Cedar Grove Cemetery

Cedar Grove holds more members of Congress than its marker names. Five congressmen are buried here, Robert Allen, Robert L. Caruthers, Edward Isaac Golladay, Robert Hatton and Haywood Yancey Riddle, along with Governor William B. Campbell. The city of Lebanon has owned the ground since 1846, and an earlier town burial ground occupied the lot where the College Street Church of Christ stood, now county offices. The cemetery covers roughly 35 acres and lies south of downtown.

What the plaque says

Cedar Grove Cemetery In 1846, the City of Lebanon purchased land for this public cemetery. Surveyed by Professor (later Lt. General, CSA) Alexander P. Stewart of Cumberland University, the first burial took place in 1849. Among the dignitaries resting here are William B. Campbell, Governor of Tennessee and Mexican War hero; Robert L. Caruthers, Governor of Tennessee and "Founder of Cumberland University;" General Robert H. Hatton, CSA; and Dixon L. Merritt, journalist and author of the limerick, "The Pelican." Buried here are a few Union veterans and more than 140 Confederate veterans, including James L. Barry (1847 -1947), Tennessee's last surviving Confederate soldier.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 18 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 23 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.
• Red Boiling Springs — 34 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• Cumberland University — 1.0 mi
• Wilson County Courthouses — 1.1 mi
• Battle of Lebanon — 1.1 mi
• Lebanon Post Office — 1.1 mi