Forrest's Early Home

Forrest's wealth in Memphis came from selling human beings. From 1851 to 1860 he was one of the city's leading slave traders, working from 87 Adams Street and later 89, a move that raised the capacity of his business from 300 to 500 people. By 1861 he claimed a personal fortune of $1.5 million. In January 1860 a building of his firm collapsed and caught fire, killing two people. He then sold his interest and put the money into plantations before enlisting for the Confederacy in 1861.

What the plaque says

Forrest's Early Home In a house which stood here in antebellum days lived Nathan Bedford Forrest. Born in middle Tennessee, 1821, he spent his early life on a Mississippi plantation. Following marriage in 1845, he came to Memphis, where his business enterprises made him wealthy. He was for several terms an alderman. He enlisted for the Confederacy, June 14, 1861.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — 0.5 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Sun Studio — 0.8 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.0 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.1 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Eugene Magevney — steps away
• Malcolm Rice Patterson — steps away
• Piggly Wiggly — steps away
• First Tennessee Bank — steps away