Where Houston Enlisted

Houston was twenty when he enlisted in March 1813, after years among the Cherokee, in a war against Britain and its Native allies. Thomas Hart Benton, who commanded the 39th Infantry, noticed him, and by the end of 1813 he was a third lieutenant. Early in 1814 the regiment joined Andrew Jackson's force sent against a faction of the Muscogee. At Horseshoe Bend, the decisive battle of the Creek War, Houston was badly wounded. Army doctors expected him to die, but he survived and convalesced in Maryville and other places.

What the plaque says

Where Houston Enlisted Here, where Blount County's first courthouse stood, Sam Houston "took a dollar from the drum", thus marking his first enlistment in the United States Army, March 24, 1813. This culminated in his command of the Army of Texas, which decisively defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto in 1836.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cades Cove — 14 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.
• Blount Mansion — 15 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.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 16 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 18 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.

More markers nearby

• Louis Philippe's Visit — steps away
• William Bennett Scott, Sr. ca. 1821-1885 — 0.2 mi
• Montvale Springs — 0.3 mi
• Maryville College — 0.5 mi