Martin Shofner, son of Michael, an immigrant from Frankfurt on Main, Germany in 1760, came from North Carolina in 1808 with his family by covered wagon, horseback, and on foot and settled this tract of land on Thompson's Creek. The land had been granted to him by the Continental Congress for military service during the Revolutionary War as a cavalryman in a North Carolina regiment under Gen. Green. Near this place, in a log cabin, the first Lutheran Church in Middle Tennessee was founded in 1808, and in 1871 the present Shofner Lutheran church building was erected on land donated by his son Austin. A pioneer settler of Bedford Co. and a patriarch of Lutheranism, Martin Shofner and his wife, Catherine Cook Shofner, are buried here.