James Davis Porter

Porter's last fight was over a college, and he lost it. As governor he secured the University of Nashville campus for the normal school that George Peabody's fund supported, then came back in 1901 as the university's chancellor and the next year as president of Peabody Normal College. He raised state and local money so the Peabody fund would leave a million-dollar bequest for a permanent teachers college. When the trustees put that college near Vanderbilt instead, Porter felt embittered and betrayed. He resigned in 1909 and retired to Paris, where he died in 1912.

What the plaque says

James Davis Porter Born near here Dec. 17, 1828. Member, General Assembly of 1859, later served the Confederacy as Chief of Staff to Gen. B.P. Cheatham. Member, Constitutional Convention of 1870. Governor, 1875-79; president N.C. & St. L. RR, 1880-1884. Assistant Secretary of State, 1885; Minister to Chile, 1892; later president of Peabody College, chancellor of the University of Nashville and president of the Tennessee Historical Society. He died May 18, 1912, and is buried in the City Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.
• Paris Landing State Park — 16 mi
  A Kentucky Lake state park on the site of a Tennessee River steamboat landing, created after the 1944 TVA dam drowned a sulphur-spring resort.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 19 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 26 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.

More markers nearby

• John Wesley Crockett — steps away
• Edwin Wiley Grove — steps away
• David Edward Jackson — steps away
• John DeWitt Clinton Atkins — steps away