John Haywood

Haywood taught himself law and resigned from North Carolina's supreme court in 1800 to defend a friend charged with land warrant fraud. At John Overton's urging he moved to Davidson County, where he trained young lawyers in two log offices at Tusculum, perhaps the first law school in the Old Southwest. He joined the state's supreme court in 1816. His 1823 histories drew on early records and interviews with pioneers, and later writers criticized their errors; one tried to trace the state's Native peoples to ancient Hebrews.

What the plaque says

John Haywood On the site of this house was home of John Haywood, a Supreme Court Justice in North Carolina. Founder (1820) of the Antiquarian Society, forerunner of the Tennessee Historical Society and author of the basic histories of the state, he is known as the Father of Tennessee History.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 6.7 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.
• National Museum of African American Music — 7.7 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.
• Ryman Auditorium — 7.7 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.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 7.9 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

• John Bell's Birthplace — 1.9 mi
• Travellers' Rest — 2.9 mi
• Hood's Retreat December 16, 1864 — 3.9 mi
• Cheatham's Line — 4.6 mi