Dunmovin farm

The first stop on the tour is the Dunmovin farm at 9596 Bethel Road built in the late 1700s and bought by Robert and Angeta Andersen in the 1960s after he retired from the Air Force. Andersen named the property "Dunmovin" because after moving 20 times as a pilot, he decided he was done moving. The property includes a home and a cabin. Six front rooms were added to the house in the 1890s. The Andersens took about five years to renovate the property, including the dogtrot-style cabin. They used materials from area homes and buildings being torn down, such as the back stairs of the Hendrickson Funeral Home and bricks and slate from Giles County High School.

Liberty United Methodist Church

The second stop is Liberty United Methodist Church, built in 1845 of hand-hewn logs. The old log building was replaced in 1886 with a large frame building.

Gardner home

The third stop is the home of Gardner, who was born into slavery in 1847. In 1862, Limestone County merchant Richard Whitehead Vasser sold Gardner, his family and 74 other slaves to Richard C. Gardner, a Nashville merchant and Elkton plantation owner. After the Civil War, E.W. Copeland sold Gardner and John Dixon 106 acres. Gardner built his two-story saddlebag-style house in 1896 to display his prosperity and increasing prominence in the community.

As a black man in Giles County, Gardner owned nearly 300 acres of the most prime land located on and around the banks of the Elk River. He was one of the few African-Americans in Tennessee to build and sustain a large farming operation on land bought after the Civil War. When he died in 1943, more than 1,000 people of all races attended his funeral. The homestead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 and is scheduled to open as a museum in late 2009.

Miz Lossie's house