Fifty yards north is the home (ca. 1856) of Union Col. Fielding Hurst, a slave owner but devout Unionist who raised the 6th Tennessee Cavalry during the Civil War. Hurst's family controlled an area known during the war and long afterward as the Hurst Nation, a Unionist stronghold in Confederate West Tennessee. He was imprisoned in Nashville for his outspoken support of the Union after Tennessee seceded. Released, he returned to Union-controlled McNairy County, and Military Governor Andrew Johnson commissioned him as the colonel of his regiment.
