Sam Davis Home

This is the farm where Sam Davis grew up, in Smyrna, Tennessee, and the Confederate courier is buried in the family cemetery behind the house. A nonprofit runs it as a museum.

The house started as a log dwelling around 1810, and Charles Davis remodeled it in 1847 into its Greek Revival form. The National Register listed it in December 1969.

Union troops captured Davis, then 21, near Pulaski on November 20, 1863. A court-martial convicted him of espionage and carrying mails, and he was hanged on November 27 after refusing to name his informant.

The Davis family enslaved the people who worked this farm. The museum interprets their lives in its exhibits and in a tour devoted to them, including a man remembered as Uncle Charlie.

Staff describe footsteps and doors closing in the empty house. Executive director Jenny Lamb told WKRN, “I have heard the footsteps and the doors closing, but it never seems to be anyone there.”

Guide Lee Lankford describes a woman in period dress at an upstairs window. Others tell of a boy running through a closed door, and of crying in the parlor where Davis was waked.

The museum opens Monday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm, and Sunday, 1pm to 4pm. The last guided tour runs at 3pm from February to December, and the 168-acre grounds require paid admission.