William Driver's Grave (Old Glory)

In the quiet Nashville City Cemetery on Fourth Avenue South lies the grave of Captain William Driver, the 19th-century sea captain who coined the phrase "Old Glory" for the American flag. Driver retired from the sea to Nashville in the 1830s; during the Civil War, with Tennessee in Confederate hands, he hid the original Old Glory flag inside a quilt sewn by his daughters, and brought it out in 1862 when Union troops took the city.

The flag itself is now in the Smithsonian. Driver's grave, with a stone-carved flag draped over the marker, is one of the few US gravesites legally permitted to fly the American flag 24 hours a day. A quiet, slightly sombre destination, and one of the more historically resonant small spots in Nashville.

things to do sight
A story
William Driver was a Salem, Massachusetts, sea captain who in 1824 was given a large American flag by his mother before setting out on a circumnavigation of the world. Standing on the deck of his ship watching the flag unfurl in the trade winds, he gave it the nickname **Old Glory** — a name that, through Driver's later move to Nashville and a Civil War episode, became attached to the American flag itself.

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