Sacred Ground: Cross Cemetery (Jellico Creek)
In a recent installment of Sacred Ground, we visited the Lloyd Cemetery on Smith Creek in eastern Scott County, where Larkin Cross is buried.
Lark Cross, the father of early and prominent Oneida businessman Clabe Cross (who owned the Hotel Cross and founded First National Bank), was murdered by Confederate soldiers in 1862 as they raided farms along Buffalo Creek and Smith Creek.
Before the band of marauders came across Lark Cross and Ransom Vanover that day, they first raided the Smith Creek farm of Cross’s brother, Caswell Cross, where they took $690 in gold — the equivalent of almost $25,000 today — and drove away 14 of his horses.
This week, we’re visiting the cemetery where Caswell Cross is buried, on Jellico Creek east of Winfield.
Caswell Cross, who died in 1893, was the first person buried at what would become known as the Cross Cemetery, which is a small plot of land located in the edge of a field along Upper Jellico Creek Road, about 1.5 miles south of the Gumfork Road creek crossing. There are only a handful of graves in the old cemetery.
The early Cross family
Caswell and Larkin Cross were the sons of Louis Micajah Cross (1780-1846) and Lovis Duncan Cross (1799-1887). They had at least six children, of whom Caswell and Lark were the oldest two.
Micajah Cross was one of the earliest permanent settlers of Scott County. His ancestors migrated from England to Maryland in the 17th century. His father, a Revolutionary War veteran named William Cross, moved southward, and the family wound up in Tennessee. William Cross died in what is now Oak Ridge.
Micajah Cross and Lovis Duncan married in 1815, probably in North Carolina. They moved to Scott County between 1823 and 1825, settling along Buffalo Creek.
It isn’t clear how Caswell Cross wound up at Jellico Creek after the war, since the rest of his family was at Smith Creek, but that is where he settled down and remained for the rest of his life.
The family of Caswell Cross
Caswell Cross served in the Civil War, enlisting in 1863. According to records, he served with Tinker Dave Beaty’s Independent Scouts.
Cross married Kissiah Baker, who may also be buried at the Cross Cemetery. Records indicate that they married on Dec. 21, 1848.
According to the historian Esther Sharp Sanderson, in “County Scott and Its Mountain Folk,” Cross married Dorcas Trammell. There is no evidence that Caswell Cross and Dorcas Trammell — who also lived at Jellico Creek — were ever married. Marriage records show that Trammell married Hugh Davis on Sept. 2, 1849.
However, Darcus and Hugh apparently divorced at some point. Although Hugh— who is buried at the nearby Trammell Cemetery — didn’t die until 1886, the 1860 census listed Dorcas Trammell as living with Caswell and Kissiah Cross — and listed her name as Dorcas Trammell Cross. Her one-year-old son, Wilson, also lived in the household, and his last name was also listed as Cross.
By the 1870 census, however, Dorcas was listed as living on her own, and both she and son Wilson were listed with the last name Trammell. She also had two additional children who had been born since the 1860 census, both with the last name Trammell as well.
Family histories generally conclude that Caswell Cross fathered multiple children with Dorcas Trammell, but the genealogy isn’t clear.
In any event, Caswell Cross died in 1893 at the age of 71 and was buried on family land along Upper Jellico Creek Road, which started the Cross Cemetery. His wife, Kissiah, may have been buried there, as well. There are records indicating that she is buried in the cemetery, but she does not have a headstone there (Caswell Cross has a solo stone), and she was not listed there in Robert Bailey’s “Cemeteries of Scott County, Tennessee” published by the Scott County Historical Society in 1994. However, Bailey noted in 1994 that there were two graves at the cemetery marked by illegible funeral home markers (those markers are no longer present).
Other graves at the cemetery
The second person buried at the Cross Cemetery was W.M. Cross, who died on Dec.7, 1898, at the age of 36. He was one of Caswell Cross’s children, and married Sarah Hicks Davis (1872-1942).
Fourteen months later, on Feb. 5, 1900, Nancy Wright Cross died at the age of 46 and was buried at the cemetery. She was the wife of John E. Cross, another of Caswell Cross’s sons.
John Cross died on March 15, 1925 and is buried at the cemetery.
In 1930, 15-year-old Millard Ervin Cross was buried at the cemetery. He was a great-grandson of Caswell Cross, the grandson of John E. Cross and Nancy Wright, and the son of Rev. Willie E. Cross.
Howard Cross, the brother of Millard, died at the age of 25 in 1946 and is buried at the cemetery.
Perrillie Phillips Cross, the wife of Rev. Willie Cross and the mother of Howard and Millard, died in 1950 and is buried in the cemetery. Her husband died in 1957 and was the last person buried at the cemetery.
The only other person other than the Cross family to be buried at the cemetery was H.C. Wright, who died March 29, 1926 at the age of 56. His grave is the only one at the cemetery other than the two unmarked graves that does not include a commercial stone. His stone is hand-engraved field stone.
H.C.’s full name was Henderson Canada Wright. He married Sarah Ann Angel, a member of the prominent family that once settled the farm just down the valley. They had at least nine children.
Cemetery inventory
CROSS CEMETERY (JELLICO CREEK)
Coordinates: 36.55177, -84.32740
First burial: 1893
Last burial: 1957
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? No.
Caswell Cross, 1822-1893
Howard Cross, 1920-1946
John E. Cross, 1851-1925
Kissia Baker Cross*, 1822-unknown
Millard E. Cross, 1915-1930
Nancy Cross, 1853-1900
Perrillie Cross, 1881-1950
W.M. Cross, 1862-1898
Willie E. Cross, 1883-1957
Henderson C. Wright, 1869-1926
*It isn’t clear that Kissia Cross is buried at Cross Cemetery.
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.