• About Me
  • Cemeteries I Have Visited
  • Have questions?
  • Photos

Adventures in Cemetery Hopping

~ A blog by Traci Rylands

Adventures in Cemetery Hopping

Monthly Archives: April 2019

More Tales From The Marble City: Discovering Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery, Part III

26 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by adventuresincemeteryhopping in General

≈ 2 Comments

Are you back for more stories from Old Gray Cemetery?

Let’s start with Lazarus Clark (L.C.) Shepard, who is thought to have been Knoxville’s first embalmer and undertaker. With a name like Lazarus (whom Jesus brought back to life from the dead in the Bible), perhaps it was inevitable that he ended up with that career.

A native of Connecticut born in 1816, Shepard spent the first 30 or so years of his life in that state. L.C. learned woodworking from his father. He married Emily Strong in 1837 in Bridgeport, Conn. It wasn’t until around 1854, after the Shepards had their four children (the last one died in childhood), that they moved to Knoxville.

Once in Tennessee, L.C. opened a furniture store but it burned four years later. For the next nine years, he worked as foreman of the rail car building department for the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia (E.T.V. & G) Railway, which had just extended its lines to Knoxville.

Conducted a President’s Funeral

In 1867, L.C. went back into the furniture business, adding to this a plant for the manufacture of coffins. Furniture stores often sold coffins in this era before funeral homes. At some point, L.C. trained to be an embalmer. This training became popular during and shortly during the Civil War when preserving the bodies of dead soldiers for shipment home became critical.

L.C. became Knoxville’s first resident undertaker and conducted the funeral of President Andrew Johnson in Greeneville, Tenn, in 1875. I don’t know how he was bestowed with the honor but it was probably because Knoxville, 70 miles away, was the nearest city with an embalmer/undertaker.

An 1871 Knoxville Chronicle advertisement for L.C. Shepard’s business. The ad extols his use of Taylor’s Patent Corpse Preserver.

In 1884, L.C. joined Edward Mann and Thomas Johnson to form Knoxville’s first formal undertaking establishment, Mann & Johnson. In 1892, the firm became known as E.B. Mann Undertaking Company. Today, it’s known as Rose Mortuary. L.C. was also a charter member of the first IOOF (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) lodge instituted in Knoxville, was three times an alderman of the seventh ward, and a trustee of the Tennessee School for the Deaf and Dumb.

The Shepard monument is the only white bronze (zinc) marker in Old Gray Cemetery.

Emily Shepard was active in Knoxville society, and had a heart for the down and out. She helped establish the Industrial Home for Youths, which three years after her death became St. John’s Orphanage. Emily died of cancer in 1882 at the age of 68. The Rev. Thomas W. Humes, whom I wrote about in Part I, was one of her pallbearers.

Clients could custom order what they wanted on the plates of their white bronze monument from a catalog.

The story behind the decline of L.C. Shepard is unclear but his obituary states that in later life, he made a bad business investment and never engaged in business after that. Ads for the business were still appearing in newspapers in the 1880s, however. Notice of his death in The Tennessean said he died a pauper. After a fall in 1900, L.C.’s last few years were spent at Knoxville City Hospital, where he received many visitors. He died on Feb. 15, 1902 at the age of 85.

A Secret Hiding Place?

I’m not surprised that the Shepards have a white bronze (zinc) marker, the only one at Old Gray Cemetery. They were much cheaper than granite or marble markers. As a funeral director, L.C. would have been very familiar with them and possibly ordered it himself when Emily died in 1882. All that had to be done after his death was to add a panel with his own birth and death dates.

Did bootleggers hide illegal booze in Shepard’s monument?

Legend has it that the hollow monument (all of them were) was a drop-off point for bootleg liquor during Prohibition. The panel shown here supposedly served as the entry point to a secret compartment for alcohol and monetary exchanges. Rust over the decades has permanently sealed the metal door.

Mind you, this kind of thing has been said about many white bronze monuments over the years, but has rarely been proven. However, the rusting of the panel suggests is just might have been tampered with over the years. This kind of rust is something I’ve rarely seen on these markers. So maybe the rumor is true in this case.

I could not write a complete story about Old Gray without telling the story of the Horne brothers, who were Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. You can’t pass their nearly life-size monument without stopping.

Brothers in Arms

Born in 1843 in Tennessee, John Fletcher Horne was the middle of the three children of the Rev. George Horne and Amanda Luttrell Horne. His sister, Margaret, was born in 1836. Younger brother, William, was born in 1845.

