Robert Cartwright

The Nickajack expedition of September 1794 ended Chickamauga resistance. Southwest Territory militia under Major James Ore, guided by a former prisoner of the Chickamauga, Joseph Brown, crossed Monteagle Mountain and struck the towns of Nickajack and Running Water, where followers of Dragging Canoe had lived since the 1780s. The militia burned the villages and their food stores. Accounts count about seventy Chickamauga dead and few militia wounded. By the end of the year the surviving Chickamaugas had joined the Overhill Cherokee in making treaties with the territory's white settlers.

What the plaque says

Robert Cartwright Near here was the home of Robert Cartwright, early pioneer and Indian fighter. Born 1722 in Virginia, he served in the British Army in the French and Indian War, and in the American Army in the Revolutionary War. He came to the Cumberland settlements in 1780 with the Donelson expedition and was a signer of the Cumberland Compact, the first articles of government for the region. He later was a member of the Nickajack expedition against the Chickamauga Indians, and was overseer for construction of the turnpike now followed by this highway. He died in 1809 and is buried nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 8.9 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.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 11 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Ryman Auditorium — 11 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.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 11 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• Goodlettsville Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 0.3 mi
• Mansker's Station — 0.5 mi
• First Long Hunters — 1.4 mi
• Alexander Wilson — 2.0 mi