Sam Davis Home

The farmhouse in Smyrna where Sam Davis, the Confederate courier hanged at 21 in 1863, grew up. The state acquired the farm in 1927 and opened it as a house museum in 1930.

The house began as a log structure around 1810; Charles Davis rebuilt it in the Greek Revival style in 1847. It joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

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

His body came home to Smyrna and was buried on Christmas Eve 1863. He was reinterred in 1866 in the family cemetery behind the house, where the grave remains.

Executive director Jenny Lamb says she has heard footsteps and doors closing in the empty house, but there never seems to be anyone there. Earlier staff described the same.

Guide Lee Lankford twice described seeing a woman in period dress, once at an upstairs window. Others describe a “lady in green” and a boy who runs through a closed door and vanishes.

Visitors and staff describe crying from the formal parlor where his body was laid out. The accounts place it near the anniversary of his December wake.

Former directors say a wooden music box in the executive director’s office plays untouched. The story goes that a rocking chair tied to “Grandma Elizabeth” Simmons moved when a tour mispronounced her name.

The museum runs guided tours Monday to Saturday and Sunday afternoons. A dedicated tour interprets the lives of the enslaved people who worked the farm, including a man remembered as Uncle Charlie.