Sherrod Bryant

His settlement was called Bryant Town. A profile for the 2026 Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture says he bought 274 acres on McCrory's Creek near the Stones River in 1811 and kept adding land for four decades. He bought enslaved people to build and work it, four young men in 1812 and eleven more later, and by 1814 ran a sawmill, distillery and lumberyard there. More than 100 people lived at Bryant Town by 1853. Its land lay around today's Nashville airport, Percy Priest Lake and Long Hunter State Park.

What the plaque says

Sherrod Bryant With a certificate of freedom praising his industry and morality, Sherrod Bryant (1781-1854) moved here from Granville County, N.C., before 1840. A farmer, he was probably the wealthiest free black in Tennessee by 1850, owning land and slaves worth $25,000. An area nearby became known as Bryant Grove. He is buried in Bryant Town Cemetery, Donelson, Tenn.

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.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 15 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.
• Fort Negley — 15 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 — 16 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

• Suggs Creek Church — 3.2 mi
• Wheeler's Raid around Rosecrans, December 30, 1862 (La Vergne) — 4.9 mi
• Mary Kate Patterson — 5.2 mi
• Sewart Air Force Base — 5.5 mi