First Settlers in Middle Tennessee

Spencer grew into a legend, and the stories turn on his strength. In one, he threw a militiaman over a high rail fence to stop a fight at a muster, and when the embarrassed man begged him to set his horse over too, Spencer did. Others called him the stoutest man they had seen; he said he feared to strike anyone in anger lest he kill him. He fought in several skirmishes and once had his right arm shattered by a ball. He died on April 1, 1794, shot from ambush in what is now Van Buren County.

What the plaque says

First Settlers in Middle Tennessee In 1776 two Virginians, Thomas Sharp Spencer of Botetourt County and John Holladay of Bedford County, possibly employed by Richard Henderson as surveyors, lived in a hollow sycamore tree on this site and planted the first non-indigenous corn crop. Holladay returned to Virginia in 1778, but the next year he was part of James Robertson's overland trek to established a settlement at French Lick, present-day Nashville. Continued: The Robertson party was joined in 1780 by settlers led by John Dolenson, who arrived by water and included women and children. Holladay was among those who signed the Cumberland Compact, the settlement's first governing document, and he received a square mile of land in what is today's Crieve Hall suburb. He died in Virginia in 1812. Spencer was killed by Native Americans in 1794 near Crab Orchard in today's Smith County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — steps away
  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 — 21 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.
• Fort Negley — 31 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.

More markers nearby

• William Brimage Bate — steps away
• Bledsoe's Lick — steps away
• General William Hall — 0.3 mi
• Abraham "Abram" Bledsoe — 0.5 mi