Parks and Recreation Department

Cannonsburgh Village History

Invites You To Step Back In Time at

A Rural Southern Village

Circa 1800-1925

Cannonsburgh Village began in 1974 as a 1976 American Revolution Bicentennial Project. A competition held by the federal government, placed the village as one of the top 16 Bicentennial Projects in the United States. Funds received for this honor were used to buy and move buildings from throughout the Mid-South. The Village depicts time from the Pioneer to Machine Era.

Cannonsburghs history goes back to the year 1811, when there was a village near the same spot named "Cannonsburgh". The name also came from Governor Newton Cannon for whom Cannon County was also named.

History: In an effort to relocate the county seat of Rutherford County to a more centralized location, Captain James Lytle and three other area landowners offered to donate land. Sixty acres of Lytle's choicest land was selected, the new site was to be named Cannonsburgh after Newton Cannon, one of the first Whig Governors of Tennessee.

Lytle requested that a Courthouse be built and the name of the village, be changed to Murfreesborough in honor of his friend Colonel Hardy Murfree whom he served with during the Revolutionary War. The spelling was eventually shortened to Murfreesboro.

It is said that the original village bore the name, Cannonsburgh for a period of about six weeks. Cannonsburgh, A Pioneer Village was built in 1976 as a Bicentennial Project. It was organized as a living museum village of early southern life and dedicated on June 26, 1976.