Sacred Ground: Rob Sexton Cemetery
Editor’s Note: The Rob Sexton Cemetery, located on the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area at Round Mountain, has been the subject of a past story in the Independent Herald. As part of the Sacred Ground series, however, we are revisiting every cemetery in Scott County.
It’s a long and rough drive from Brimstone Road to the mountaintop that was once referred to as Toadtown. Here, on the northern slopes of Round Mountain, is the Rob Sexton Cemetery, which is said to be the final resting place of Revolutionary War veteran Timothy Sexton Sr.
Sexton, who was one of at least 15 Revolutionary War veterans who moved to present-day Scott County after the war and who is memorialized on a plaque outside the old Scott County Courthouse in Huntsville, doesn’t have a tombstone bearing his name; therefore, the only verification that he’s buried here — on the ridge that separates Bull Creek from Brimstone Creek — is word-of-mouth, handed down through the years. But several of his descendants are also buried here, and there are several graves marked only by uninscribed field stones. It seems likely that one of those is the grave of Timothy Sexton.
This is the same Sexton family whose roots can be found at the Slick Rock Cemetery at the base of the mountain, where you turn off the main road at Brimstone and begin the climb to Round Mountain. That cemetery is also commonly known as Sexton Cemetery.
Sadly, Rob Sexton Cemetery is no longer maintained. It is clear of reforestation, but is becoming overgrown. A recent visit to the cemetery found significant damage caused by wild hogs.
Located on the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area, Rob Sexton Cemetery does not require a four-wheel-drive vehicle to reach from the Brimstone side, but a vehicle with plenty of ground clearance, like an SUV or a pickup truck, is certainly necessary.
The Sexton family
Timothy Sexton Sr. was born in New Jersey in 1750. He was the only of Scott County’s known Revolutionary War veterans to serve in the northern theater of the war. He was a sergeant in the New Jersey Continental Army.
Little is known about Sexton’s service in the war. After the war, he married Esther Sisel — likely an alternative spelling of the same surname we now know as Cecil — in York County, N.C. They had as many as 13 children together. One of them, William Sexton, married Rhoda Griffith, the daughter of another Revolutionary War veteran, Joseph Griffith of Brimstone.
Timothy Sexton was likely of Irish descent. Some family records list his father as John Sexton, who was born in Ireland and migrated to the American colonies. However, other sources place Timothy Sexton’s line as arriving in America a couple of generations earlier.
If Timothy Sexton is buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery, as all family records agree on, he would have been the first burial there; the date of his death is placed on June 18, 1832. He would have been 81 or 82 years old at the time.
Esther Sexton died in 1850 and is reported to also be buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery.
In addition to William Sexton — who is said to be buried at Slick Rock, though there’s no way to confirm that — another child of Timothy and Esther Sexton was Moses Sexton. He died in 1850, the same year as his mother, but his burial location isn’t known. He married Leander Hatfield, and they had a large number of children. One of their children was daughter Rebecca (1823-1905), who married Jehu Phillips, an early elected official in Scott County and one of the Phillips family from Bull Creek. (They’re both buried at Huntsville Cemetery.)
Another of Timothy and Esther Sexton’s children, son Timothy Sexton Jr., died around 1850 and is also said to be buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery, along with his parents. He married Nancy Ellis, and they had several children, some of whom were quite young at the time of Timothy Sexton’s death. Two of his daughters, Margaret (born 1815) and Leanner (born 1820) married brothers from the Phillips family at nearby Bull Creek. Leanner married Emanuel, who was an early elected official in Scott County and donated 25 acres of land for the establishment of Huntsville as the county seat. He died of smallpox during the Civil War while serving in the U.S. army, and is buried at Knoxville National Cemetery in Knoxville, Tenn.
Less is known about most of the rest of Timothy and Esther Sexton’s children, though at least one — son John Sexton — left Scott County for Arkansas.
Following the burials of Timothy Sexton Sr. in 1832, Esther Sexton in 1850, and Timothy Sexton Jr. in or about 1850, the next burial at Rob Sexton Cemetery was Timothy Sexton Jr.’s wife, Nancy Ellis Sexton, in June 1860.
