Sacred Ground: Cross-Cooper Cemetery
There weren’t many families that weren’t visited by tragedy in the 19th century. That was true anywhere in America, and it was especially true in rural Appalachia, where there were no hospitals and little medicine.
In 1800, about the time white families were first beginning to settle the area that would become Scott County, the child mortality rate in the United States was 46%; nearly one in every two children born would not live to see their fifth birthday.
That number steadily declined through much of the 19th century, then spiked again in the 1870s as the cholera pandemic swept across the country, along with outbreaks of smallpox and yellow fever. In addition, stillbirths were common, and it was not a rare occurrence for a mother to die in childbirth.
Throughout the cemeteries of Scott County — and in any other part of the country — these stories are told. But there may not be a story as tragic as that of P.S. and Emily Cooper of the Rockhouse community in eastern Scott County.
If you visit the Cross-Cooper Cemetery, you’ll find two rows of nearly identical headstones in the back of the cemetery. There are 10 in all — one for each of the Coopers’ infant children, who were born in the 1890s and 1900s and died at birth. At the end of the second row are the graves of their parents, P.S. and Emily Cooper.
The Cross Cemetery
Also known as the Lark Cross Cemetery, or simply the Cross Cemetery, the Cross-Cooper Cemetery is located as far as you can drive into Rockhouse. It is located at the base of Braden Mountain, where the public road ends and is gated before it crosses private land on its way into the mountains and onto the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.
The cemetery draws its name for Lark Cross, the grandson of Larkin Cross, who was shot and hanged by Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War, and the nephew of early prominent Oneida businessman Clabe Cross. Lark Cross was born 10 years after his grandfather’s murder and is named for him. The elder Lark Cross was featured prominently in the last edition of Sacred Ground, which focused on Lloyd Cemetery along Smith Creek, on the opposite side of the mountain.
Lark Cross (1872-1960) was one of the last people buried at the cemetery. His parents, Emanuel Cross (1847-1917) and Easter Cooper Cross (1853-1932), are also buried there.
The first identifiable grave to be located at Cross-Cooper Cemetery is that of Catherine Cooper, who died in 1885 at the age of 49 and is buried in a unique comb-style grave that was once common in other parts of Tennessee but is seldom found in Scott County.
A sign outside the cemetery indicates that it was founded in 1860. It contains several unmarked graves.
Very little has been written about the Cooper family of eastern Scott County. However, according to census records for Scott County, Catharine Cooper was the mother of P.S. Cooper, as well as Easter Cooper Cross. Her husband, William Cross, was also buried at the Cross-Cooper Cemetery when he died in 1917.
Morlena Cross, the 15-year-old sister of Lark Cross and granddaughter of Catharine Cooper, was the second person buried at the cemetery when she died on July 26, 1886. Her headstone is a hand-carved fieldstone with several of the letters engraved backward.
It was on April 21, 1985 that the first child of P.S. and Emily Cooper was born and died. Over the next 15 years, a total of 10 Cooper children were buried in the cemetery, most on the day of their birth, or within a few days of their birth.
The Cooper family
Each of the Cooper babies’ headstones are in the same style, with the same emblem at the top and the parents recorded as “P.S. & Emlia Cooper.” The epitaph at the bottom of each reads, “At Rest.”
Emlia Cooper was actually Emily Adkins Cooper. She and her husband, whose actual name appears to have been Peter Sheaman Cooper, are each buried in the cemetery. Their headstones contain the same “At Rest” epitaph as their children.
In the 1940 census, the Coopers were listed as living on Joe Baird Road. P.S. Cooper was 75 at the time, while Emily was 65. They had a 20-year-old woman — Emmie Lec Rierdon — living with them, along with Emmie’s four-year-old daughter, Barbora Rierdon.
P.S. Cooper died on Sept. 16, 1941, at the age of 75. Emily died on Dec. 19, 1953, at the age of 78.
Emily was the daughter of William Adkins and Jane Lay Adkins; the granddaughter of Jesse James Adkins and Martha Byrd Adkins, and Michael Lay and Lydia Baird Lay.
Peter Sheaman, or P.S., was the son of William and Catharine Cooper. He was only about 19 when his mother died in 1885.
According to the 1900 Scott County census, P.S. and Emily Cooper had been married for six years at that time. He was 34, and she was 24. There were no other family members listed at that time, indicating no surviving children. Nor were there any other members in their household as of the 1910 or 1920 censuses. Apparently, the couple did not have any children who survived.
By 1930, the couple had left Rockhouse and lived in Norma.
The Cooper tragedies began in April 1895, when their first child died at birth.
Eleven months later, on March 5, 1896, their second child was born. The exact date of death wasn’t engraved on the headstone.
