William Dunwoody built a rough wooden tavern on this Main Street corner in the early 1790s, a stopping point along the Great Wagon Trail where pioneers heading west could rest and resupply near Greeneville’s reliable Big Spring. The tavern changed hands and names repeatedly over the following century, known at various points as Bell Tavern and Lane House. In September 1864, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, nicknamed the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy, was staying at a nearby mansion when Union troops, tipped off to his location, ambushed and killed him as he tried to escape toward the stables.
When the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad brought a new depot to town in 1886, local entrepreneur Colonel John H. Doughty demolished the old tavern and built the four-story brick Grand Central Hotel in its place to serve rail travelers. The Brumley family later ran the property as Hotel Brumley from 1908 to 1981. A 1996 restoration overseen by seven historic preservation agencies reopened it as the General Morgan Inn, named for the general killed nearby.