Sacred Ground: Angel-Wright Cemetery
Between the old Gum Fork and Capachene settlements east of Winfield, on the banks of Jellico Creek, is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in all of Scott County. It is called Angel Valley, and its name doesn’t come from its angelic qualities, but from the family that once farmed this fertile valley.
On the upper end of this valley, on a wooded knoll in the middle of the farm, is the Angel-Wright Cemetery, the final resting place of many members of the Angel family that once owned all this land. There are several Angel cemeteries in the area, and this one is foremost of them all. The “Sacred Ground” series makes its third visit to Jellico Creek, this time to explore the area’s very first families: the Angels and the Trammels.
A stone’s throw from the cemetery knoll is what remains of the original Angel homeplace: a stone chimney that still stands, more than 200 years later. Standing here, on a warm spring morning, multitudes of songbirds make music in the forest canopy that skirts the pastures and meadows. Nesting Canadian geese honk from a nearby pond. Wild turkeys feed in the grasses. Rabbits munch on new clover. Life is abundant at Angel Valley, and it’s not hard to see why Archibald Angel and his wife, Nancy Ann Trammel, chose this place.
The paternal grandfather of the Angel family that once settled Jellico Creek was William Angel II, a native of Shropshire, England, who migrated to America as a young man and lived most of his life in Virginia. The maternal grandfather of the family is the more widely known Dennis Trammel, who served as a militia captain in the Revolutionary War and would eventually wind up in what is now Scott County. The two families migrated here together at some point in the early 1800s. It’s not clear where William Angel’s son, Arch, and Dennis Trammel’s daughter, Nancy, were married, but family historians agree they were married by the time the two families made the move to the Cumberland Plateau.
This is their story.
The Angel family
William Angel and Mary Partridge were the grandparents of Archibald Andrew “Arch” Angel, who was probably born sometime around 1775 in North Carolina. Their son was William Angel II, the first member of the Angel family to migrate from England to the American colonies. He married Mary Rachel Godwin in 1774. Arch Angel was one of their first children.
The Trammell family
The Trammell family’s roots go back further in America than the Angel family’s. On the Trammell side, Thomas Trammell was the first to migrate from England to the colonies, in the late 17th century. He was the great-great-grandfather of Dennis Trammell.
Dennis Trammell was born in Amelia County, Va. in 1759, and the family moved to North Carolina when he was a child. When the Revolutionary War began, Trammell joined the North Carolina militia and became a captain.
The families intwined
Arch Angel and Nancy Ann Trammell were married around 1804, probably in East Tennessee. Various court records indicate that Dennis Trammell had moved his family to what is now Claiborne County by 1797, and then to Knox County, Ky. — east of Williamsburg — by 1805.
In February 1804, Col. Return Jonathan Meigs — a Revolutionary War hero who was serving as a Cherokee agent in Tennessee — sent a letter naming Arch Angel and a number of others as “intruders on Indian Lands on the West Side of Cumberland Mountain.” The letter didn’t specify where Angel would have lived at the time, but mentions Little South Fork, Clear Fork, Mouth of Buffaloe, Poplar Creek, Tattersons Creek, Elk Ford and the Cumberland River.
At the time, this area was Indian territory; the Cherokee did not cede ownership of the lands to the United States until the Third Treaty of Tellico shortly thereafter. It was that treaty that opened the Cumberland Plateau to white settlement.
Meigs’ letter ordered all of those living on Indian lands to remove themselves and their property or be forcibly removed by the U.S. military.
In 1807, both Angel and Trammell appear on tax lists in Knox County, Ky.
By 1810, the families had arrived in what is now Scott County, settling in the Oneida area. A survey record indicates that Angel owned 298 acres on Pine Creek, while a separate record indicates that Trammell owned 216 acres on Pine Creek.
At some point thereafter, the families moved to Angel Valley on Jellico Creek. According to census records, Arch Angel owned five slaves in 1830 and seven slaves in 1840.
Scott County’s oldest grave
It’s impossible to know exactly when the Angel family cemetery was established on the wooded knoll in the center of the farm. There are more than 100 graves marked with uninscribed field stone.
However, the cemetery does contain the oldest verifiable headstone in Scott County: that of James Trammell, Nancy Ann’s older brother who died Jan. 11, 1826 at age 51. It is the earliest gravestone in Scott County that contains a name. There is an earlier headstone found at Davis Cemetery off Alderville Road in Winfield, but it is broken and doesn’t contain a name; only a date.
You might expect that such an early headstone would be quite simple, especially in a graveyard that is filled with simple fieldstones. However, Trammell’s stone was actually quite elaborate for its time, and is similar in craftsmanship to several other stones that are found at the Angel-Wright Cemetery, as well as at other cemeteries in the Jellico Creek area.
James Trammell was the father of Civil War Capt. Dennis Trammell, who fought for the Union army and had his Jellico Creek home burned by Confederate guerrillas while he was away at war. His farm was destroyed as part of the 1862 raid that saw Rebel guerrillas murder Lark Cross and Ranson Vanover. Legend has it that the guerrillas allowed Trammell’s blind wife, Polley, to be led away from the home before it was torched.
