Sacred Ground: Coffey Cemetery
As settlement spread in the fertile tabletop lands around Pine Creek — before the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad came along and the depot and developing town around it became known as Oneida — a number of cemeteries sprang up throughout the fledgling community. This was especially true in the latter part of the 19th century — not surprisingly, about the time the railroad came through and Oneida began to become the population center of Scott County.
Among those was Coffey Cemetery. Located on Stanley Street, just across from the former Boss glove factory and the Scott County Fairgrounds, Coffey Cemetery is one of Oneida’s oldest cemeteries, and also one of the town’s largest graveyards. While Coffey Cemetery would be eclipsed in size by cemeteries like Litton Cemetery, and especially by Hazel Valley and Carson Memorial Park, those cemeteries were established some years later.
Coffey Cemetery dates all the way back to at least Feb. 20, 1853, when Jeremiah Stephens was buried on the small knoll overlooking Litton Fork of Pine Creek. However, there are several graves marked by common field stones that were not inscribed or are not legible, making it impossible to date the cemetery with certainty.
Jeremiah Stephens
Who was Jeremiah Stephens, the first person buried at what would come to be known as Coffey Cemetery?
That’s hard to say with certainty. His stone contains only the date of his death: “Died 20th of February 1853.” The Find A Grave website, which is prone to errors, lists his birth as being in 1781 in North Carolina, which would’ve made him about 72 at the time of his death. However, there is no elderly man named Jeremiah Stephens in the 1850 census for Scott County.
The only Jeremiah Stephens living in Scott County that appears in the 1850 census is a 15-year-old boy, the son of Edmon Stevens and Mary Stevens. And because the Stevens family is listed on the same page of the census as the family of Campbell County Reed — who lived at nearby Hazel Valley — it lends some credibility to the idea that this is the same Jeremiah Stephens buried at Coffey Cemetery, which would have made him around 18 years old at the time of his death.
Also adding to the likelihood that the Jeremiah Stephens buried at Coffey Cemetery was a young man and not an elderly man: the Jeremiah Stephens mentioned in the 1850 census had a brother, James Granville Stephens, who was buried at Coffey Cemetery when he died in 1917. One of Granville’s sons, Lorenzo (or Lorenzy) D. Stephens, was buried at the cemetery in 1890 after he was killed in a collision near Pine Knot, Ky.
Interestingly, Granville Stephens was a lieutenant in the Confederate army during the Civil War, serving in Company G of the 11th Tennessee Infantry. He was one of the few Scott Countians who served in the Rebel army, and one of the even fewer who held an officer’s rank during the war.
Just as interesting: Although Granville Stephens served for the Confederate army, he named one of his sons who was born four years after the war ended Ulysses Grant Stephens, after the Union general (and newly-elected President of the United States) Ulysses S. Grant. Sadly, Ulysses Stephens died as an infant. (Another of Granville’s sons, born in 1862, was named after President Andrew Jackson.)
The Coffey family
Within sight of the knoll where Jeremiah Stephens was buried lived the Coffey family.
Joseph “Joe” Coffey was born in 1829 in Wayne County, Ky., the son of James Coffey and Sarah Sumpter Coffey. James Coffey was the son of a Revolutionary War veteran named Reuben Coffey, who married Mildred Morris and moved from Virginia to Wayne County, Ky. after the war.
The Coffey clan was of Irish descent. John C. Coffey (1620-1717) migrated from Ireland to Virginia colony in the mid 17th century. John C. Coffey was Joe Coffey’s third-great-grandfather.
After a couple of generations in Virginia, the Coffeys wound up in North Carolina, and then moved west to Kentucky. Reuben Coffey, the Revolutionary War soldier, was the first of the family to wind up in Kentucky. Several of Reuben Coffey’s siblings — and his father — also served in America’s War of Independence.
From Wayne County, the Coffey clan moved a bit eastward, to a community known as Flat Rock in present-day McCreary County. James Coffey, a slave-holder and farmer who owned four slaves in 1840, made the move to Flat Rock, which is located along present-day U.S. Highway 27 just south of Parkers Lake in northern McCreary County.