It is unknown who paid for the monument for the Horne brothers as both parents died before they did.

John served as a sergeant with the Kain’s Battery Tennessee Light Artillery. Younger brother, William, was an assistant quartermaster with the 42nd Georgia Infantry. Both brothers returned to Knoxville after the war. John never married and worked as a merchant for the rest of his life. William married Catherine Kelso in 1872 and they had four children. Both brothers worked together as J.F. Horne & Son Liquor Distributors in later years.

William died in 1891 at the age of 46 from typhoid fever. His wife, Catherine, died in 1897 of a “uterine hemorrhage” died at 51. Their son, Henry, had died at age 12 in 1889. All three are buried together at Old Gray Cemetery.

It is unknown if either Horne brother resembled the soldier that marks their graves.

John Fletcher Horne never married and died in 1906 of cancer.

John died in 1906 of cancer. From what I can tell, he was popular among his fellow veterans and was instrumental in organizing Confederate reunions. It was perhaps his fellow brothers in arms that helped in getting the monument made and placed at the cemetery. It is not something I see often on an individual soldier’s, or in this case soldiers’, grave site.

There’s an interesting footnote to this one. The Horne statue stands with his back to the massive Union Soldiers Tower next door at Knoxville National Cemetery. A few articles I read stated that family of the Horne brothers or the Horne brothers themselves insisted that any monument erected in their honor must have its back to the Union Soldiers Tower. Since it wasn’t constructed until 1901 and he died in 1891, I doubt William had a say in the matter. John, who died in 1906, might have but the truth is unknown.

The Marble City

I didn’t know until researching Old Gray that Knoxville was known as the Marble City in the 1800s. Its quarries provided an ample supply of Tennessee Marble, a highly polishable pinkish gray stone. You can find Tennessee Marble in famous buildings such as the J.P. Morgan Library in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Frank S. Mead is on the left. He was the first president of the Ross Marble Company.
(Photo source: McClung Historical Collection)

According to an article by Paul James, the Ross Marble Company paid for land next to what would become the Ijams Bird Sanctuary and opened up a quarry to extract Tennessee Marble. The site later became locally known as Mead’s Quarry in honor of Frank S. Mead, the company’s first president. He was also owned the Republic Marble Company (at times known as Ross and Republic Marble Co.), which produced grave markers and monuments.

A Quarry Transformed

By the Great Depression, however, demand for the Tennessee Marble plunged and quarrying operations everywhere felt the pinch. Switching to gravel and limestone production, both Ross and Mead’s quarries survived for several decades. By 1978, both were defunct and, particularly Mead’s Quarry, became illegal dump sites.

Arthur Mead worked closely with his brother, Frank, at the Republic Marble Company. He died from injuries he sustained in February 1895 when the sled he and his friends were riding struck a tree.

After thousands of volunteer cleanup hours and the dedication of Ijams park staff, the Ross and Mead quarries have expanded Ijams and jumpstarted Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness, created by Legacy Parks Foundation. The Foundation has over 40 miles of trails within South Knoxville alone. Apparently there are also two cemeteries within the area that I need to explore.

Many of the markers at Old Gray came from stone mined out of Frank S. Mead’s quarry.

Mead’s Quarry was the source for grave markers and monuments in Knoxville cemeteries. The Mead family monument, a large Celtic cross, was sculpted by Knoxville’s David H. Geddes, who owned the Knoxville Monument Works.

It was erected when Frank Mead’s older brother, Arthur, died in a tragic sledding accident on Feb. 6, 1895. He was only 33. He and Frank had worked together in managing the Republic Marble Company. Frank S. Mead was 71 when he died in 1936 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

We’re not quite done at Old Gray. Stay tuned for more in Part IV.

Twas the Dreamer Who Knew God’s Face: Discovering Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery, Part II

19 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by adventuresincemeteryhopping in General

≈ 2 Comments

Last week, we spent some time at Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery. But there are too many stories worth sharing to limit to just one post. So let’s move on to Part II.

If you spend any time reading my blog, you’ll find many stories about women who died young. It was simply how it was before the advent of antibiotics, nutritional awareness and sanitary conditions. As I started looking into the lives of some of the ladies buried at Old Gray, the sad stories accumulated all too quickly.

