Nelson Merry School

The school was chartered on January 3, 1889, and the man who raised its building money, Peter Guinn, was pastor of Jefferson City's Martha Davis Baptist Church. Its founding principal was G. Nelson Bowen; Eugene E. Peck held the post later. Despite the college name, it taught children from the first grades through high school until at least the First World War, and it went by many titles, among them Nelson Merry Training College, Teachers' College, Academy and High School. Its teams were the Lions, though the 1920s baseball nine played as the Black Cats.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 25 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Blount Mansion — 26 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Mossy Creek — 0.6 mi
• Carson-Newman College — 1.1 mi
• "Little Lord Fauntleroy" — 3.9 mi
• David Crockett and Polly Finley — 5.5 mi