Joe Coffey, born in 1829, was James Coffey’s youngest son. He moved his family to present-day Oneida at some point after the Civil War began. He was the first Coffey in Scott County.
Establishing a home
The Coffey family settled along Litton Fork of Pine Creek, in the vicinity of where the fairgrounds and the old glove factory are now located. Joe Coffey owned the land where Jeremiah Stephens had been buried in 1853; his home could be seen from Stephens’ grave.
When Joe Coffey died in 1882, he became the second person buried at the cemetery that would come to be known as Coffey Cemetery. Exactly when it began to be called that isn’t clear, but when Granville Stephens died of old age in 1917, his birth certificate stated that he was buried at the “Coffee Grave Yard.”
Joe Coffey owned a sizeable chunk of real estate in the gently-rolling terrain behind where the Scott County Hospital would eventually be built. He donated property for the first Scott County girls school, according to some historical accounts.
Joe Coffey married Beth Ada Strunk, known as “Bethady” and “Ada.” They had at least 10 children. The first several of those children were likely born in McCreary County, before the family moved to Scott County.
Most of the Coffey children remained in Scott County all their lives. Some returned to Kentucky, where other members of the Coffey clan still lived.
Two of Joe and Ada’s children, Lewis and Bill, married into the Litton family that was prominent in the area at the time. Lewis married Arminda Litton, while Bill married her niece, Etta Litton. Both of them are buried at the nearby Litton Cemetery on Litton Road.
Although Ada Coffey remarried nearly two decades after Joe’s death in 1882, she is buried at Coffey Cemetery and her name is inscribed on her headstone as Ada Coffey.
Among Joe and Ada’s children, son John (1863-1916) is buried at Coffey Cemetery along with his parents, as is daughter Alice Ann Stanley (1880-1948), who married James Crabtree Stanley.
Another son, Captain Dick Coffey (1872-1950; Captain was his name, not a military rank) is also buried at the cemetery, along with his wife, Lettie Jane McBride (1881-1926). Although no stones can be located at the cemetery for Cap or Lettie Coffey — which is unusual for a death as recent as 1950 — his son, Johnnie Coffey, told family members that was where his father was buried, and Cap Coffey’s obituary in 1950 listed Coffey Cemetery as the place of interment.
It was Cap Coffey who inherited Joe Coffey’s home and the land where the cemetery was located.
Also buried at Coffey Cemetery is 21-year-old Ome Coffey — Cap Coffey’s youngest son — who was killed in a traffic accident in 1937 while headed home from work at the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company, and Charlie Coffey, the infant son of John and Henrietta Blevins Coffey.
Another of John and Henrietta’s children, Robert Coffey, was buried at the cemetery when he died in 1918 at the age of 26, a casualty of the Spanish flu pandemic that was sweeping the U.S. His older brother, Luther, died at the age of 28 just three days later, also of the flu, and was buried at Coffey Cemetery.
Robert’s wife, Ernie Litton Coffey, was also buried at the cemetery when she was killed in an accident in 1970. Tragically, she was on her way to Shelbyville, Ky., where her son, Clarence, had just died at a V.A. hospital. She and her daughter were involved in a head-on collision with a truck at Parker’s Lake, and Ernie was killed. A dual funeral was held at Bethlehem Baptist Church for her and her son.
The cemetery grows
While 29 years elapsed between the burial of Jeremiah Stephens in 1853 and the burial of Joe Coffey in 1882, Coffey Cemetery quickly began to grow in the 1880s. Today, there are nearly 300 graves located at the cemetery, though burials there have mostly ceased.
In 1886, Isaac Blevins was buried there. He was the son of Jonathan J. Blevins — one of the first permanent settlers of the Big South Fork region — and Sarah Minton. His daughter, Emarine Blevins Chitwood, is also buried at the cemetery.