The cemetery grows
Both Nancy Ann Trammell Angel, who died in 1829, and Arch Angel, who died in 1847, are believed to be buried at the Angel-Wright Cemetery.
A descendant of the Angel family has documented Nancy Angel’s grave at the cemetery, citing a stone that is engraved “N.A. Angel 28 __ 1829.” The descendant believes that an uninscribed stone nearby marks the grave of Arch Angel.
As part of transcribing the cemetery for this story, the Independent Herald was unable to locate Nancy Angel’s stone. However, that is not surprising; the old stones are weathered and increasingly difficult to read. Robert Bailey in 1994 and Tim West in 2007 were unable to locate the graves of Arch and Nancy Angel, as well.
It’s also worth noting that, in 2001, Peggy Pennell transcribed the cemetery and discovered a stone bearing the letters “N.A.D.,” along with what appeared to be a “28” and “1929.” That’s strikingly similar to the stone that has been documented by a descendant as possibly being the stone of Nancy Angel.
One of the graves at the cemetery is that of Hannah Angel, who died in 1848 at age 66. Her stone denotes that she was a “bond servant.”
A final note on the Angel family: It is believed that Arch Angel’s mother, Mary Godwin Angel, died in 1841 and is buried at the cemetery. However, no stone can be verified.
The Wright family
With time, the Angel family cemetery grew to include others from the small community, including Blankenships, Bradens, Chitwoods, Ellises, Lovetts, Webbs, and Wrights — the family whose name is on the cemetery today.
The Wright family married into the Angel family. Dennis Wright (1858-1925) and his son, Lewis, married Angel cousins. Dennis Wright and his wife, Lucinda Angel (1858-1925) are both buried at the cemetery. Lucinda was a great-granddaughter of Arch and Nancy Ann Angel. Her father was William Angel and her grandfather was James Angel.
Also buried there are twins Claude and Velma Wright, who died several weeks apart as infants in 1918. Another infant, Dennis Wright, was buried there in 1929.
Richard Wright, age 23, the son of Dennis and Lucinda, was buried there in 1923.
To understand why the cemetery is known as the Angel-Wright Cemetery today: burials had mostly stopped there by the 1920s, and several of the final burials were the Wright family.
The Angel family still lived in the area. In 1924, Thomas Angel — Lucinda Angel Wright’s brother — was buried there when he died at age 65.
Following baby Dennis Wright’s death in 1929, there were only two more burials at the cemetery. Oklahoma Ellis, the infant son of Truman and Roberta Ellis, was buried there in July 1934. And, finally, Isabell King Angel — Thomas Angel’s wife — was buried there when she died in June 1943 at age 74.
With that, the cemetery ceased to be active.
Literally a stone’s throw away — just across the old road that traveled to the Angel home — is a separate cemetery, the much smaller Nimrod Angel Cemetery. It will be the subject of the next “Sacred Ground” installment as the story of Angel Valley continues.
Cemetery Census
Angel-Wright Cemetery
GPS Coordinates: 36.58310, -84.30750
First Burial: 1826*
Last Burial: 1943
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? No.
Albert Angel 1897-1910
Alford Angel 1894-1894
Archibald Angel 1841-1901
Archibald A. Angel* 1775-1847
Elizabeth Angel 1871-1884
Freeman R. Angel 1890-1895
Hannah Angel 1782-1848
Isabel King Angel 1869-1943
James Angel 1875-1876
Joseph H. Angel 1900-1900
Lewis Angel 1869-1873
Lewis L. Angel 1867-1911
Mary Angel 1842-1920
Mary King Angel 1844-1920
Mary Godwin Angel* 1752-1841
Nancy Elswick Angel* 1817-1867
Nancy Meadors Angel 1835-1909
Nimrod Angel 1845-1882
Sarah Angel 1845-1921
Sarah King Angel 1813-1878
Thomas Angel 1859-1924
William Angel 1836-1917
William R. Angel 1869-1872
Camilla Blankenship N/A-N/A
Ewell Blankenship 1848-1897
Elizabeth Bolling 1778-1889
Christine Braden N/A-N/A
Eveline Braden N/A-N/A
Irene Braden N/A-N/A
Ida Ellis 1888-1912
Oklahoma Ellis 1934-1934
Elizabeth Angel King* 1824-1891
Jackson H. King* 1817-1857
Millie Angel King* 1816-1861
William King Sr. 1785-1841
James M. Lovett 1849-1917
Sarah B. Lovett 1855-1893
Sterling S. Lovett 1886-1909
Martha Neal 1892-1921
M.R. N/A-1858
James Trammell 1774-1826
Andrew J. Webb 1809-1891
Elizabeth Webb 1856-1906
Claude Wright 1918-1918
Dennis Wright 1929-1929
Dennis G. Wright 1858-1925
Lucinda Wright 1858-1925
Richard N. Wright 1899-1923
Velma Wright 1918-1918
*There are more than 100 graves at Angel-Wright Cemetery marked by uninscribed field stones. The above persons denoted by asterisks are believed to be buried at the cemetery but cannot be verified.
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.