentless advocate for the city’s people and neighborhoods. She served on the Metro Council from 1975 to 1987, was the first woman to chair its Budget and Finance Committee, and ran for mayor in 1987 and 1991. Nixon and her first husband, U.S. District Judge John T. Nixon, purchased this 1925 Colonial Revival house in 1971. It was the setting for her campaigns and community activism.
Location: 1607 18th Ave S
Number 212
Erected 2020
General Thomas Overton 1753-1825
Gen. Thomas Overton served in the Revolutionary War and as Inspector of Revenue in N.C., the same position held by his brother Judge John Overton in Tenn. He was one of Gen. Jackson’s seconds in duel with Chas. Dickinson. This grave plot was a part of his homeplace, “Soldier’s Rest,” where he lived from 1804 until his death in 1825.
Location: Donelson Avenue west of Bryan Street, Old Hickory
Number 65
Erected: 1976
Bettie Mae Page 1923-2008
One of six children, Bettie Mae Page graduated from Hume-Fogg High School (1940) and George Peabody College (1944) before moving to New York to work as a model and actress. She became one of the most-photographed pinup models of the 1950s and retired from public life in 1957. Page became an evangelical Christian and maintained a reclusive lifestyle, though she developed an underground cult following and was hailed as a feminist icon prior to her death in Los Angeles in 2008.
Location: Hume-Fogg High School, 700 Broadway (7th Ave. side)
Number 249
Erected 2022
Ernest Rip Patton 1940-2021
{double-sided}
Ernest Rip Patton attended Tenn. Agricultural & Industrial State University where he joined the Nashville Student Movement, attended meetings at local churches—including his own, Gordon United Memorial Methodist—and participated in lunch counter sit-ins. In 1961, he was one of 14 students the state expelled after their arrests during the Freedom Rides. They all received honorary doctoral degrees from TSU in 2008. Dr. Patton spoke, and often sang, across the country about his activism.
Countless men and women fought for equal rights for African Americans in Nashville during the Jim Crow era, beginning with the 1957 desegregation of public schools. Test sit-ins at downtown eateries began in 1959, and efforts to desegregate public facilities lasted until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Members of the Nashville Student Movement and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee departed Nashville as Freedom Riders in 1961 and advocated for equal voting rights through 1965.
Location: 2334 Herman Street
Number 251
Erected 2022
John Thomas Patton 1884-1965
{double-sided}
The son of former slaves, J.T. Patton founded Patton Brothers Funeral Home in 1908 in Franklin, Tenn. His brothers—Jasper, Daniel, and George—joined him in business and they expanded to Nashville in 1921. By the mid-1950s, Patton Brothers was the largest black-owned and -operated funeral business in middle Tennessee. Patton’s oldest son with second wife Alice Otey, Thomas—a Tuskegee Airman—headed the Franklin branch and younger son Edward ran the regional headquarters in Nashville.
Location: 1014 28th Avenue N
Number 256
Erected 2023
Captain John Rains
On Christmas 1779 he led his family and livestock across the frozen Cumberland and settled in this vicinity. In 1784 he built a fort that enclosed the spring 75 yards east. At James Robertson’s orders he often led a company of scouts against Indians. His home was on this hill until he died in 1834, age 91.
Location: SW corner of Rains Ave and Merritt St.
Number 2
Erected: 1968
W.R. Rochelle
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A graduate of Peabody College, William Rayburn Rochelle served as principal of Cohn High School from 1939 until his retirement in 1965. An innovative educator, he led Cohn in developing student government and was responsible for a state-of-the-art music education program. Rochelle devoted his life to education and community service, especially to adults with intellectual disabilities. In 1968, he founded the Rochelle Center for disabled adults and their families.