The next two burials, in June 1886 and June 1888, were Millard Newport and John Newport, the one-year-old daughter and the newborn son of Melvin and Amanda “Manda” Hughett Newport. In 1891, another newborn of Melvin and Manda, Lucinda Newport, was buried at Coffey Cemetery.
Peter Carson was the sixth person buried at Coffey Cemetery in October 1888, followed by Lorenzo Stephens, Lucinda Newport, and Leander Sheppard.
Woodmen memorials
Among the more interesting headstones at Coffey Cemetery are two identical markers from the early 1900s. The elaborate stones are fashioned after a tree trunk, and are Woodmen of the World memorials. One of them marks the grave of Robert Coffey, who died of Spanish flu in 1918. The other is located at the rear of the cemetery and marks the grave of Curtis M. Flynn, who died three years earlier at age 34.
The stones contain the Latin phrase, “Dum Tacet Clamat,” which translated means “Though silent, he speaks.” The phrase is included on Woodmen of the World memorials all over the U.S.
Woodmen of the World was founded by Joseph Cullen Root after he heard a preacher in Iowa tell a parable about the benefits of woodmen clearing forests to build homes and security for their families. He founded the organization in Nebraska in 1890, and the organization provided gravestones for family breadwinners when they died. The organization eventually began charging a $100 fee for gravestones, then stopped providing them entirely in the 1920s.
Woodmen of the World remains in existence today as an insurance company, and is known as WoodmenLife.
Dual victim
Another grave of interest is that of Whitney Marcum, a 22-year-old man who was one of two men killed in a dual at Niggs Creek Church in 1933.
According to newspaper accounts from the time, Marcum and Henry Smith, 38, were both killed in the gun battle as a result of an argument that had started in the church during a Sunday night service.
Ance Smith and Gayson Marcum had begun arguing when Smith’s brother, Henry, and Marcum’s cousin, Whitney, began shooting. Whitney Marcum was shot six times and Henry Smith was shot once. Both men died on scene.
Whitney Marcum was the son of Leander and Alice Forbis Marcum. His parents are also buried at the cemetery. Ance and Henry Smith were the sons of John J. “Hawk” Smith, one of the more colorful figures to settle the Big South Fork region. Ance Smith, 32, was killed in a mining accident at Zenith one year after the dual at Niggs Creek Church.
The King family
In the 1880s and especially in the 1890s, the cemetery on Cap Coffey’s farm began to transform into a community graveyard, with people from a number of different families buried there. It would be a lengthy task to trace the lineage and histories of all those families, but one of the more interesting ones is the King family.
Millie Angel King, the daughter of Archibald and Nancy Trammell Angel, married William “Billy” King. (She is believed to be buried at Angel-Wright Cemetery, which was recently featured in this series.) The King family had lived in present-day Scott and McCreary counties for several generations, and William King Sr.’s family lived in the Capachene area near Angel Valley. Two of Millie’s brothers, James and Dennis, married Billy King’s sisters.
Billy and Millie King had at least nine children. One of them, Kirby Sherman King, was born in 1846. He married Nancy Ellen Hatfield, the oldest daughter of William Riley Hatfield and Elizabeth Burk of the Station Camp settlement along the Big South Fork River. The Hatfield family once lived at the farmstead that is now Charit Creek Lodge in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Hatfield had family ties to the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud. Ironically, he apparently moved to Tennessee to escape the violence that had beset the family back home in West Virginia, but was killed during an argument with another man along the Big South Fork River in 1892.
William Riley Hatfield had a son, William Claburn “Dick” Hatfield, who was also shot and killed, by Newton Blevins, in 1924. Blevins served a year in jail after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and was later shot and killed himself.
Dick Hatfield is buried at Coffey Cemetery. Also buried there are his sister and brother-in-law, Nancy Ellen King and Kirby Sherman King.
Kirby and Nancy’s youngest surviving child was Isaac Marion “Ike” King, born in 1897. He became one of the most notable residents of the Station Camp settlement. He served as a storekeeper, justice of the peace and post master of the Elva post office after it moved to Station Camp. He also taught school for some 40 years, and was a land agent for the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company. His home was located about a mile west of the Big South Fork River, near where Station Camp Creek and Laurel Fork Creek merge.
