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Originally called Old Grove, Beech Grove
in Bedford County was established very early in the
nineteenth century—a post office was located here as
early as 1819—at the site where McBride’s Branch crosses
the old Ft. Nashborough (Nashville) to Georgia Road. This road,
which would later become the Murfreesboro-Manchester
Pike, was constructed originally in 1805-1807, and a
stage line began to run between Ft. Nashborough
(Nashville) and
Ross’ Landing (Chattanooga). A local landowner, William
S. Watterson, created the village not only as a stage
stop, but also as an opportunity to organize a real
town. Typical of such efforts, Beech Grove would gain,
after the Civil War, a male-female academy, but the 1873
depression forced the school to close.
Beech Grove was the site of the Tullahoma
Campaign's single most important military engagement.
John T. Wilder’s brigade of mounted Union infantry
secured Hoover’s Gap in a battle just to the north of
the community. His mid-western regiments held off the
determined attacks of William Bate’s Confederate
brigade, and allowed
the bulk of the Union Army to pour through and down the
Manchester Pike in an attempt to flank Bragg’s entire position.
Commemorating this engagement, a Confederate cemetery
sits at the northern end of the community—on the hill
held by one of Wilder’s regiments, the 72nd
Indiana. Today, Interstate 24 traverses Hoover’s Gap,
destroying much of the original viewshed and slicing the
gap in two.
Historic Civil War Resources:
Beech Grove Cemetery
– originally a pioneer graveyard, the cemetery became,
in 1866, a site for reinturing the Confederate dead
killed and hastily buried along the hillsides at
Hoover’s Gap. The site is recognized locally
as the South’s first official Confederate cemetery.
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