Eagleville Baptist Church

Harpeth Baptist was organized on November 7, 1839, and its members could be excluded for drinking or dancing. Enslaved people worshipped there too and sat in the balcony; the church's own history names two of them, Ralph and Barbary. The frame building was used as a Confederate hospital and then burned by Federal soldiers. In 1884 George Martin Savage, the former president of Union University, moved to Eagleville and opened a school he called Savage School.

What the plaque says

Eagleville Baptist Church John Rushing, James Keele, and John Landrum founded the Harpeth Baptist Church on Nov, 7, 1839. Rushing was the first pastor. In 1840 John Scales donated two acres on the Harpeth River north of Eagleville for the site of the first meetinghouse. The congregation moved to Eagleville in 1860, and by 1870 a brick church was built on this site. In 1878 Chesley Williams gave the church land to James C. Williams, W. H. McCord, and Thomas N. Wilson, deacons of the church.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Henry Horton State Park — 11 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.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 15 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.
• Carnton — 16 mi
  The McGavock farm in Franklin, worked by 44 enslaved people in 1860, that became the largest field hospital of the Battle of Franklin.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Newton Cannon — 5.2 mi
• Henry Hollis Horton — 11 mi
• Army of the Cumberland, June 24-26, 1863 (Christiana) — 13 mi
• Rutherford County — 14 mi