Historical Marker
Eli Sims (Simms) February 1, 1776-September 14, 1862
Sparta, White County · Tennessee
The brick house was built by Eli Sims and by the people he held in slavery. They put up the two-story house in 1824, and it still stands outside Sparta as the county's first brick dwelling. Sims, a native of Ireland, arrived in 1810, the same year the first log courthouse went up at Sparta, and he set up the county's first cotton gin. Accounts of the house leave the names of those builders unrecorded.
What the plaque says
Eli Sims (Simms) February 1, 1776-September 14, 1862 This White Conty farmer, educator, road commissioner, and county trustee established the first cotton gin in White County. He served also as chairman of the White County Quarterly Court. Born in Larne, Ireland, he settled in White County in 1810 and built this house in 1824, thought to be the first brick house in the county. He married Rachel Townsend in 1807, and they reared 12 children. Sims is buried in the old Zion Cemetery.
Where it stands
35.95583, -85.57028 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Burgess Falls State Park — 6.3 miA day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
- Rock Island State Park — 11 miA park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
- Cookeville Depot Museum — 15 miThe 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
- Cummins Falls State Park — 21 miA 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.