Zion

The congregation descends from Scots-Irish families who came from South Carolina in 1807 and bought five thousand acres of General Nathaniel Greene's land grant. The present church has a gallery where the enslaved members of the congregation sat, and Tiffany stained glass added in 1880. The cemetery holds more than fifteen hundred graves, among them Sam Watkins, author of Co. Aytch and one of seven survivors of his company, and a monument to Daddy Ben, an enslaved man said to have survived three hangings rather than reveal his master's hiding place to British interrogators.

What the plaque says

Zion About 1 mile south, in 1807, a Presbyterian colony from South Carolina built a log meeting house and established a community around it. A school soon followed. A brick church was built in 1815, the present structure in 1847. Many descendants of the founders are in the present congregation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 6.1 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 — 9.9 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

• St. John's — 2.7 mi
• Hood's Maneuver — 2.9 mi
• Rattle and Snap Plantation — 3.3 mi
• Hood & Schofield, November 24, 1864 — 4.2 mi