It’s hard to miss the monument for Virginia Rosalie Coxe. The angel standing in front of the cross is missing part of her arm, but is relatively intact. As you can see, her name is almost worn off of the base. But the lines below it are still there:

In the dawn of the day of ages
in the youth of a wondrous race,
’twas the dreamer who saw the marvel,
‘Twas the dreamer who knew God’s face.

It’s possible Virginia’s epitaph is from one of her own poems.

Born in Virginia in 1863, Virginia “Jennie” Rosalie Michie was supposedly educated at Atlanta’s Gate City High School. However, it’s an institution I can find no information about. I think the reporter meant Girls’ High School, which was known for its academic excellence. It was in Atlanta where I believe Jennie met her future husband, Joseph Coxe. They married there in 1882. Coxe is described in one newspaper as “an eccentric coal baron” from North Carolina. Nevertheless, the couple was quite wealthy.

Virginia Rosalie Coxe was best known for her romantic novel, The Embassy Ball.

Joseph and Jennie lived in New Jersey and Philadelphia before moving to Knoxville. They had two children, Annie and Rosalie. Annie died in childhood but Rosalie would live well into adulthood, marrying and having children.

The Danielle Steele of the 1890s

The Coxes traveled a great deal and moved in society circles, even living in Spain for some time. But Jennie’s greatest pleasure came from authoring romantic stories under nommes de plume such as Percy Thorpe and Virginia Jerome. It was under the latter that she published the novel Princess Beelzebub. She also enjoyed writing poems, short stories, and songs.

Joseph may have initially balked at the idea of having a popular author for a wife, but eventually Jennie wrote under her own name. It was her book The Embassy Ball, published in 1898, that she is most remembered for. From the articles I read, reporters considered her a good interview and women enjoyed settling down with one of her novels. I’d compare her to a Danielle Steele or a Nora Roberts for the 1890s.

Artist’s drawing of Virginia “Jennie” Rosalie Coxe that appeared in the Atlanta Constitution.

A 1901 article in the Nashville-based Tennesseean newspaper describes her elegant Knoxville home Crescent Bluff as having an Italian rose garden overlooking a river. The Coxes hosted many parties there. I also found an advertisement in a Knoxville-based gardening magazine touting a new hybrid tea rose from the Dingee & Conrad Co. that was named after her.

Virginia Rosalie Coxe was only 44 when she died in 1906.

Jennie and Joseph saw their daughter, Rosalie, married to Daniel Hull in 1904 in a lavish wedding at Crescent Bluff. Sadly, Jennie died of Bright’s disease on June 24, 1908 at Crescent Bluff. She was 44 years old.

What Was Bright’s Disease?

Bright’s disease was a catch-all term for several kidney-related disorders, most often what we now call nephritis. The symptoms and signs of Bright’s disease were first described in 1827 by the English physician Richard Bright, for whom the disease was named. Today, nephritis is much easier to treat and not always fatal as it could be in the 1800s. President Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, died in 1914 of Bright’s disease when she was 54.

In 1911, Crescent Bluff, the home where Jennie entertained and lovingly tended her garden, was totally destroyed by fire.

Joseph did not remarry but traveled, spending much of his final years in Italy. He died of pneumonia in 1923 while in Lucerne, Switzerland. Records indicate his body was embalmed and placed in a vault awaiting burial instructions. I haven’t found anything to indicate what happened to him after that. Daughter Rosalie died in 1978 and is buried at Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, Ga.

Much less is known about a woman buried near Jennie. But the monument for Ora Brewster Blanton got me looking into what her story might be.

The upside down torches on the base of Ora Brewster Blanton’s monument signifies death or a life extinguished.

Ora Brewater was born in 1858 in Sweetwater, Tenn. It appears her father died when she was a child, leaving her mother to raise her and her two sisters (one died in childhood and the other at age 30). Ora likely had to work to support her family. Ora eventually moved to Shelby, N.C. to teach music at the Shelby Female Academy.

Death After Surgery

It was in Sheby that Ora met Charles Coleman Blanton, a hardware/dry goods merchant from a prominent family. They married in Monroe, Tenn. in 1885 and moved to Meridian, Texas where Charles worked in the banking business. There are no records indicating they had any children.

Ora died only five years later in 1890 shortly after undergoing an operation. I don’t know what it was for. Her body was sent back to Knoxville for burial at Old Gray Cemetery, where her mother and her sister, Vallie, are also buried.

The statue for Ora Blanton’s monument stands next to a cross on a rock.

