Mt. Olivet Baptist Church

Mount Olivet was a mother church. Moore Stevenson began preaching in 1800 and set up a preaching point at Big Cedar Lick, now Leeville, then helped constitute the church there on April 25, 1801, and served as its first pastor. A daughter congregation, Little Cedar Lick, followed by 1803, and an outreach on Bradley's Creek grew into Smith's Fork. Stevenson, a North Carolina-born farmer who had held a number of enslaved people before turning to the ministry, is credited with helping plant other churches, including Flat Rock, Bethesda and Barton's Creek.

What the plaque says

Mt. Olivet Baptist Church Mount Olivet, the oldest Baptist Church in Wilson County was constituted on April 25, 1801. Until 1843, it was known as Big Cedar Lick Church. Begun in 1859, the native stone building, ¾ mile west, was finished after the Civil War. Slaves hauled the stones for the 2-foot thick walls on a lizard pulled by oxen, then lifted them with a gin pole.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 11 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.
• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 15 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.
• Fort Negley — 20 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.
• Ryman Auditorium — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Edward F. Geers — 4.6 mi
• Benjamin Hooker / John Rice — 5.6 mi
• Cloyd's Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 5.8 mi
• Castle Heights Military Academy — 6.6 mi