Benevolent Cemetery

How many people lie here is itself a question. Eagle Scouts recorded 320 marked graves in 1991 and 1994, county archive research finds more than 600 burials, and local historians now count about 800 known graves, with burials running from 1897 to 2002. Benevolent Lodge No. 11 was a chapter of a Black mutual-aid society founded in Nashville in 1865. Allen Chapel A.M.E. took the deed in 1988. After a historical marker was dedicated in November 2021, the state review board approved the nomination for the National Register in January 2022, the first step.

What the plaque says

Benevolent Cemetery In 1897, Lodge #11 of the Colored Benevolent Society established this cemetery to serve Murfreesboro's African Americans in the era of Jim Crow segregation. Members included Berry Seward, the city's first black electrician, and Drs. George C. Harden and John McClellan, both graduates of Meharry Medical College. The cemetery's approximate 800 burials include workers, professionals, trades people, and veterans from the Indian Wars, Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II. In 1988 Mrs. Mary Finch sold the cemetery to Allen Chapel AME Church trustees to ensure its preservation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 3.6 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 24 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.
• Henry Horton State Park — 24 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 29 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.

More markers nearby

• Bradley Academy — 0.8 mi
• Oaklands — 0.8 mi
• Old Bradley Academy — 0.9 mi
• Holloway High School, 1929-1968 — 0.9 mi