In 1895, Charles returned to North Carolina to work with his father and brother at the First National Bank of Shelby. Charles never remarried, becoming a prominent business leader in Shelby and active community member until his death in 1944. He is buried in Shelby’s Sunset Cemetery, where over 100 Blantons are listed.

Joe DePriest’s book about the Banker’s House in Shelby, where Charles Blanton grew up and I believe returned to after Ora’s death, had the only information I could find on Ora’s life. It’s included on the Banker’s House website. Joe and I have swapped emails and I appreciated his help very much.

The Death of Two Wives

Next to Ora Blanton is the monument to Frank Atkin and his two wives, Rosa and Lida. Frank’s brother, Clay Brown “C.B.” Atkin, was a major mover and shaker in Knoxville’s downtown development. He owned and operated several hotels, the jewel in the crown being Hotel Atkin. He was also instrumental in the Tennessee Theater’s establishment. Frank helped his brother in his many business ventures in a less public role.

Rosa was only 33 when she died on tuberculosis.

Born in 1863 to Samuel and Nancy Ault Atkin, Frank married Rosa Estelle Ault (I am guessing they were cousins) in 1884 in Knoxville. They had one son, Frank Jr., in 1885, and a daughter, Lillian, in 1889. Rose died on Nov. 1, 1890 of consumption, now known as tuberculosis.

In today’s world, tuberculosis is preventable and very treatable, with a death rate of only 10 percent. People with compromised immune systems who contract it are most at risk of death. But at the start of the 19th century, tuberculosis was a serious threat to life. It took the discovery of the tuberculosis bacteria by Robert Koch in 1882 for that to start to change. Even then, developing effective treatment would not come for another 50 years.

Frank remarried in 1893 to stenographer Lida Coffin in Hamilton County, Ohio. Lida died on June 1, 1895 of “puerperal peritonitis” or “childbed fever” shortly after giving birth. She was only 27 years old.

“Childbed Fever” Strikes

“Puerperal peritonitis” haunted women for centuries, often striking a few days after childbirth. Unsanitary conditions played a large role in causing these infections and there were no antibiotics yet to treat them after it occurred. It’s surprising to think that once upon a time, a doctor might drag on the same dirty clothes he wore the night before to deliver another child with unclean instruments, but it happened.

In 1903, Frank married a third time to a woman named Lucille. She was 22 and he was 42, making her only a few years older than his daughter, Lillian. I could not find a record of their marriage but they are listed as such on the 1910 Census. Frank died in October 1910 and records state the cause of death was “general breakdown”. He is buried at Old Gray with Rosa and Lida.

The Atkin statue was holding a colorful bouquet of poinsettias along with her wreath when we were there.

Both of Frank’s children, Frank Jr. and Lillian, lived long lives. Lillian is buried at Old Gray with her parents while Frank Jr. is buried with his wife, Robbie Atkin, at Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery in Knoxville. I don’t know what happened to third wife, Lillian Atkin, but I suspect she remarried.

I have more tales from Old Gray yet to share, so come back for Part III.

The Passing Tribute of a Sigh: Discovering Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery, Part I

12 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by adventuresincemeteryhopping in General

≈ Leave a comment

Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect,
         Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
         Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

— Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, 1750

Last week, I visited Tennessee’s Knoxville National Cemetery and shared the story of the Union Soldiers Tower. Next door is Old Gray Cemetery which is a little older and a bit bigger than KNC.

One of the gates at Old Gray Cemetery. Across the street is St. John’s Lutheran Church.

Once used as pastureland just outside Knoxville’s city limits, the land that became Old Gray Cemetery was considered ideal for a suburban cemetery. The first parcel was purchased in December 1849, and landscape architect Frederick Douglass was hired to come up with a ground plan. Founded in 1850 and dedicated in 1852, it was called Gray Cemetery until 1892 when New Gray Cemetery opened about a mile away. Old Gray now covers almost 14 acres.

Named After a Famous Poem

Old Gray Cemetery got its name from Thomas Gray (1716-1771), the English poet who wrote the poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” in 1750. It was suggested by Henrietta Brown Reese, wife of Judge William B. Reese. He was Old Gray’s first board of trustees president.

Historical marker at Old Gray Cemetery, founded in 1850. It’s the second oldest cemetery in Knoxville.

