Nashville City Cemetery

Nashville’s oldest public cemetery, opened January 1, 1822 on land the town bought 2 years earlier. It has operated continuously ever since, and the grounds are now part of the Metro Parks system.

Roughly 20,000 people are buried here, among them 4 of Nashville’s founders, including James and Charlotte Robertson, and Charles Dickinson, the man Andrew Jackson killed in their 1806 duel.

The grounds also hold 4 Confederate generals, William Driver, the man behind the flag name “Old Glory,” and original Fisk Jubilee Singers, Ella Sheppard among the roughly 6,000 African American burials.

Metro’s own archivists have traced the cemetery’s best-known legend and picked it apart: the boulder-and-lantern story is embellished, and the lantern hardware dates to the early 1900s, not the 1830s.

The legend centers on Ann Rawlins Sanders, whose boulder grave is locally called “Suicide Rock.” The story goes that she drowned in the Cumberland River after a lovers’ quarrel around 1836.

The account goes that a lantern was hung over the boulder because Sanders feared the dark, and visitors report it glowing with no one there to light it.

Visitors also report an apparition near the boulder and shadowy figures among the gravestones at twilight. Even Ghost City Tours, which tells the story, concedes the cemetery runs short on darker tales.

Grounds are free and open daily, dawn to dusk. The cemetery association runs free themed tours the second Saturday of each month, plus fall Living History and Lantern Tours; keep to the paths.