by Bill Wilson, with Meredith Thomas

I am asked frequently who founded Murfreesboro and how the city got started. Most people think first of Colonel Hardy Murfree, the officer who led the charge of the Patriots during the American Revolution when they had stormed and seized Stony Point on the Hudson River in New York in 1779.

Well, in actuality it was Captain William Lytle, who in 1811 donated the first 60 acres of land on which the Square of Murfreesboro began.

Murfreesboro was named, though, after Colonel Murfree, a friend of Captain William Lytle.

My friend Bricke Murfree is a local attorney who lives here with his family. He is a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Colonel Hardy Murfree. I believe it is so cool that our community includes descendants of the man that our great city was named after.

Many of us drive down Broad Street routinely, going to and from work, taking our kids to school or ball practice, or maybe just shopping. Did you know there is a cemetery at the corner of Broad Street and Old Fort Parkway in the parking lot of the Haynes Brothers Lumber Company? This is known as the Lytle Cemetery, and it is where Captain Lytle is buried.

Lytle built his home on land that he got from a Revolutionary War grant in 1810. The home sat near where Panther Creek Brews is located today on West Main Street, near the greenway (a building that also happens to house the headquarters of the Murfreesboro Pulse). The home was remembered as being beautiful, with fluted columns. It stood for 110 years and was torn down in 1927 for progress and the then-new Carnation Milk plant.

Reportedly, many of the architectural features of the home were preserved in other homes built later here in the Murfreesboro area.

So, the next time you’re at the red light at the corner of Broad Street and Old Fort Parkway, imagine that stately home sitting there. Also, when you get the opportunity, go park your car over at the Haynes Brothers Lumber Company parking lot and visit the old Lytle Cemetery to see for yourself the resting place of one of Murfreesboro’s founding fathers, Captain William Lytle. We are ever so grateful for these important people in our city’s history.

If you would like to know more about our local history, please check out the Rutherford County Historical Society page on Facebook.