On Sunday, March 11th at 3 P.M., the Franklin Civil War Round Table will is presenting a tour and lecture of St John’s Church, just outside Columbia, Tennessee. Maury County historian, Bob Duncan, will speak on the church’s history, its involvement with the Polk family including Bishop General Leonidas Polk, and as a final resting place for Confederate General Patrick Cleburne.
Author Shelby Foote wrote of the church, “…a tiny, high-roofed St John’s Church, Ivy-clad and gothic, where Bishop-General Polk had preached and his Episcopal kinsmen had their graves amid flowers and shrubbery fresh and green in bleak November-had so impressed Pat Cleburne, for one, that he checked his horse in passing and remarked that it was ‘almost worth dying for to be buried in such a beautiful spot….”
Bob Duncan is well known in Middle Tennessee as a frequent speaker and writer on local and Tennessee history. He is the author of eight books and is the featured Sunday columnist of the Columbia Daily Herald. He holds several preservation awards including the Tennessee Historical Commission’s Preservation Award in 2002. He is the Maury County historian and the director of the Maury County Archives.