Sixteen months after that, on July 7, 1897, their third child was born. Again, the exact date of death wasn’t engraved on the headstone.
Almost 10 months later, on April 23, 1898, their fourth child was born and died.
Eighteen months after that, on Oct. 8, 1899, their fifth child was born and died.
On Nov. 18, 1900, their sixth child was born. The first five children were not named, indicating that they may have each died at birth. The sixth, however, survived birth and was named Everet. But he died exactly two months later, on Jan. 18, 1901.
P.S. and Emily buried their seventh child on Oct. 18, 1902. It was a few years before their eight child was born. The infant was born and died on Feb. 28, 1906.
On Jan. 30, 1907, baby Mary J. Cooper was born. She survived the longest, but died just a little more than four months later, on June 8, 1907.
The last Cooper child, Mamie, was born and died on Jan. 29, 1910.
Other notes about the Cross Cemetery
P.S. and Emily Cooper weren’t the only young couple experiencing heartbreak and tragedy at Rockhouse around the turn of the century. P.S. Cooper’s sister also lost two children during that timespan. In fact, the same person appears to have carved the headstones for both families.
On Nov. 12, 1906, Rozettie Silcox died just before her third birthday and was buried at the cemetery. Three years later, her nine-year-old brother, William E. Silcox, died exactly one week after his ninth birthday.
Census records from 1900 indicate that Rozettie’s and William’s parents were Levi M. Carter Silcox and Morlena (or Marlena) Silcox. They were each 29 at the time, and had three older children. He was the son of Joseph and Emily Silcox; she was the daughter of William and Catharine Cooper — P.S.’s younger sister.
Like P.S. and his wife, Marlena and her family left Rockhouse. They settled in Campbell County later in life. Both of them are buried at Turley Cemetery in Red Ash.
The 1900 census indicates that M.C. and Marlena were neighbors to Arlie Lay, who would later move from Rockhouse to Oneida and become a prominent businessman, the founder of the Lay Simpson line of furniture stores. Lay and his sons operated Lay’s Oneida Furniture Co. for nearly a century, and his grandson, Jerry Lay, now runs Lay Family Furniture.
What became of Emmie Rierdon and Barbora Rierdon after the Coopers’ deaths isn’t clear. In the 1940 census, Emmie Rierdon was listed as boarding with the Coopers, while four-year-old Barbora was listed as the daughter of the Coopers.
After the death of Lark Cross’s wife, Maudy, in 1986, no one else was buried at the Cross-Cooper Cemetery until just last year, when U.S. Army veteran Jimmy Ray Chambers of Pioneer died, at the age of 66. He was a resident of the Rockhouse community and a member of the Five Black Gums Baptist Church in the community. He was a member of the first graduating class of Scott High School.
Cemetery Inventory
CROSS-COOPER CEMETERY
Coordinates: 36.429493, -84.355782
First burial: ~1860
Last burial: 2021
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? Yes.
Clautie Byrd, 1916-1918
Hattie Byrd, 1896-1918
Flem Chambers, 1902-1902
Lola Chambers, 1895-1913
Thomas Chambers, 1864-1905
Catharine Cooper, 1835-1885
Emily Adkins Cooper, 1875-1953
Everet Cooper, 1900-1901
Infant Cooper, 1895-1895
Infant Cooper, 1896-1896
Infant Cooper, 1898-1898
Infant Cooper, 1899-1899
Infant Cooper, 1902-1902
Infant Cooper, 1906-1906
Mamie Cooper, 1910-1910
Mary J. Cooper, 1907-1907
P.S. Cooper, 1865-1941
William Cooper, 1829-1917
Clara Cross, 1916-1977
Easter Cross, 1853-1932
Elizabeth Cross, 1872-1913
Emanuel Cross, 1847-1917
Lark Cross, 1872-1960
Lucy Cross, 1922-1923
Maudy Inus Cross, 1886-1986
Morlena Cross, 1871-1886
Serelda Ford, 1854-1933
Hattie Hensley, 1904-1905
Rittie Cooper Lay, 1865-1944
Rozette Silcox, 1903-1906
William E. Silcox, 1900-1909
Betsy Jane Strunk, 1859-1900
Calvin Wilson, 1835-1929
Nancy Ann Wilson, 1834-1919
Editor’s Note — Because the Lloyd Cemetery at Smith Creek, which was the subject of this feature last week, is also commonly called the Cross Cemetery, and because there are other Cross cemeteries in Winfield, there is significant errors among online sources that attribute a number of graves to the Cross-Cooper Cemetery that aren’t actually located there. The list included with this story used Robert L. Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census as a reference, and cross-referenced that inventory with photographs of the stones located in the cemetery. Bailey’s 1994 book is available for purchase from the Scott County Historical Society.
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.