Many of Old Gray’s first burials were victims of Knoxville’s 1854 cholera epidemic. The cemetery also contains several victims of the New Market train wreck of 1904. The tragedy occurred when two Southern Railway passenger trains collided head on near New Market, Tenn. on Sat., Sept. 24, 1904, killing at least 56 passengers and crew and injuring 106.

The area around Old Gray (and KNC) is home to a large homeless population, many of whom come to the Salvation Army Center nearby. A number were living under the Broadway overpass in 2017 but a 2018 article detailed the city’s plan to turn that area into a “day park” for the homeless so that may have changed things.

Road into Old Gray Cemetery from front gates.

When Sean and I were there, we saw a few homeless men quietly eating their lunch in the cemetery. Elsewhere, some college students were sunning themselves on blankets, enjoying the unusually warm weather for November and what was left of the colorful autumn leaves.

One of the first graves inside the cemetery gates is a slab gravestone for the Rev. Thomas William Humes, first president of the University of Tennessee (under that name). First known as Blount College, it opened in 1794 with the Rev. Samuel Carrick as president.

A Journalist, Lawyer, and Minister

Humes graduated from East Tennessee College (what the University of Tennessee was called at that time) in 1831, and obtained his master’s degree there two years later. He entered Princeton Theological Seminary to become a Presbyterian minister, but left after deciding he could not take the Westminster Confession of Faith.

During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Thomas William Humes worked as editor of the Knoxville Times, the Knoxville Register, and a Whig Party paper, The Watch Tower.

Back in Knoxville in the mid-1840s, Humes  studied under Tennessee’s Episcopal Bishop James Otey. In July 1845, Humes was ordained a priest by Bishop Otey, and in September 1846, Knoxville’s St. John’s Episcopal Church congregation elected him rector.

Although Rev. Humes had owned slaves, he helped several slaves in Knoxville purchase their freedom during the late 1840s and 1850s. He also opened a school for Knoxville’s free blacks and freed slaves. During the secession crisis of 1860 and 1861, Humes stayed loyal to the Union, despite the fact many relatives and most of his congregation supported secession. After he refused to acknowledge Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s National Day of Prayer in 1861, Rev. Humes resigned as rector.

When General Ambrose Burnside’s Union forces occupied Knoxville in September 1863, Burnside asked Rev. Humes to resume his position at St. John’s and he agreed. St. John’s member and Confederate diarist Ellen Renshaw House boycotted Rev. Humes’s opening sermon, calling Humes “the grandest old rascal that ever was.”

In 1865, Rev. Humes became president of then-East Tennessee University and secured an $18,500 federal grant to help restore the school’s deteriorated campus, occupied by both Union and Confederate armies during the war. In 1869, Tennessee’s state government designated the school the recipient of the state’s Morrill Act (land grant) funds. This amounted to $400,000, which generated for the school $24,000 in annual interest.

The Rev. Thomas William Humes was president of East Tennessee University, which became the University of Tennessee in 1879.

In 1879, East Tennessee University changed its name a final time to the University of Tennessee. Rev. Humes resigned as president in 1883, and was succeeded by Charles Dabney in 1884. In later years, Rev. Humes helped raise funds for educational and economic development in East Tennessee. He died on January 16, 1892.

Avowed Unionist with Shifting Loyalties

Across the drive, you can see monuments and a bench for the Maynard family. Horace Maynard was another East Tennessean loyal to the Union, despite the fact his views seemed to flip flop depending on the times.

Born in 1814 in Westboro, Mass., Maynard graduated from Amherst College in 1838 and came to East Tennessee College to teach. Maynard also studied law. Admitted to the Bar, he began practicing in 1844.

Maynard also involved himself in politics. Unsuccessful in his first bid for national office in 1853, he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1857. He was re-elected twice and served until Tennessee seceded from the Union. He went on to serve as the Attorney General of Tennessee (1863-1865) and as a delegate to the Southern Loyalist Convention in Philadelphia (1866).

Elected to the House of Representatives from Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District in 1857, Maynard became one of the few Southern congressmen to maintain his seat in the House during the Civil War.

Maynard’s views on slavery reflected shifting sentiments common among East Tennessee Unionists. During the 1830s, Maynard, the son of an abolitionist, called slavery “a curse to the country.” But by 1850, Maynard was defending the practice of slavery in letters to his father. In 1860, Maynard owned four slaves, and while he opposed secession as a congressman, he still defended slavery. Toward the end of the Civil War, Maynard again adopted an abolitionist viewpoint, and supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Horace Maynard successfully defended the creation of Union County, Tenn. from a challenge from Knox County. Grateful residents renamed the Liberty community Maynardsville to show their appreciation.

