Greeneville Cumberland Presbyterian Church still displays a cannonball above its front entrance, tying the building to a Civil War strike that hit the church on Sept. 4, 1864. The marker is part of a story that the congregation keeps in public view, even though the cannonball now on display is not the original projectile that struck the building more than 160 years ago.
Alan Booker, a church congregation member and Greeneville tour guide, said, “It brings home that the war was here.” He also said, “We try to tell the stories because there's a lot of history in Greeneville.” Those details place the cannonball in a wider effort to keep the church's wartime memory visible for visitors who stop at North Main and Church streets.
Greeneville church history
The congregation was organized in 1841 by the Rev. Isaac S. Bonham with 30 charter members. The church moved to its current location in 1860, when Pastor John P. Holtsinger began construction on the first section of the building. The property was purchased from then-Sen. Andrew Johnson for $1,200, and Andrew Johnson donated the final $100 toward the purchase.
Before the Civil War broke out, the property had housed the offices of The American Presbyterian, a Cumberland Presbyterian newspaper edited by the Rev. Joseph B. Dobson. Construction stopped when the Civil War interrupted the project, after workers had completed the first floor. During the war, the building served as a hospital and stables for horses, giving the church a wartime role before the cannonball became part of its public identity.
Sept. 4, 1864 in Greeneville
On Sept. 4, 1864, Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan was staying at the Williams House in Greeneville. Union troops learned that Morgan was in town and surrounded the area overnight in an attempt to capture him. Confederate forces on a nearby hill fired toward the property to give Morgan an opportunity to escape, and a cannonball struck the church during the firing.
Morgan was killed that day in the garden of the Williams property across the street from the church. That sequence leaves the church's entrance display tied to a documented battlefield moment, while the object overhead remains a later replacement rather than the original shell that hit the building.
Church cannonball tradition
According to local legend, women from the church visited Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in the 1930s and asked the superintendent for a cannonball. After the superintendent refused, the women took a cannonball and brought it back to the church, where it was eventually placed above the front entrance.
The detail that the displayed cannonball is not the original matters for how the church tells its own history: the artifact is a symbol, not the same projectile that struck the building in 1864. Visitors who come to Greeneville see both the preserved building and the explanation around it, a small but visible link between the Civil War and the church's present-day role in the town's memory.
