Judge Nathan Green, Sr.

Green reached the bench by the narrowest of margins and then trained his successors. In December 1831 the legislature chose him for a vacant supreme court seat on the fifth ballot, after John Catron moved up to chief justice. He kept the seat until 1852, then taught law at Cumberland University. His son Nathan Green Jr. became a prominent lawyer and legal educator, and his grandson Grafton Green also served on the state supreme court. He was born in Amelia County, Virginia, in 1792.

What the plaque says

Judge Nathan Green, Sr. This house was built by Judge Green, the father of equity jurisprudence in the state, who sat for twenty-one years in the Tennessee State Supreme Court. In 1852 he became a professor of Law at Cumberland University. Before settling in Lebanon, he served in the War of 1812, was a senator in the General Assembly in 1826, and held the post of chancellor of East Tennessee in 1827. Judge Green died here in 1866.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 13 mi
  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 — 17 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.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 24 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Red Boiling Springs — 34 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• Castle Heights Military Academy — steps away
• Cumberland University — 0.4 mi
• Caruthers Hall — 0.5 mi
• Robert Looney Caruthers — 0.6 mi