After Tennessee was readmitted to the Union, Maynard was again elected to the U. S. House of Representatives and served until 1875. He then campaigned unsuccessfully for the governorship of Tennessee. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him U. S. Ambassador to Turkey in 1875, where he remained until May 1880. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him Postmaster General in June 1880 and he served until 1881. Horace Maynard died in Knoxville on May 3, 1882.

Horace Maynard’s son, James, is buried to his left of his father.

Horace Maynard and his wife, Laura Ann, had seven children together. During the Spanish–American War, the USS Nashville, commanded by their son, Washburn, fired the war’s first American shot. Eldest son Edward, who is buried near his parents at Old Gray, has a tragic story worth mentioning.

Tintype of Edward Maynard, who survived the Civil War but died in 1868 of yellow fever.

Death in the Caribbean

Born in Knoxville in 1843, Edward Maynard was attending Eastern Tennessee University when the Civil War broke out. His studies were abruptly curtailed, as he and his fellow students chose up sides and left to enlist.

Soon after joining the Union’s 6th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, Edward was promoted to lieutenant colonel and attached to the 23rd Army Corps. Maynard’s regiment was at the Battle of Murfreesboro, engaged the enemy near Lost Mountain, Ga. in June 1864 and took part in the Battle of Nashville. He escaped unscathed and mustered out in March 1865.

After the war, Edward held a minor position in the secretary of state’s office in Nashville. In May 1866, he became consul to the Turks Island, at the time a British-held island north of Cuba and Hispaniola. Unfortunately, his two years in the tropics ended tragically.

Edward Maynard’s monument is a shortened column, indicating a life cut short.

On January 10, 1868, Edward Maynard died of Yellow Fever. His family did not receive news of his death until Feb. 7, 1868.

The Short Life of Lillien Gaines

Finally, I’d like to share the story of a monument that I saw from some distance and made certain I got a look at soon after we arrived.

Born in Savannah in 1868, Lillien Gaines was the daughter of Confederate Col. James L. Gaines and Belle Porter Gaines. A native of Knoxville, Col. Gaines was wounded at the Battle of Five Forks and lost his arm in the last days of the Civil War. He was already engaged to Missouri native Belle Porter. According to one account I read, Col. Gaines offered to release her from their engagement due to his “mutilation and poverty” but that she married him anyway.

Lillien Gaines was only seven years old when she died in 1876.

After marrying on Nov. 22, 1865, Col. Gaines and Belle moved to New York where son Ambrose was born in 1866. They then moved to Savannah, where Lillien was born. They later moved to Knoxville where Col. Gaines was elected comptroller in 1875 and the family moved yet again to Nashville.

Lillien spent most of her short life in Knoxville.

The Gaines’ had only been in Nashville a short time when Lillien became ill. She died on April 29, 1876. While a Memphis newspaper reported she died of meningitis, Tennessee death records indicate she died of “paralysis of the lungs.” Her grieving parents brought her body back to Knoxville, where her father was born and Lillien had spent most of her short life.

Col. Gaines and Belle returned to Nashville where they had a third child, James, in 1878. Col. Gaines died in 1910 and Belle died in 1913. Both of them are buried next to Lillien.

There are many stories yet to share from Old Gray Cemetery in Part II.

 

 

 

Visiting Knoxville National Cemetery: The Story of the Union Soldiers Monument

05 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by adventuresincemeteryhopping in General

≈ 1 Comment

I’m leaving Nebraska behind for now and heading closer to home with a visit to Knoxville National Cemetery (KNC).

Would it surprise you to know that KNC is home to a 60-foot monument dedicated to Tennessee’s Union soldiers?

Before I dive into that, let me set the scene. My in-laws live in Knoxville and we visit them often. During Thanksgiving week of 2017, I knew I wanted to get over to KNC and Old Gray Cemetery, which are conveniently located right next to each other and share a stone wall border. So on a sunny fall day, I grabbed my son and we headed downtown.

Because we were visiting Old Gray as well, we spent less time at KNC than I would have liked. There were also some visitors at KNC that day that appeared to be sharing a quiet moment at a loved one’s grave and I did not want to disturb them with our presence.

According to Find a Grave.com, Knoxville National Cemetery has close to 9,000 recorded burials.

