Sacred Ground: Grave Hill

On a hillside overlooking sprawling pastureland several miles outside Oneida, on land still owned by the Thomas family that has deep roots here, is the burial ground for which an entire community came to be known.

This is Grave Hill. Today, the entire community between Oneida and Foster Crossroads is known as Grave Hill; the road traveling through it is named Grave Hill Road. And it was here, in the early 1850s, that the community’s first dead loved ones were laid to rest.

Grave Hill Cemetery has grown to include more than 130 graves. Many of the graves are marked by field stone; some of them are not identified. A walk among the stones reveals the names of the families who have long made their home at Grave Hill — names like Thomas, Foster, and Marcum. 

In fact, it wasn’t until 1898 — nearly half a century after the cemetery began — that the first person other than a Thomas, a Foster, or a Marcum was buried at Grave Hill, reflecting the size of those early families that settled there.

The Sacred Ground series earlier profiled Foster Crossroads Cemetery, a couple of miles west of Grave Hill. The Boyatt family was much more prominent at Foster Crossroads, and remains so today. But there are some overlap between these two cemeteries, as you might expect, given their close proximity to one another. They were founded at about the same time — Grave Hill in 1852, and Foster Crossroads in about 1863.

The Thomas family

The first several burials at Grave Hill were children, each of them members of the Thomas family. It started with Sarah Thomas, who died in September 1852 at the age of 19 months.

It’s fitting that a Thomas was the first person buried at Grave Hill. After all, the Thomas family owned the farm then, and still does today. In fact, Grave Hill is one of the very few cemeteries of its size in Scott County that has remained in the ownership of the same family through so many generations.

Baby Sarah Thomas was the daughter of Calvin Thomas (1824-1899) and Fannie Brown (1834-1917). Like so many other members of the Thomas family, both Calvin and Fannie would be buried at Grave Hill when they died years later.

Calvin Thomas was the son of Sarah Thomas (1802-1899). She, too, is buried at Grave Hill. 

There is a lot about the life of Sarah Thomas that isn’t clear. What is clear is that she was born in Virginia. By the 1850 census, she was living with Calvin, Wesley, Willis and Rebecca Thomas. Calvin Thomas was listed as head of household, at age 25. The others’ ages ranged from 16 to 9. They were all her children.

Online genealogy sources frequently list Wesley Thomas as William Wesley Owens, patriarch of the Owens family that lived on Station Camp Creek in the late 19^th century — where the Owens Cemetery is located. The same sources list Willis Thomas as Willis Owens. Sarah Thomas appears to have had several children with, and was perhaps married to, Willis Owens. Born in North Carolina in 1778, Willis Owens moved to Tennessee and eventually settled in Fentress County, west of Jamestown in the community known as Little Crab. He died there in 1860 of kidney stones. His burial place is unclear.

If these sources are correct, two of Sarah Thomas’s children took the name Owens while the rest went by Thomas all their lives.

Calvin Thomas married his wife, Fannie Brown, about 1850. Sarah — their oldest child — was born in February 1851.

After Calvin and Fannie’s baby girl was buried at Grave Hill, it was more than two decades before another burial occurred there. In September 1874, three-month-old Lewcinda Thomas was buried there. She was also the son of Calvin and Fannie Thomas. And two years after that, in September 1876, another of the family’s children, 12-year-old Littleton Thomas, died and was buried at the cemetery.

Through the years, many other members of the Thomas family would be buried at the cemetery.

The Marcum family

In 1880, the cemetery expanded beyond the Thomas family for the first time. One-year-old Emmaline Foster was buried there, according to Robert Bailey in his 1994 book, Cemeteries of Scott County, Tenn. She appears to have been the daughter of Charles Foster (1824-1893) and Lurany Marcum (1842-1881). Both of her parents would later be buried at the cemetery, as well.

Lurany Foster would be the first adult to be buried at the cemetery when she died in 1881, at the age of just 38. She was the daughter of John A. Marcum Sr. (1812-1905) and Rachel West (1813-1905). She first married Martin Terry (1845-1868) in 1865. Following his death at a young age, she married Charles Foster (1824-1893) in 1875.

