Sacred Ground: Jordan Boyatt Grave
Far out a ridge that juts above No Business Creek is a single grave, marked by an original, hand-inscribed fieldstone and a commercial headstone that has been placed in recent years. It is the resting place of Jordan Boyatt, one of the early settlers of the No Business Creek valley.
When Boyatt died in 1900, he was buried on the ridge that towered over the family’s farm along the headwaters of No Business Creek. The selection of the burial site wasn’t completely random; it was located along the old wagon road that the family used to get in and out of the valley. Today, the road leading from Terry Cemetery Road to the Boyatt gravesite is accessible via four-wheel-drive vehicle. However, the original road leading on into the valley and to the Boyatt farm is being reclaimed by nature. The same is true of Boyatt’s farm. While the farm of his son, Ransom Boyatt, is kept cleared by the National Park Service, the older Boyatt farm, located a short distance “up the creek” from Ranse’s farm, is not. The foundation of Jordan Boyatt’s house can be found, but little else remains of the old farm.
Who was Jordan Boyatt
Pronounced “Jurdan,” Jordan Boyatt was the first of the Boyatts to move into what we now know as the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. The family originally hailed from the Foster Crossroads area west of Oneida, where many descendants of the family still live.
Born April 18, 1928, Jordan was the son of Thomas Boyatt and Susannah Maxwell. Both of his parents are believed to be buried at Foster Crossroads Cemetery, where a monument in their honor names them as the first settlers of Foster Crossroads.
The Boyatt family can be traced as far back as 11th century England. Boyd was a precursor to the Boyatt name in 12th century Scotland, where the family were Scottish nobles. Sir Robert Boyd, who is mentioned frequently in the epic poem “The Wallace” by Blind Harry, was a direct ancestor of Scott County’s Boyatt family.
It was Edward Boyett, a third great-grandfather of Thomas Boyatt, who migrated to America in the mid 17th century, landing in Virginia colony. From there, the Boyatts moved to North Carolina and eventually to Tennessee.
Jordan Boyatt — grandfather to the Jordan Boyatt this story is about — moved to Tennessee at some point around the beginning of the 19th century. A delinquent tax listing shows him in Anderson County in 1805. He married Elizabeth Gregory, who died young in 1910. One of their children was Thomas Boyatt, who would marry Susannah Maxwell and settle at Foster Crossroads.
Some commercial accounts say that Jordan Boyatt came to the Big South Fork region with Martin Beatty, the prospector who is credited with discovering oil while drilling for salt brine near Bear Creek along the Big South Fork River, a few miles from Foster Crossroads. The Beatty well was one of the first commercial oil wells in the U.S.
Thomas W. Boyatt was one of the five children of Jordan and Elizabeth Gregory Boyatt.
Our story’s Jordan Boyatt was one of 10 children born to Thomas and Susannah Maxwell Boyatt.
Jordan Boyatt’s family
Jordan Boyatt married Elizabeth Buttram in 1844. She died several years later, and Boyatt married Elizabeth Winchester — the daughter of John Winchester and Mahala Sweet — in 1851. She would also die at a relatively young age, and he married a third time to Mary Ann Slaven in 1870. She was the daughter of John Slaven and Dolly Brown.
Boyatt had one child with his first wife. William Boyatt was born in 1845 and married Rebecca Slaven.
Boyatt and his second wife, Elizabeth Winchester, had at least seven children. And he had at least two more children with his third wife, Mary Ann Slaven.
When Boyatt moved to No Business isn’t entirely clear but it was likely when he married his third wife in 1870. Elizabeth Winchester is believed to have died in the Foster Crossroads area. And, of course, Mary Ann Slaven — Jordan’s third wife — was from No Business. Her grandfather, Richard Harve Slaven, was the first settler of the Big South Fork around 1800.
The best-remembered of Jordan Boyatt’s 10 children was Ransom “Ranse” Boyatt, who lived a short distance “down the creek” from his father, and whose farm is kept cleared by the National Park Service.
Ranse, born in August 1869, was one of Jordan Boyatt’s children with Mary Ann. He married Poppie Litton, the daughter of George Washington Litton and Helen Terry. He was found murdered at his No Business home in 1933, amid a manhunt for his son, Jerome Boyatt — Jordan’s grandson who killed a Pickett County sheriff and the sheriff’s lawman son during a dispute at a Rock Creek mining camp. It has long been assumed that Ranse Boyatt was murdered by the posse that hunted Jerome because he could not give up, or refused to give up, his son’s whereabouts. Shortly after his father’s death, Jerome surrendered to Scott County authorities. He was later kidnapped from the Scott County Jail in Huntsville and murdered by a vigilante mob believed to have been led by the son of the dead Pickett County sheriff, who was himself the sheriff in Clinton County, Ky.
The death of Jordan Boyatt
Jordan Boyatt died on Feb. 14, 1900, at age 71. He was buried along what is now called Michigan Camp Road, on the ridge overlooking his No Business Creek arm.
Mary Ann Slaven Boyatt died Dec. 14, 1925, at age 78. She is buried at the Ranse Boyatt Cemetery on No Business Creek.
Of Jordan’s 10 children, the burial locations of some are unknown. Bertha — who suffered from dwarfism and died at age 24 — was buried at the Ranse Boyatt Cemetery.
Another, Nellie Boyatt Kidd, is buried at Hazel Valley Memorial Cemetery in Oneida.
Still another, George Newton Boyatt, was buried much like his father — in a solitary grave in a now-forested area in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area — when he died in 1941.
The oldest, William Boyatt — Jordan’s only child with his first wife, Elizabeth Buttram — was buried at Foster Crossroads in 1930.
Finally, a daughter, Unie Boyatt Pugh, was buried in Cumberland County, Tenn. in 1968.
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.