Thomas Hart Benton

For fifteen formative years Thomas Hart Benton was a Williamson County man. His widowed mother brought the family to a 2,500-acre tract on Leiper's Fork in 1800, and he briefly taught school in Maury County before being admitted to the Franklin bar in 1806, where his name appeared on more lawsuits than any other lawyer's. In the legislature he sponsored the bill creating Tennessee's circuit courts and one guaranteeing enslaved people a jury trial outside their masters' jurisdiction. In 1813 a Nashville tavern brawl ended with Benton shooting Andrew Jackson in the shoulder.

What the plaque says

Thomas Hart Benton On the foundations of this house was home of Thomas Hart Benton, whose family came from North Carolina in 1799. In 1809 he was state senator. Moving to Missouri in 1815, he became U. S. Senator in 1821 and remained in the senate 30 years. Dying at the age of 76 in 1856, he left a record of outstanding statesmanship.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 5.7 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.
• James K. Polk Home and Museum — 5.8 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.
• Gordon House and Ferry Site — 17 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.
• Henry Horton State Park — 21 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.

More markers nearby

• Joseph Brown — 2.8 mi
• Hood's Maneuver — 4.1 mi
• Hood & Schofield, November 24, 1864 — 4.8 mi
• St. John's — 5.0 mi