When Ike King died in 1957, he was buried at Coffey Cemetery beside his parents. His wife, Hattie Bell Hatfield, was also buried there in 1969. One of Ike’s children, son Isaac Edward “Edd” King, is buried at Coffey Cemetery, along with two grandchildren: DeLetta King and Johnny Billings.
The cemetery today
Coffey Cemetery is still somewhat active; the last burial was in 2018. It is maintained fairly regularly, though the entire cemetery isn’t always mowed on a regular basis. Some of the gravestones are broken, and some are disappearing into undergrowth, including some beneath the boughs of a large evergreen in the center of the cemetery and some along the rear margins of the cemetery.
The last person to be buried there was Kenneth Ray Paysinger, in July 2018. Paysinger was originally from Scott County; his parents, Albert Daine Paysinger and Myrtle Clark Paysinger are both buried at Coffey Cemetery. He lived in North Carolina at the time of his death.
Cemetery census
COFFEY CEMETERY
GPS Coordinates: 36.50440, -84.52310
First Burial: 1853
Last Burial: 2018
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? Yes.
Anna Butler Acres 1885-1954
Christine Acres 1916-1933
Dan Acres 1920-1934
Daniel L. Acres 1862-1948
Evelyn M. Acres 1918-1935
J.W. Acres 1922-1922
James M. Acres 1891-1980
Joanna Acres 1928-1928
Jocyfen Acres 1925-1925
Martha Ryan Acres 1866-1951
Walter A. Acres 1913-1930
Robert L. Alcorn 1871-1932
Thomas Bagley 1847-1920
Pearl F. Bales 1902-1923
Anna Barnett 1912-1924
Fannie Bayner 1895-1904
Roena Sexton Begley 1856-1943
John Billings 1939-1973
Isaac Blevins 1822-1886
Roy E. Blevins 1943-1947
Thursie Forbis Blevins 1879-1914
Billie L. Brewster 1941-1941
Clorine Brewster 1926-1930
Floyd W. Brewster 1936-1944
Marion O. Brewster 1928-1930
Mary Stanley Brewster 1939-2007
Maxine Brewster 1926-1930
Albert Brown 1891-1928
Leamon Brown 1908-1909
Austin Bruster 1937-1937
Clifford M. Burchfield 1899-1932
F.L. Burchfield 1902-1904
Freman Burchfield 1910-1911
Irene Burchfield 1916-1917
Jesse Y. Burchfield 1826-1911
Julia B. Burchfield 1902-1921
Levi M. Burchfield 1890-1928
Luvernia L. Burchfield 1882-1931
Malinda B. Burchfield 1882-1964
Margaret G. Burchfield 1826-1908
Margaret C. Burchfield 1879-1916
Millard Burchfield 1918-1919
Ona Burchfield 1905-1915
Quincey R. Burchfield 1904-1930
Robert Burchfield 1904-1932
Rufus L. Burchfield 1878-1922
William R. Burchfield 1871-1953
Lucretia Lowe Butler 1876-1962
Richard C. Butler 1855-1947
Jess Byrd 1919-1919
James W. Carson 1877-1929
Lurania Owens Carson 1853-1928
Peter Carson 1853-1888
Loranzy Y. Cecil 1880-1923
Martha Watters Cecil 1933-1934
James E. Chambers 1900-1920
A.B. Chitwood 1838-1894
Adda Chitwood 1888-1891
Charles Chitwood 1878-1918
Clarence Chitwood 1891-1911
Doresey J. Chitwood 1936-1979
Earl Chitwood 1902-1956
