14th Annual Forrest Homecoming In Tenn.

By Gregory L Wade · Originally published August 2016 · p. 37

CHAPEL HILL, Tenn.—The Fourteenth Annual Nathan Bedford Forrest Homecoming event was recently held in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, a farming community about forty-five miles south of Nashville. The summer gathering took place at the restored log and frame structure where the Confederate cavalry general lived from age nine to about twelve before the family moved to northern Mississippi. Hundreds gathered to walk the grounds to get a taste of the rough frontier life that would shape the young boy into the military genius he would become. Homecoming events included demonstrations by infantry, cavalry and artillery along with speakers about military and civilian life during the Civil War. Over the last twenty-five years what was once a badly deteriorating log structure where Forrest spent much of his boyhood has been fully preserved by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). The rural nature of the farm has been preserved with more than fifty acres as part of the property and a two-thousand-foot drive to the local county access road. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s actual birth site was a few miles away in a structure torn down in the 1800’s. But his boyhood home remained occupied by various tenants until the 1970’s. At that time the State of Tennessee acquired the site with plans to eventually incorporate it into nearby Henry Horton State Park. Financial issues along with the controversial nature of such a site kept the project on hold until the property was transferred to the SCV in 1997. Reenactor Jerry Hughes of Old Hickory, Tennessee, noted how far the restoration has come noting, “Years ago I thought a lot of it was lost, they have done an incredible job restoring this farm.”