08/02/2026
Tonight is a sad one. Another offense of a graceless age has destroyed another piece of the history of Maury County, removed another testimony of a vanishing Southern people, and ripped another page from the fabric of America that can’t be replaced.
This home, if memory serves me correctly, was the home of T.S. Church. He was born here in 1842 so we know the home was at least 184 years old. In 1861, Church joined the Confederate army and road off to war from this house as a 1st Lieutenant in the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry. I never pursued an in-depth study of Church beyond what I uncovered at the Maury County Archives when I was engaged in an effort to try and purchase the house from the then owner, Mr. Gardner Head. So, I don’t know his exploits in the war. To be honest, as precious as Church’s history was to me, I was actually more interested in the House as well as the site it was located on.
The home sat on property that was part of a land grant awarded to John Gordon for his service during the War of 1812. John Gordon was a contemporary of Davy Crocket and just about as well known to American school children at one time. Now it’s questionable if the average American student even knows who Crocket was.
Prior to construction of the house, men of the 2nd United States Infantry were sent here to build a road on orders from our third President Thomas Jefferson. What most know as the Natchez Trace was originally called the Columbian Highway and was to be paved with stone, the goal being for a fine carriage to travel overland from Nashville to Natchez.
One of the interesting things about the old Church home was the fact that it had a very unique cellar hand carved from a single massive stone. The home was confusing as to its construction leading me to believe the present home had been rebuilt on the footprint of an earlier structure. The presence of the army in 1802 fed my imagination that the extremely labor intensive “cellar” may actually have been a powder magazine carved out by soldiers sent to build the road. They did build a cantonment near by that has some evidence of having been in use for an extended time. All of this evidence as well as it’s location, led me to believe that the old Church home, at least part of it, could have been one of the very few surviving structures to the original Natchez Road, the oldest Federal road in the country. There were older roads from the English colonial period but, as a government effort of the fledgling United States, this was the first.
The house was a classic Virginia Catslide so common in the Tidewater region of Eastern Virginia. I found this unique because this was the only such house like that I’ve ever seen this far west. What’s more, John Gordon before coming to Tennessee, was originally from Spotsylvania County, Virginia near Fredericksburg. All these factors led me to believe the home was much older than 1842. At least the first version was. The siding was held in place by Type II machine cut nails which made their appearance around 1815, the Type I being invented around 1790. Again, more evidence that Maury County had a stoic witness to History that could have been among its earliest structures.
I tried to purchase the home in 2017. Myself and the owner were in agreement and then without warning or reason the owner’s wife had a change of heart and convinced the gentleman not to sell. I had told him my honest intentions were to simply preserve the house. That seemed to please him but in the end it wasn’t enough. At the time of our negotiations, Mr. Head was in his mid 90s. About a year later I approached him again. He said he had a girl about rent it but he wasn’t sure if she was serious and, if she didn’t rent the house, he thought that selling it to me “sounded good”. Apparently his wife had yet another change of heart, this time in my favor. Well, the renter did move in but several indicators said she wouldn’t be there long so, I decided I’d just wait her out. Somewhere along this time I learned that Mr. Head passed away. Out of respect I didn’t want to pursue the house for at least a while until his wife was ready. In the meantime the house had become a major eyesore and a haven for the worst sort of people. The Maury County Sheriff’s Department made 53 calls on that address in 2017 alone. To stop this old home from becoming a “meth house” was also a motivator for me wanting to purchase it.
One day I walked down to the house rehearsing in my mind how I would approach the owner’s wife now that he was out of the picture. I was going to walk the grounds just to re-inspire me before I made my introduction. As I walked up I saw two vehicles in the driveway. Then, to my horror, I saw that one of two men had a chainsaw and was literally sawing through the house on random paths and cutting out huge sections of the corner posts. One of the men, seemingly in a supervisor role, was the stepson of the late owner. Because of all the drug issues and Sheriff’s Department attention the house had drawn, the owner’s wife had as a “solution” for her son to make the home uninhabitable by demolishing parts of it.
Time passed and, even after all that had transpired, I decided it was still worth saving. Then, along with all the migration to Tennessee, a new owner emerged buying not just the old house but the entire 96 acres that was originally John Gordon’s land grant.
I don’t know the new owner nor do I know where he, or she, is from. What I do know is, probably completely unaware of the historic nature of the home and surrounding property, part of their new “dream” included bulldozing the home and burning at least 184 years of the architectural history of a home, the regional history of a piece of Tennessee, and the personal history of an embattled people. All gone. All of it.