As detailed in the Sacred Ground profiles of Sunnyview Cemetery and the cemeteries of Marcum Creek near Buffalo, John Marcum Sr. migrated to present-day Scott County from Claiborne County. While his cousin, Arthur Marcum, settled in the Smith Creek area, John Marcum settled in the Pine Creek area and his family soon spread to the Grave Hill and Litton Road communities, and remains very prominent in those communities today.

Lurany’s brother, John A. Marcum Jr. (1841-1903), who is also buried at Grave Hill, was a key figure in the Marcum family. He had at least 12 children with two wives, Nancy Smith (1841-1869) and Arlena Phillips (1853-1945), and many of their descendants still live in the Oneida area.

Another of Lurany’s siblings, William Marcum (1842-1893) was also buried at Grave Hill, as was his wife, Lucy Phillips (1844-1942). 

The first Marcum to be buried at the cemetery — besides Lurany, of course — was two-year-old Asbera Marcum, in 1886. She was the daughter of Richard Marcum (1863-1943) and Mahala Thomas (1856-1932). Richard Marcum was one of the sons of John A. Marcum Jr. Asbera was the great-niece of Lurany Foster.

Newborn Edgar Marcum — the son of John A. Marcum Jr. and Arlena Phillips — was buried at the cemetery in 1893, and 7-year-old Ezra Marcum — another of John and Arlena’s children — was buried there in 1901. Yet another son of John and Arlena, 21-year-old John B. Marcum, was buried at the cemetery in 1903. And one of their daughters, 39-year-old Lucie, was buried there in 1918 after she died amid the Spanish Flu pandemic.

The Foster family

The Foster family was also prominent in the early Grave Hill community, along with the Marcum and Thomas families. 

Charles Foster, the second husband of Lurany Marcum, was born in Kentucky in 1824. He was the son of Marcus Foster (1795-1854) and Elizabeth Owens (died 1836).

Charles first married Mary “Polly” Campbell on June 1, 1848, in Whitley County, Ky. He married Lurany on Aug. 15, 1875 in Scott County and they settled down in the Grave Hill community.

When Mildred Foster was the first Foster to be buried at Foster Crossroads Cemetery in 1921, she was a great-granddaughter of Charles Foster. (Her father was William Foster, and her grandfather was John Foster, one of Charles Foster’s children with his first wife, Polly Campbell.)

Emily Foster — the youngest daughter of Charles and Lurany Foster — was buried at Grave Hill when she died in November 1880. She was just 17 months old. Less than a year later, Lurany died at the age of 38 and was buried not far from her daughter. Almost three years later to the very day, 8-year-old Mary Foster, another of Charles and Lurany’s children, died and was buried at the cemetery.

In a span of less than four years, Charles Foster buried his wife and two of his young daughters at the cemetery. Less than 10 years later, in April 1893, he died and was buried with his family. 

The Foster family, meanwhile, had begun to grow in the Grave Hill community — as would be evidenced by the later naming of the Foster Crossroads community nearby.

John Foster — one of Charles Foster’s sons with his first wife, Polly, whose granddaughter was the first Foster buried at Foster Crossroads — buried his young daughter, two-year-old Arlenia Foster, at Grave Hill in August 1887. 

A few years later, in 1897, John Foster’s wife, Emily Phillips, died and was buried at Grave Hill. John Foster was buried there in 1923.

One of several connections between the Foster and Marcum families of Grave Hill: John Foster and John Marcum Jr. married sisters, Emily and Arlena Phillips. Their father was Emanuel Phillips, who was an elected official in Scott County and donated 25 acres to start the Town of Huntsville as the Scott County seat of government.

The last two Fosters to be buried at Grave Hill were brothers Robert H. Foster in and Autho “Bo” Foster, who died less than two weeks apart in 2018. They were the great-grandsons of John and Emily Phillips Foster.

The cemetery grows

The first person other than a Thomas, Marcum or Foster to be buried at Grave Hill was 29-year-old Jefferson “Jeffy” Phillips in 1898. He died while serving in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He had enlisted on June 18, 1898, and died on Oct. 14, 1898. 

