George Woods

Born into slavery in March 1842, George Woods and his brother Joe were hired as laborers by Edwin Curtiss, a foreman for Frederic Ward Putnam's Peabody Museum digs. In 1882 and 1883 Putnam made George foreman at the Jarman Farm site in Williamson County, and he later oversaw the Hunt Mound dig. He then worked with Gates P. Thruston, whose collection is at the Tennessee State Museum. Most authorities consider the brothers the first African American archaeological field technicians in Tennessee. No photograph of him is known. A death certificate gives January 1912, not September.

What the plaque says

George Woods 1842-1912 George Woods was one of the earliest documented African-American archaeological technicians to work in Tennessee. He and his brother Joe were key participants during the 1877-1884 archaeological expeditions across Middle Tennessee sponsored by Harvard's Peabody Museum. Woods explored the Brentwood Library and Noel Cemetery sites. Later he assisted local antiquarian archaeologist Gates P. Thruston. Woods died September 28, 1912, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 2.9 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.
• Ryman Auditorium — 3.3 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 3.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 3.5 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• Greenwood Park — steps away
• Buchannan's Station — 0.6 mi
• Confederate Circle at Mount Olivet — 0.9 mi
• Walden College — 1.7 mi