Morgan's Headquarters

Morgan married Martha "Mattie" Ready in Murfreesboro on December 14, 1862. He was a widower, and she was seventeen. A week earlier his command had captured 1,834 Union troops at Hartsville. The Great Raid of July 1863 through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio was unauthorized, and it ended with his capture. In 1864 he was suspended from command pending a court of inquiry, and in September federal soldiers surprised him at Greeneville, Tennessee, where he died trying to escape.

What the plaque says

Morgan's Headquarters To a house which stood here, belonging to Dr. W.C. Armstrong, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan brought his bride, the former Martha Ready, of Murfreesboro, when establishing his cavalry command in this area. The house served as his headquarters until shortly preceding his departure on his ill-fated Ohio Raid in the summer of 1863.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 11 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 18 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 23 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 24 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.

More markers nearby

• Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986 — 0.3 mi
• Carl T. Rowan — 0.3 mi
• Bernard School — 0.4 mi
• Lucy Virginia Smith French — 1.2 mi