Mary Kate Patterson

Mary Kate Patterson lived west of the Nashville Turnpike and worked as a courier for Coleman's Scouts, the Confederate cavalry and spy network. She befriended Union personnel to get passes into Nashville, carried back supplies and messages hidden in her buggy, and used window signals at the family house to tell Confederate soldiers when it was safe to come for food. After Sam Davis, a neighbor and fellow Scout, was captured in Giles County, she went to Pulaski to identify his body. In 1864 she married his half-brother John Davis. She died in 1931.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 13 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.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 14 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.
• Fort Negley — 14 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 — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Wheeler's Raid around Rosecrans, December 30, 1862 (La Vergne) — 0.7 mi
• Sewart Air Force Base — 2.6 mi
• Sam Davis — 3.9 mi
• Smyrna Railroad Depot — 3.9 mi