Eddy Chitwood 1888-1891
Elizabeth S. Chitwood 1905-1996
Emarine Blevins Chitwood 1844-1929
Fred A. Chitwood 1896-1923
Gilbert L. Chitwood 1907-1948
Grant Chitwood 1865-1961
Harriet Oaks Chitwood 1873-1916
Ina I. Chitwood 1896-1967
Nancy L. Chitwood 1856-1893
Richard A. Chitwood 1869-1907
Ruth J. Chitwood 1930-1932
Walter Chitwood 1897-1980
W.H.S. Chitwood 1894-1908
Adine E. Clark 1905-1929
Bertha Strunk Clark 1892-1985
Catherine Clark 1920-1920
Dave Clark N/A-1938
Infant Clark 1921-1921
Infant Clark 1926-1926
Infant Clark 1922-1922
Infant Clark 1924-1924
Infant Clark 1923-1923
Beth Ada Strunk Coffey 1835-1920
Captain D. Coffey 1872-1950
Charlie Coffey 1895-1895
Ernie Litton Coffey 1892-1970
Henrietta Blevins Coffey 1872-1962
Jefferson Coffey 1906-1930
John Coffey 1863-1916
Joseph Coffey 1829-1882
Lettie J. McBride Coffey 1881-1926
Luther Coffey 1889-1918
Ome Coffey 1916-1937
Robert Coffey 1892-1918
William J. Coffey 1910-1910
Mary B. Coulter 1936-1937
Smith Coulter 1921-1923
William Coulter 1935-1941
Eva Crabtree 1910-1923
Imogene Crabtree 1926-1926
Maxine Crabtree 1926-1926
Phillip B. Crabtree 1943-1943
Tammy Brewster Crabtree 1964-1999
Virgil O. Crabtree 1919-1988
Sallie Terry Crooks 1899-1973
Margaret Daniel 1922-1923
James M. Daugherty 1869-1921
Alonzo Davis 1918-1938
Andrew T. Davis 1870-1934
Arthur Davis 1910-1937
Sarah Hicks Davis 1878-1938
John W. Delk 1882-1922
Norman Douglas 1914-1918
Everette J. Easterly 1912-1932
Infant Elliot 1923-1923
Jessie W. Elliot 1896-1941
Shirley M. Elliot 1934-1936
Alice F. Ellis 1942-1943
Robert M. England 1918-1919
Lydia Flowers 1916-1927
Curtis M. Flynn 1881-1915
Cleopas Forbis 1905-1920
David Forbis 1829-1901
Martha Leach Forbis 1843-1915
Hattie Foster 1910-1912
John S. Foster 1897-1985
Luther Foster 1926-1926
Nola Stanley Foster 1900-1992
Stella Foster 1894-1896
Zachary Foster 1886-1925
James Goad 1861-1921
Centhia Berry Goodin 1904-1929
Artie Terry Hamby 1896-1983
Nettie Hatfield 1902-1921
William R. Hatfield 1861-1924
Baby Hill N/A-1918
Dorothy Hill 1916-1918
Easton Hill 1898-1923
James Hill 1871-1923
Louisa Winchester Hill 1879-1958
Lina Davis Hughett 1907-1927
F. Cecil Janes 1922-1934
B. Jeffers 1904-1922
Boston Jeffers 1897-1923
Dilmon Jeffers 1923-1944
Houston Jeffers 1849-1923
Knap Jeffers 1889-1921
Knox Jeffers 1890-1921
Mary Brown Jones 1862-1943
Amanda Alcorn King 1865-1916
Beckom King 1908-1965
DeLetta N. King 1948-1965
Elihu B. King 1855-1918
George W. King 1863-1937
Hattie B. Hatfield King 1889-1969
Isaac E. King 1919-1960
Isaac M. King 1887-1957
Kirby S. King 1846-1935
Nancy Hatfield King 1849-1917
Thomas M. King 1910-1973
David H. Lay 1926-1926
Elmer R. Lay 1904-1923
Margaret Collins Lay 1880-1973
William A. Lay 1874-1955
Infant Litton 1913-1913
Jane C. Litton 1943-1944
Edison Lloyd 1935-1935
Alice Forbis Marcum 1882-1929
