Cherry Mansion

Cherry Mansion's bluff held people long before the generals. The house sits on a palisaded prehistoric settlement about 2,000 years old, its mounds largely obliterated by later construction. David Robinson built the house; sources differ on whether it dates to about 1829-30, as a wedding gift for his daughter, or was finished near his death in 1849. After the Civil War, Queen Haley worked in the house as a domestic worker while her husband Alex ran the Cherry family ferry; they were grandparents of the writer Alex Haley. The Cherrys owned the house until 1935.

What the plaque says

Cherry Mansion A house built here by James Rudd, pioneer ferry operator, was replaced by a house built by David Robinson, whose son-in-law, William H. Cherry, improved and enlarged it. Maj. Gen. C.F. Smith, Federal army commander, had headquarters here, where he died and was succeeded by Maj. Gen. U.S. Grant. Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commanding Federal Army of the Ohio, also used it for a short while. Maj. Gen. W.H.L. Wallace, mortally wounded at Shiloh, died here.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee River Museum — 0.3 mi
  A small museum in Savannah's 1939 post office with the Shiloh effigy pipe, a Trail of Tears river-crossing exhibit, a gunport replica from the USS Cairo and the largest petrified wood in the state.
• Shiloh National Military Park — 6.3 mi
  The April 6-7, 1862 battlefield above Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, with the Hornets' Nest, Bloody Pond, a national cemetery and no entrance fee.
• Shiloh Indian Mounds — 7.1 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Tennessee River bluff: the remains of a palisaded Mississippian-era town with seven mounds and the visible rings of its house sites, inside Shiloh National Military Park.
• Pickwick Landing State Park — 12 mi
  A state park beside TVA's Pickwick Landing Dam, a few miles north of the Mississippi and Alabama lines, with a lodge, marina, golf course, aviary and the lake the 1938 dam made.

More markers nearby

• Buford Hayse Pusser — 12 mi
• The Hurst Nation — 20 mi
• The Trail of Tears, Cherokee Removal 1838 — 20 mi
• Farmington Baptist Church — 23 mi