Aaron Venable Brown

Brown moved to Giles County in 1818 and became the law partner of James K. Polk, whose later presidency gave him a national stage. As governor he called for 2,800 volunteers for the Mexican War and more than 30,000 answered, which solidified Tennessee's Volunteer State name. In 1850 he was a delegate to the Nashville Convention of slaveholding states, where he and his brother-in-law Gideon Pillow co-wrote a resolution backing the Compromise of 1850 that was voted down. Buchanan made him Postmaster General in 1857, and he died in office.

What the plaque says

Aaron Venable Brown A native of North Carolina, Aaron Brown studied law in Nashville and moved to Pulaski to practice. He served four terms in the State Legislature, three terms in Congress, and one term as Governor, 1845-47. In 1850, he wrote the Tennessee Platform of the Southern Convention. Governor Brown died in Nashville.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pulaski Public Square and the Giles County Courthouse — 8.1 mi
  The 1909 courthouse and nineteenth-century storefronts on Pulaski's square, in the town where the Ku Klux Klan was founded and where the architect Moses McKissack III was born.
• James D. Vaughan Southern Gospel Music Museum — 23 mi
  A museum on the third floor of the Vaughan Municipal Building on the Lawrenceburg square, honoring the shape-note publisher who built a songbook, quartet and radio empire here from 1903.
• David Crockett State Park — 25 mi
  A Lawrenceburg park on Shoal Creek where Davy Crockett ran a gristmill, a powder mill and a distillery from 1817, and later broke with Andrew Jackson over Indian removal.

More markers nearby

• Neill S. Brown — 1.8 mi
• John Calvin Brown — 1.8 mi
• Walter Herschel Beech — 8.0 mi
• Donald Grady Davidson and John Crowe Ransom — 8.1 mi