Location: Cohn School, 4805 Park Avenue
Number 148
Erected: 2012
Jackie Shane 1940-2019
Jackie Shane began her pioneering career as a transgender soul singer and musician on Jefferson Street during the 1950s. After moving to Canada, she helped create the Toronto Sound and had her first hit in 1962, “Any Other Way.” Tired of others limiting her freedom to express her true self, Shane left the music industry at the height of her fame. She maintained a reclusive lifestyle in Nashville until 2017 when she released a Grammy-nominated compilation album, Any Other Way.
Location: 2601 Jefferson Street
Number 266
Erected 2023
Cardinal Stritch
{double-sided}
Samuel Stritch, born Aug. 17, 1887, southwest corner Fifth and Madison, entered Assumption School at age 7. Ordained when 22, he sang his first Mass here, was priest in Memphis and Nashville, Bishop of Toledo, Archbishop of Milwaukee, Archbishop of Chicago. Named Cardinal in 1946, he was called to Rome in 1958 to head Catholic missions, thus became first American member of the Roman Curia.
Location: 1227 Seventh Ave N
Number 74
Erected: 1981
Frederick Stump 1723-1820
Frederick Stump was born in Lancaster Co., Pa. He married Ana c. 1757, Ann Snavely c. 1766, and Catherine Gingery in 1816. He had at least 8 children. In 1761 he founded Stumpstown, Pa. In 1768 he was jailed in Carlisle, Pa. for killing several Native Americans. Freed by a sympathetic mob, he fled to Ga. He served in the Revolutionary War under Col. Francis Marion, was jailed and escaped from Ft. Marion, Fla. He returned to Ga. to find his mills burned and property confiscated.
The Stump family moved west, joined the Amos Heaton party, and arrived at French Lick Dec. 1779. Frederick and son Jacob of White’s Creek signed the 1780 Cumberland Compact. By 1789 Stump built this 2-story log tavern-inn, a 2-story log home to the southeast, grist and saw mills, a cotton gin and distillery. He served as Capt. in the War of 1812 and died in Davidson County with an estate of nearly 1,500 acres of land and 60 enslaved persons. His exact burial location is unknown.
Location: 4949 Buena Vista Pike
Number 53
Erected 1975/ 2020
Dr. Matthew Walker Sr. 1906-1978
Matthew Walker was born December 7, 1906 in Waterproof, La. After attending school in New Orleans, he graduated from Meharry Medical College in 1934 and began teaching at Hubbard Hospital. Walker served as Chairman of the Department of Surgery from 1945-73 and was instrumental in securing a 1968 federal grant to start the Meharry Neighborhood Health Center. In 1970 the community-based clinic’s name was changed to the Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center in his honor.
Location: 1035 14th Ave. N
Number 189
Erected 2019
William Walker “Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny”
Born May 8, 1824, Walker moved to this site from 6th Ave. N. in 1840. In early life he was doctor, lawyer, and journalist. He invaded Mexico in 1853 with 46 men and proclaimed himself Pres., Republic of Lower Calif. Led force into Nicaragua in 1855; was elected its Pres. in 1856. In attempt to wage war on Honduras was captured and executed Sept. 12, 1860.
Location: Commerce St. and 4th Ave N
Number 35
Erected 1970
Samuel Watkins 1794-1880
Brick manufacturer and builder, who at the age of 15 fought under Gen. Jackson in the Creek campaigns and at the Battle of New Orleans, left at his death in 1880 this site and $100,000 as an endowment for a school later called Watkins Institute. A pioneer school for adult education, it has been in continuous operation since 1885.
Location: 2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd.
Number 11
Erected 1968
Dr. Josie Wells 1876-1912
Josie Wells came to Nashville in 1900 to attend Meharry Medical College of Walden University. One of three women graduates in 1904, she specialized in caring for women and children. She held free clinics for needy families, regardless of race. Wells was the campus physician at Fisk University, the first woman on the Meharry faculty, was instrumental in fundraising for Hubbard Hospital and became hospital superintendent in 1912.
Location: 1016 Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard
Number 242
Erected 2021