While Tennessee is a Southern state, it did not secede from the Union quickly or easily. In fact, it was the last state in the Union to leave it on June 8, 1861. In the state’s mountainous eastern section, few people owned slaves and voters opposed secession by more than 2-to-1.

As it turns out, Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state and more soldiers for the Union Army than any other Southern state. According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia, while Tennessee did send over 120,000 soldiers to fight for the Confederacy, over 31,000 men fought for the Union. While there’s quite a difference in those two numbers, it makes a Union monument in Knoxville not so unusual after all.

According to the cemetery web site, Union Major Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside established Knoxville National Cemetery during the Civil War after the siege of Knoxville and subsequent Battle of Fort Sanders on November 29, 1863. Unlike most Union commanders, while Burnside was an Indiana native, he had close ties to the South because his father grew up in South Carolina.

While he had a notable military career and was elected governor of Rhode Island, Ambrose Burnside’s facial hair is what he is now better known for and the term “side burns” that it coined.

Burnside was known for his distinctive facial hair and because of it we can thank him for the term “side burns”. After the Civil War, he was elected to three one-year terms as Governor of Rhode Island, serving from May 29, 1866, to May 25, 1869.

The land Burnside acquired for the new federal cemetery amounted to almost 10 acres. After the war in March 1867, legal judgment in the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, when it was already the site of more than 2,000 burials, affirmed the U.S. government’s purchase of the land.

A native of Ohio, Captain H.S. Chamberlain is thought to have designed Knoxville National Cemetery.

Burnside is thought to have given the task of laying out the cemetery to his assistant quartermaster, Captain Hilton Sanborn (H.S.) Chamberlain. There’s a little uncertainty about that. The cemetery’s first burials were Union dead exhumed and moved from Cumberland Gap and other parts of the region. By 1874, there were 3,135 interments in the 10-acre tract. Approximately a third were unknown.

The cemetery’s plan was so effective that KNC was one of the few in the nation that required no alterations upon being designated a national cemetery after the war.

I don’t usually take my son with me on cemetery hops but the promise of chicken fingers afterward was a strong inducement.

After the war, Tennessee adopted a constitutional amendment forbidding human property on February 22, 1865 and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866. It became the first state readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866.

The graves at Knoxville National Cemetery are arranged in a circular pattern, with each burial section separated by walkways. The burial sections each form one quarter of the circle, with the headstones converging toward the middle, where there is a flagpole and cloth canopy.

That leads me to the Union Soldiers Monument at KNC. I learned that its grand size was no accident.

In 1892, Knoxville’s Confederate veterans installed a 48-foot monument topped by a statue of a Confederate soldier at Bethel Cemetery near the Mabry-Hazen House in East Knoxville. There are over 1,000 Confederate soldiers buried there. I saw that monument in January this year, but it was through the cemetery fence because Bethel Cemetery is only open on Saturdays for a few hours. I imagine the fear of vandalism is what is behind that.

The cornerstone of the Union Soldiers Tower was laid in 1896.

In response, the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) formed a commission, headed by former Union Army officer and Knoxville Journal publisher William Rule, to raise money to build a bigger monument at KNC. The commission signed a contract with William B. McMullen, presi­dent of the Tennessee Producers Marble Company and the Southern Monument Company, for material and construction, and with Colonel William A. Gage for engineering consultation.

The cornerstone was laid in 1896 but fundraising went slowly. The Spanish American War also intruded but perhaps spurred Knoxvillians to begin to see KNC in a new light. During the Civil War, it was the resting place of men mostly from far away who died in or near East Tennessee and had to be buried here. Now it was to be the resting place of men from East Tennessee who died far away and whose families requested them to be buried at KNC.

In the end, the monument cost $11,300. Of the estimated 7,000 donations, most came as one-dollar offerings from Union pensioners. The 50-foot-tall marble tower, topped by a bronze eagle with outspread wings, was unveiled on Oct. 24, 1901. Some were surprised because the original plans had featured a Union Soldier on top, not an eagle.

The original Union Soldiers Monument at KNC featured an eagle on the top. It was struck by lightning in 1904. This Library of Congress photo is from a few years prior to that.

On August 22, 1904, the Union Soldiers Monument was struck by a bolt of lightning during a storm. The castle-like foundation was a ruin and the strike sent chunks of stone into houses across the street. The bronze eagle and the cannonball it was perched upon were missing from the monument’s top. The eagle was found on the ground in four pieces, its head and wings severed.

