Demonbreun's Cave and Nashville's First White Man

Long before Broadway became renowned for its abundance of wined-up white girls and country music fueled chaos, before even the first twang of an acoustic guitar graced the shores of the Cumberland, was a time when there was not a single white man in the area. Then Jacques-Timothée Boucher Sieur de Montbrun showed up and there was one... This is the story of Nashville’s first white man; a French fur trapper who lived in a cave, traded and fought with the Natives, and dined with Marquis de Lafayette and Andrew Jackson.

Jacques-Timothée Boucher Sieur de Montbrun, or Timothy Demonbreun for short, was a French-Canadian fur trader born in 1731. He served valiantly in the French Army in Canada during the French-Indian War. After France was beaten at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, he packed his bags and moved south into the English colonies that would later become the United States. In 1766 while hunting in a region along the Cumberland called the “French Lick,” he noticed large numbers of Buffalo and Deer and decided to make French Lick his home (“French Lick” was the first name given to the area we now call Nashville.) 

Demonbreun would join George Rogers Clark’s expedition into the Illinois territory and become the lieutenant governor in command of the Northwest Territories. Ole Timmy was a true player at heart, having five kids with his wife Therese in Illinois and popping out another three with Elizabeth in Nashville. The man had two families and eight children in total. In 1786, he resigned from military service and moved to the French Lick permanently.

While Timothy built his cabin, he enjoyed the luxuries of Nashville’s very first waterfront penthouse, in the form of a cave about 4 feet wide and 150 feet long. This is a cave that you can still visit today if you’re in the know, located a couple of miles from Broadway and opening up over the Cumberland River. It was in this cave where the first white man was born in Nashville. Little baby John Baptiste, or the “cave baby” as he is called.

Not long after Timothy started trapping the Cumberland River would, men like James Robertson and John Donelson arrived to establish Fort Nashborough—the first communal settlement in French Lick and the beginning of Nashville as we know her today. 

Demonbreun later founded a mercantile and fur trading business selling cured deer hides, buffalo tongues, and other goods in Nashville’s Public Square and even opened up a tavern in later years. When Marquis de Lafayette visited Nashville on May 4th, 1825 Andrew Jackson hosted a banquet in his honor and Demonbreun was present to enjoy some conversation with Lafayette in their native tongue. Demonbreun died in October of 1826.

Demonbreun’s life is yet another real story of a real man who came before us and, in the face of constant struggle, endured hardships in order to advance civilization. To further digest the spirit of these frontiersmen readers can venture to Centennial Park and visit the fifty-foot granite obelisk erected to the memory of James Robertson, which reads, “We are the advanced guard of civilization. Our way is across the continent”