Sacred Ground: Keeton Cemetery (Black Oak)

Keeton Cemetery near Leatherwood has been on our short list since the “Sacred Ground” series began. But it was bumped to the top after our profile of the Burg Keeton Cemetery last week.

One of the graves at Burg Keeton Cemetery is Louvernia Thompson Keeton (1865-1945), the wife of Granville Keeton and grandmother of slain Scott County game warden Lindsay Haywood Phillips. And Louvernia’s mother and father are buried at the Keeton Cemetery at Leatherwood.

Located on a small knoll near Litton Place, off Leatherwood Road, the Keeton Cemetery has not been maintained for many years; it has been completely taken over by forest. It is home to what appears to be at least 11 graves, though some of them are marked with illegible or uninscribed field stones, and a couple are not marked at all.

It’s not clear why the cemetery has always been called Keeton Cemetery; there are no Keetons buried there — at least not among the decipherable graves — and, indeed, the cemetery is also commonly known as the Thompson Cemetery. The only clue to the Keeton tie is Louvernia Keeton, a member of the Thompson family who lived in the area of what is now Litton Place who married into the Keeton family on the other side of Pine Creek, near Helenwood. 

 The Lewis Thompson family

The earliest verifiable grave at Keeton Cemetery is that of someone who died on Feb. 1, 1863. The hand-shaped stone is inscribed only with the initials “L.T.” along with “DECST FEB 1, 1863.”

There is no way to conclusively prove it, but the grave is likely that of Lewis Thompson, who was born in Virginia in the early 1790s and later migrated to Tennessee. He was a veteran of the War of 1812, though little was recorded about his time in the U.S. Army.

There is nothing to conclusively prove the date of Lewis Thompson’s death, but he last appeared in the 1860 census, at which point he told enumerators that he was 68 years old, having been born in Virginia in 1792. (There are also records indicating a Lewis Thompson — son of Elswick and Patty Acres Thompson of Virginia — was born in September 1789. It could be a different Lewis Thompson; however, it’s worth noting that our Lewis named his oldest son Elswick, not a particularly common name in those days.)

Lewis Thompson was married twice: first to Phoebe Thompson, and later to Mary “Polly” Thompson. He apparently had children with both. 

Polly Thompson, who was much younger than Lewis, died in 1902 and is buried at nearby Possum Rock Cemetery. Unfortunately, little is known about Phoebe Thompson, including when she died or where she is buried. She appeared in the 1850 census as Lewis Thompson’s wife; by the 1860 census, he was married to Polly Thompson. A gap in the births of Lewis’s children, from 1837 to 1851, coupled with the census records, would suggest that Pheobe died sometime in 1850 or 1851. A death certificate for Lewis’s daughter Emolin Thompson Thomas, born in 1851, indicates that her mother was Polly.

The Keeton Cemetery

Regardless of who the stone inscribed “L.T.” belongs to — and it seems very likely, if not certain, that it is Lewis Thompson — his oldest son, Elzwick Thompson, is certainly buried there.

Elzwick (or Elswick) Thompson was born Sept. 11, 1818 and died Sept. 27, 1904. “Elzie,” as he was called, was apparently born after his parents moved from Virginia to Tennessee. He married Nancy Brown, and they later moved to Fentress County. It’s not clear who Nancy’s parents were, or if she was related to Polly Brown, Lewis Thompson’s second wife, but the 1850 census found Nancy Brown living in Lewis’s household. 

One of Elzie’s and Nancy’s many children was Louvernia Thompson, who married Granville Keeton. Their other children spread wide and far — some winding up in Kentucky, some in Texas, some in Oklahoma, and some back in Scott County.

Elzie Thompson died on Sept. 27, 1904 and is buried in the Keeton Cemetery at Leatherwood. Nancy died less than six months later, on March 14, 1905, and is also buried at Keeton Cemetery.

The other two identifiable graves at Keeton Cemetery are baby Nancey Blevins, who died in infancy in May 1881, and Thomas Davis, who died in 1897 at the age of 82.

Davis was the husband of Mary Davis. He was born in North Carolina and later moved to Scott County. 

Because there are graves at Keeton Cemetery that cannot be identified, there is a great deal of mystery surrounding the cemetery. Three of the unidentifiable graves are side-by-side-by-side. As Tim West, who inventoried the cemetery in 2014, notes, the sizes of the graves indicates that they were likely the graves of children. 

Nearby are two spots of sunken earth, one containing a mostly sunken field stone without engraving and the other containing no marker at all, that may also indicate children’s graves. 

Perhaps the greatest mystery of all: Could this cemetery be the final resting place of Phoebe Thompson, who died around 1850 or 1851? There is at least one stone that is illegible, so it’s very possible that she was buried here following her death. If so, hers would have been the earliest grave at Keeton Cemetery; her passing preceded her husband’s by about 12 years.

Cemetery census

KEETON CEMETERY (LEATHERWOOD)
GPS Coordinates: 36.464271545, -84.631446838
First Burial: 1863*
Last Burial: 1905*
Burials since Robert Bailey’s cemetery census of 1994? No.

Nancey Blevins, 1881-1881
Thomas Davis, 1814-1897
Elzwick Thompson, 1818-1904
Lewis Thompson, 1792-1863
Nancy Brown Thompson, 1827-1905

*There are at least five unidentifiable graves at Keeton Cemetery. Some are marked with illegible or uninscribed stones; at least two aren’t marked at all.

This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.