Athens

Samuel Gholson shows how far a career could bend in the same town. He practiced law in Athens from 1830 to 1839, served in Congress, and then sat as a federal judge from 1839 until he resigned in January 1861 when Mississippi seceded. In 1862 he served as a private at Fort Donelson, Iuka and Corinth. Commissioned a Confederate brigadier general of cavalry in 1864, he lost his right arm at Egypt Station that December. He died in Aberdeen in 1883 and lies in Odd Fellows Cemetery there.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waverley Mansion — 21 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 22 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Chickasaw Council House — 29 mi
  A roadside exhibit on the Natchez Trace Parkway marking the Chickasaw capital of the 1820s and the council house where the 1832 treaty of Pontotoc Creek ended Chickasaw title to Mississippi.

More markers nearby

• DeSoto Expedition — 6.5 mi
• Aberdeen Mississippi Blues — 6.6 mi
• Dr. W.A. Evans — 6.9 mi
• Aberdeen — 7.0 mi