Unfazed, the GAR commissioners planned a quick rebuild, this time using federal funds secured by Congressman Henry R. Gibson. Designed by the local architectural firm Baumann Brothers, the new monument largely followed the original design. The main difference was that the bronze eagle was replaced by an eight-foot statue of a Union soldier. The new monument was completed on October 15, 1906.

This is what it looks like today.

The Union Soldiers Monument is sometimes referred to as the Wilder Monument because of the soldier’s alleged resemblance to Union General John T. Wilder.

Some people refer to it as the Wilder Monument because the soldier is said to resemble Union general and East Tennessee businessman John T. Wilder, who was the only ranking general on the memorial tower committee. There’s actually a Wilder Monument at Georgia’s Chickamauga Battlefield that was built to honor him. It features a castellated tower with an interior staircase, but with no statue on top.

Here’s General Wilder as a soldier.

A native of New York, General John Thomas Wilder came from a long line of military men. Wilder was also an engineer who operated the first two blast furnaces in the South.

Here’s as good of a close up as I could get of the monument soldier.

This marble statue of a Union soldier replaced the bronze eagle destroyed by a lightning strike in 1904.

When the tower was built the first time in 1901, it stood 50-feet tall. But when the rebuild was completed in 1906, it topped out at 60 feet.

In 2009, Evergreen Architectural Arts was hired to make repairs and conserve the Union Soldiers Monument.

You can’t enter the tower but you can look through the door and see the stained glass American eagle inside.

A stained glass American eagle resides within the Union Soldiers Monument.

One Civil War Medal of Honor recipient is buried at KNC. Private Timothy Spillane of the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry received the commendation for gallantry at the Battle of Hatcher’s Run in Virginia. He died in Knoxville in 1901 and was buried at KNC around the time the first tower was erected. World War II Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Troy A. McGill, killed in action in 1944, was originally kept in a military mausoleum in the Philippines, but his remains were re-interred at KNC 1951.

I didn’t know these markers were there so I did not get photos of them during our visit.

Soldiers from all wars, from the Civil War to recent times, are buried at KNC. One of them was Tennessee native Patrick Belmont Northern Earle, born at Three Springs about 40 miles east of Knoxville. He was a graduate of Knoxville High School and at the time of his enlistment was a student of the University of Tennessee.

First Lieutenant Belmont Earle was only 23 when he was killed in action near Bellicourt, France in World War I. (Photo source: ETVMA.org)

First Lieut. Earle left Knoxville in September 1917 as an officer of Company D, 117th Infantry. At Camp Sevier, S.C., he became an aide-de-camp of Brig. Gen. William S. Scott, and when the latter was succeeded by Brig. General Tyson in command of the 59th Brigade, First Lieut. Earle remained on staff duty.

First Lieut. Belmont Earle was on staff duty but asked to be sent to the front line once he arrived in France.

However, after reaching France, First Lieut. Earle asked to be assigned to line duty and was ordered to Company M, 118th Infantry. He took part in all engagements up to October 5, 1918, when he was fatally wounded near Bellicourt. He died October 7, 1918. He was only 23 years old.

Before I close, there is a wonderful four-part article by the Knoxville History Project that proved to be a great source for what I wrote. If you want to know more about the origins of Knoxville National Cemetery and its history, you can find it here.

Next time, I’ll be next door at Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery.

Recent Posts

  • Oklahoma Road Trip 2019: The Sooner the Better at Fort Sill’s Beef Creek Apache Cemetery, Part I
  • Oklahoma Road Trip 2019: The Sooner the Better at the Fort Sill Post Cemetery, Part II
  • Oklahoma Road Trip 2019: The Sooner the Better at the Fort Sill Post Cemetery, Part I
  • Looking Back: 10 Years of Adventures in Cemetery Hopping
  • Oklahoma Road Trip 2019: The Sooner the Better at Old Elgin Cemetery, Part II

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013

Categories

  • General

Blogroll

  • A Grave Interest
  • Beneath Thy Feet
  • Cemetery Photography by Chantal Larochelle
  • Confessions of a Funeral Director (Caleb Wilde)
  • Find a Grave
  • Hunting and Gathering (cool photography site)
  • Southern Graves
  • The Cemetery Club
  • The Graveyard Detective
  • The Rambling Muser

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Adventures in Cemetery Hopping
    • Join 374 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Adventures in Cemetery Hopping
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...