The Civil War ended more than a century ago, but standing on the windswept, open fields a few miles south of Pulaski near the Minor Hill community, the conflict feels much more immediate.

Boy Hero of the Confederacy

This is the spot where the story of courier Sam Davis, the “boy hero of the Confederacy,” begins. Davis was captured here on Nov. 19, 1863, brought to Pulaski to be jailed and tried, and was hanged there on Nov 27. He had just turned 21. Many of the sites along his final journey are memorialized on a trail that leads through the county, but the starting point is a place fraught with emotion for those who carry the war, and its heroes, close to heart.

“It’s a lonesome place,” says Cathy Gordon Wood, president of the Giles County 257, United Daughters of the Confederacy. “If you can imagine the area as being wooded, which it was then, and him asleep under a tree, it can really take you back in time.”

Sam Davis Trail Has Multiple Stops

The UDC has long acted as custodians of the Davis trail’s stops, caring for a marker erected at the capture site in 1926, as well as erecting a statue of Davis in Pulaski’s courthouse square in 1906. It also remains involved in the activities of the nearby Sam Davis Museum, built in 1950 on the site of his execution. The UDC also is working with other groups to place a marker in Maplewood Cemetery, another trail stop, to commemorate Davis’s brief interment there.

These and other efforts by civic groups to keep Davis’s story alive have helped Pulaski and Giles County become a major stop for Civil War enthusiasts and history buffs alike, says Mayor Daniel Speer.

“People drive to Minor Hill to start on the trail, and then get to town where the museum, the statue and the cemetery can all be walked to,” Speer says. “The Davis story really anchors our tourism programs — it’s an ongoing thing for us.”

Campbellsville, Anthony’s Hill Among Other Civil War Sites

In addition to the Davis sites, history buffs can visit the site of the Battle of Campbellsville, a November 1864 skirmish between occupying Union forces and Confederates that preceded the battles of Nashville and Franklin; the Battle of Anthony’s Hill, which took place the following month in the aftermath of the Nashville-area fighting; and the Confederates’ last stand in Tennessee, which took place in Minor Hill a year and one month after Davis’s execution. (The war itself would end four months later.) From her Edwardian home on Sam Davis Boulevard, local resident and historian Margaret Campbell says the steady stream of tourists keeps all this history alive for her, and adds to the pleasure of living in Giles County.

“The story of Davis himself is easy to become fixated on, because he was only a boy doing his duty,” Campbell says. “It’s a tremendous part of Giles County’s culture and history, and when people come through they hear about it, they see our old homes and historic buildings, and we are reminded by them of how beautiful and unique it is here.”