Although his surname might not have been Thomas, Marcum or Foster, Jeffy Phillips was certainly connected to those early Grave Hill families. He married Rachel Marcum, who was a granddaughter of John A. Marcum Jr.

The next person outside those three families — though, like Jeffy Phillips, he wasn’t really “outside” those families — to be buried at the cemetery was John Blevins, the infant son of William Huston Blevins and Rosa Marcum Blevins, in 1907. Rosa Blevins was a daughter of John A. Marcum Jr. and Arlena Phillips.

Ola Blevins, another of W.H. and Rosa Blevins’ children, was buried at the cemetery in 1914. 

Like many other cemeteries, Grave Hill Cemetery rapidly grew during the Spanish Flu pandemic, as many people in Scott County and throughout the U.S. died from complications of influenza. 

However, the cemetery continued to grow rapidly after the flu pandemic had ended in 1920. Burials began to slow after the middle of the 20^th century. 

Although the cemetery remains active, there are far fewer burials there now than there once were. At one point, between the deaths of Reva Smith Thomas in 1993 and Minda West Thomas in 2002, there were no burials there for a little more than nine years.

As it began, though, Grave Hill remains a resting place for members of the Thomas family that has its roots in the Grave Hill community. Almost everyone buried there in the past 20 years is related to those first Thomases in some way. 

In 2020, Fannie Helen Thomas was buried there. She was the widow of Orison Maynard Thomas, a great-grandson of Calvin Thomas who was killed in a traffic accident in Morgan County in the 1980s. Later that same year, John Marion Thomas was buried at the cemetery. He was a grandson of Calvin Thomas. And, finally, Tim Thomas, a third-great-grandson of Calvin Thomas, was also buried at the cemetery in 2020.

The last burial at Grave Hill as of this writing was Jake Autry in December 2021. Like so many others who are buried at Grave Hill, he spent most of his life in the community. 

Cemetery census

GRAVE HILL CEMETERY
GPS Coordinates: 36.54560, -84.55530
First Burial: 1852
Last Burial: 2024

