"General Griffith Rutherford "

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The General Griffith Rutherford memorial is located in Rutherford County on the Murfreesboro public square. Rutherford (1721-1805) was an Irish-born Revolutionary war officer who later immigrated with his parents to Philadelphia. He entered the war in 1775 as a colonel in North Carolina’s militia, in command all colonial military forces west of the Alleghenies. Rutherford was promoted to brigadier general in 1776, and during the following summer, he raised 2,400 men to campaign against Cherokee tribes in North Carolina. During the War, Rutherford attempted to systematically destroy Loyalist support upon whom the British were largely dependent in North Carolina, and defeated Tory partisans at the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill on 20 June 1780. He was later injured and captured by the British. Because of his service, governor Alexander Martin gave Rutherford 3,000 acres of Tennessee land in Sumner County, which Rutherford occupied in 1792 at the age of seventy-one. On June 13, 1794, Rutherford was appointed to the territorial legislature by President George Washington. Rutherford County was named for General Rutherford in 1803. The General Griffith Rutherford stone memorial was erected in 1946, the year of Tennessee’s Bicentennial of Statehood, by the Tennessee Historical Commission.