St. John's

Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal clergyman, conceived the idea of a plantation chapel, drew the plans and supervised the work on a corner where four Polk family plantations met. Enslaved people from those plantations built it from materials found on the land. The result is a simplified rural Gothic Revival: slit vents in the limestone foundation, buttresses, a fifty-foot tower whose parapet and corbelled corners recall castle battlements, and pews set around two side aisles with no central aisle. A historic cemetery adjoins the church.

What the plaque says

St. John's Consecrated Sept. 4, 1842, by James Hervey Otey, first Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, this church was built by Leonidas Polk, then Missionary Bishop of Southwest and his three brothers, George, Lucius, and Rufus, who divided a grant received from their father, Col. William Polk, of North Carolina. Memorial services are held here on Whitsunday.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• James K. Polk Home and Museum — 6.4 mi
  The 1816 brick house in Columbia where Polk practiced law and campaigned for the legislature, now a museum that also tells of the people the Polk family enslaved.
• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 6.6 mi
  Columbia's Black business and church district south of the courthouse square, where on the night of February 25, 1946 a white mob gathered and Black veterans stood guard.
• Gordon House and Ferry Site — 12 mi
  A brick house of 1818 beside the Duck River at milepost 407.7 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, where a Chickasaw partner and a Tennessee captain ran a ferry and an inn.
• Meriwether Lewis Site — 19 mi
  The place on the Natchez Trace Parkway where Meriwether Lewis died in October 1809, with his 1848 monument, a pioneer cemetery, a walk on the Old Trace and a free campground.

More markers nearby

• Rattle and Snap Plantation — 1.1 mi
• Hood's Maneuver — 2.3 mi
• Zion — 2.7 mi
• Hood & Schofield, November 24, 1864 — 4.6 mi