Douglas R. Autry, 1936 – 1963

Jake Autry, 1935 – 2021

Virgie West Autry, 1937 – 2020

Lucy Phillips Banks, 1844 – 1942

Armp Blevins, 1891 – 1922

Daniel Blevins, 1900 – 1917

John Blevins, 1907 – 1907

Stella West Blevins, 1895 – 1927

Ola Blevins, 1913 – 1914

Polly Miller Blevins, 1863 – 1950

Thomas J. Blevins, 1884 – 1922

William C. Blevins, 1896 – 1918

Etholl Burke, 1927 – 2021

Floyd Burke, 1929 – 1957

Freeda Slaven Caldwell, 1939 – 2025

Frona Phillips Cooper, 1943 – 1985

William E. Daugherty, 1929 – 1929

Eva Duncan, 1915 – 1918

Arlenia Foster, 1885 – 1887

Bo Foster, 1929 – 2018

Charles Foster, 1824 – 1893

Emily Phillips Foster, 1856 – 1897

Emily Foster, 1879 – 1880

John Foster, 1856 – 1923

Lurany Marcum Foster, 1842 – 1881

Mary Foster, 1876 – 1884

Morris Foster, 1866 – 1950

Patten Foster, 1834 – 1919

Bob Foster, 1927 – 2018

Wilda M. Gibson, 1923 – 2007

Charlie H. Gregory, 1890 – 1945

Phylana Terry Gregory, 1898 – 1954

Eric A. Harness, 1985 – 2003

Sarah Haughten, 28 Feb – unknown

Beulah Marcum Hogue, 1903 – 1977

George R. Hogue, 1908 – 1983

Bertha Kidd, 1918 – 1919

Asbera Marcum, 1883 – 1886

Edgar Marcum, 1893 – 1893

Ezra Marcum, 1884 – 1901

John A. Marcum Jr., 1841 – 1903

John B. Marcum, 1881 – 1903

Lucie Marcum, 1878 – 1918

William Marcum, 1842 – 1893

John E. Pennington, 1897 – 1961

James E. Phillips, 1896 – 1968

Jeffy Phillips, 1869 – 1898

John T. Phillips, N/A – 1934

Johnnie Phillips, 1882 – 1916

Sarah Thomas Phillips, 1802 – 1899

Thelma Marcum Phillips, 1923 – 1979

Joseph A. Simpson, 1844 – 1928

Doris Wilfong Slaven, 1942 – 2009

Elsie Slaven, 1945 – 1947

Freddie L. Slaven, 1944 – 1946

Infant Slaven, 1919 – 1919

Infant Slaven, 1932 – 1932

Infant Slaven, 1936 – 1936

Infant Slaven, 1930 – 1930

Joe C. Slaven Jr., 1926 – 1927

Laudy Slaven, 1925 – 1941

Leo Slaven, 1928 – 1992

Luther Slaven, 1923 – 1926

Mary Burke Slaven, 1898 – 1938

Cruse Slaven, 1892 – 1961

Zora Terry Slaven, 1904 – 1983

Lainey Strunk, 2025 – 2025

B.D. Terry, 1889 – 1985

Cephus Terry, 1909 – 1932

Cora Smith Terry, 1902 – 1922

Infant Son Terry, 1922 – 1922

Jesse C. Terry, 1946 – 2024

John Terry, 1866 – 1952

Leonard Terry, 1861 – 1955

Lilie Thomas Terry, 1889 – 1963

Lilley West Terry, 1866 – 1934

Andy Thomas, 1860 – 1915

Bertha Thomas, 1918 – 1919

Burdon Thomas, 1889 – 1985

Calvin Thomas, 1824 – 1899

Carl E. Thomas, 1952 – 2015

Cordelia Thomas, 1920 – 1921

Daughter Thomas, 1959 – N.A.

Donna K. Thomas, 1958 – 1979

Litha Blevins Thomas, 1888 – 1979

Ella Boshears Thomas, 1889 – 1973

Esaw Thomas, 1883 – 1918

Ethel Boshears Thomas, 1897 – 1936

Fannie Frazier Thomas, 1926 – 2020

Fannie Brown Thomas, 1834 – 1917

Infant Thomas, 1899 – 1899

Infant Thomas, 1920 – 1920

Infant Thomas, 1938 – 1938

Infant Son Thomas, 1927 – 1927

Isaac Thomas, 1854 – 1911

John Thomas, 1857 – 1934

John M. Thomas, 1928 – 2020

Lewis S. Thomas, 1874 – 1958

Littleton Thomas, 1861 – 1871

Loretta Thomas, 1943 – 1943

Loy Thomas Jr., 1952 – 1952

Loy Thomas Sr., 1918 – 1985

Lucinda Thomas, 1874 – 1874

Mabel Foster Thomas, 1907 – 1978

Martha Marcum Thomas, 1869 – 1927

Mary Cross Thomas, 1895 – 1985

Minda West Thomas, 1924 – 2002

Mitchell Thomas, 1886 – 1946

Nancy West Thomas, 1862 – 1908

Orison M. Thomas, 1927 – 1983

Orville L. Thomas, 1923 – 1930

Emily Chambers Thomas, 1864 – 1956

Reason S. Thomas, 1891 – 1981

Rebecca Sexton Thomas, 1874 – 1934

Reva Smith Thomas, 1935 – 1993

Orlando Thomas, 1921 – 2011

Ruth Thomas, 1919 – 1920

Sarah Thomas, 1851 – 1852

Thurman Thomas, 1899 – 1927

Tim Thomas, 1960 – 2020

Tollie Thomas, 1904 – 2004

William Harrison Thomas, 1869 – 1943

Bertha Watson, 1921 – 1921

Carrie Sexton Watson, 1893 – 1921

Dottie Kidd Watson, 1902 – 1990

Butch Watson Jr., 1948 – 2013

Garland M. Watson Sr., 1924 – 2014

Henry L. Watson, 1896 – 1947

Laura Watson, 1919 – 1920

Rhoena Marcum Watson, 1874 – 1926

Samuel Harrison West, 1945 – 1945

This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.