Infant Marcum 1918-1918
Leander A. Marcum 1867-1943
Whitney Marcum 1910-1933
William Marcum N/A-1897
Cecil Mathews 1922-1934
Elizabeth Mayfield Mays 1836-1924
Faitha Jones Mays 1851-1919
James Mays 1836-1918
John T. Mays 1859-1916
Thomas G. Mays 1924-1924
Grace Morcuen 1902-1918
Michael R. Neal 1891-1922
Alverson N. Newport 1856-1921
Delpha Litton Newport 1914-1937
Ida Newport 1880-1958
John Newport 1888-1888
Lucinda Newport 1891-1891
Marion D. Newport 1880-1942
Mary Long Newport 1858-1933
Millard Newport 1885-1886
Maggie Jeffers Ooten 1891-1971
Milford Ooten 1915-2005
Oscar W. Ooten 1892-1923
Otis H. Ooten 1924-1974
Una Burchfield Ooten 1901-1986
Elizabeth Slaven Patterson 1853-1927
Albert D. Paysinger 1925-1995
Kenneth R. Paysinger 1953-2018
Myrtle Clark Paysinger 1932-2006
Cassie Davis Peak 1900-1929
John Peak 1857-1927
Marchie Phillips 1923-1923
Odie Phillips Sr. 1900-1923
Pairsida West Phillips 1880-1949
Ira R. Potter 1910-1946
L.F.R. N/A-N/A
Fannie Rayner N/A-1904
Louis F. Raynor 1862-1947
Mary Ross Raynor 1870-1965
Alexander Ross 1823-1904
Inez Leona Rosser 1904-1904
James S. Rosser 1872-1914
Luther H. Rosser 1900-1923
Mary E. Rosser 1926-1926
James R. Scroggins 1900-1928
Lulie Phillips Sexton 1881-1959
Thomas B. Sexton 1873-1950
Vina Rosser Sexton N/A-1914
Leander Sheppard 1891-1891
Henry Hood Sherill 1920-1921
Infant Shipwash 1927-1927
Isabell King Siler 1880-1922
Mary J. Slaven 1884-1935
Beitie Smith 1912-1912
Boby J. Smith 1937-1937
Cassandra Smith 1905-1911
Ewell W. Smith 1844-1921
Ezra Smith 1908-1926
Francis H. Smith 1920-1920
Infant Smith 1913-1913
Infant Smith 1913-1913
Lora L. Smith 1910-1910
Lovaney Marcum Smith 1846-1914
Lucrecia Hatfield Smith 1892-1956
Richard C. Smith 1903-1909
Alice Coffey Stanley 1880-1948
Eyvonne Stanley 1953-1955
James C. Stanley 1876-1949
J.C. Stanley 1944-1980
Thomas C. Stanley 1916-1970
Travannia Acres Stanley 1917-1983
William E. Stanley 1898-1940
James G. Stephens 1833-1917
Jeremiah Stephens N/A-1853
Lorenzo D. Stephens 1866-1890
Anna Lewallen Stone 1881-1957
Noble Stone 1890-1940
Rex Taylor 1925-1926
A.Y. Stanley 1910-1966
Elitha Roberts Stanley 1871-1917
James D. Terry 1951-1951
Kilby Terry 1901-1965
Paul L. Terry 1930-1968
Una Stanley Terry 1912-1996
Earl Troxell 1922-1953
Shirley Chitwood Watters 1940-1992
Simpson D. Watters 1926-2005
Gary R. Welch 1948-2003
Audney West 1914-1915
Bessie Forrester West 1905-1943
Bonnell D. West 1922-1925
Charles S. West 1876-1937
Gracie West 1916-1917
Hinny West 1911-1914
Infant West 1927-1927
James A. West Jr. 1936-1991
James R. West 1916-1918
Laura Rosser West 1896-1932
Nancy Wilson West 1881-1965
Ninny West 1911-1914
Phyllis Chitwood West 1943-2006
Infant White 1922-N/A
Lusilva Wilson 1851-1923
T.F. Wilson 1854-1932
Paul G. Yancey 1931-2016
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.