Rebecca Griffith Sexton died about 1872 and was buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery. She was the wife of Emanuel Sexton, who was the son of Timothy Sexton Jr. and Nancy Ellis Sexton, and the granddaughter of Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Griffith of Brimstone. Emanuel Sexton would also be buried at the cemetery when he died in 1888. The date of Rebecca Sexton’s death may be off slightly; she was not listed in the 1870 census with the rest of her family.
In 1881, the first person for which a verifiable headstone can be located was buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery: Lucinda Hughett Sexton died on July 1, 1881, at the age of just 28. She was the daughter of John and Christine Lewallen Hughett of Brimstone, and the wife of Robert Sexton, who she had married 10 years earlier.
Robert Sexton, who was also known as Robbin, was buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery when he died in 1906. It’s possible that his second wife, Florinda Newport Sexton, was also buried in one of the Rob Sexton Cemetery unidentified graves when she died in 1894. It is thought by some descendants that Robert and Florinda’s son, Cpl. Mitchel Sexton, was returned to Scott County and buried there when he died of appendicitis at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. near the end of World War I in 1918. However, that is merely speculation.
Meanwhile, Nancy Sexton, the daughter of Sarah Sexton Griffith, is believed to have been buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery when she died in 1882, although that cannot be positively verified. Sarah Sexton, who would be buried at the cemetery herself in 1890, was the daughter of Timothy Sexton Jr. and Nancy Ellis Sexton. She married William Griffith, from Brimstone.
In 1892, Levi Sexton was buried at the cemetery. He was 45 when he died on Aug. 13 of that year. He was the son of Timothy Sexton Jr. and Nancy Sexton, and married Rosa Jane Ridenour.
Finally, in October 1906, the newborn son of Tim and Lassie Hutson Sexton — who had been born four days earlier — died and was buried at the cemetery. Tim Sexton was the son of Levi and Rosa Jane Sexton, and settled in Elgin with his family.
Years later, in January 1953, a funeral was being held for Lassie Sexton at Wolf Creek Church of Christ. As the final prayer was being delivered, Tim Sexton died suddenly. The service was discontinued, and a double funeral was held four days later. (Neither were buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery.)
Of all the Sextons mentioned above, only three — Robert “Robbin” Sexton, his wife Lucinda Hughett Sexton, Levi Sexton, and the infant son of Tim and Lassie Sexton — can be verified to be buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery with certainty. However, most of the rest are known to be buried at the cemetery via family oral history.
Later, Nellie Jeffers Sexton died and was buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery in 1926. She was the wife of Jasper Sexton of the Cordell community near Bull Creek. Jasper Sexton was the son of Robert and Lucinda Hughett Sexton, and a brother to Cpl. Mitchel Sexton. Jasper Sexton’s first wife, Laura Chambers Sexton, was also buried there when she died in 1916, at the age of 33.
The Griffith family
As documented above, the Sexton family descended from Revolutionary War veteran Timothy Sexton married into the Griffith family descended from Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Griffith. And by the 1920s, a number of Griffith graves began to show up at Rob Sexton Cemetery.
The first of those — besides Sarah Sexton Griffith, the wife of William Griffith and the daughter of Timothy Sexton Jr. and Nancy Ellis Sexton, who died in 1890 — was baby Albert Griffith in 1920. His grave was originally marked with an uninscribed field stone, with a funeral home marker later placed at the grave. He was the son of Horace Maynard Griffith and Armelda Newport Griffith.
Horace Griffith was the grandson of Andrew Griffith and Lucy Sexton Griffith. Lucy Sexton was the daughter of Timothy Sexton Jr. and Nancy Ellis Sexton.
The other Griffiths buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery were also originally identified by uninscribed field stones, with funeral home markers later placed.
Joe Griffith — Albert Griffith’s 20-year-old brother — also died in 1920 and was buried there. McKinley Griffith — Albert and Joe’s 16-year-old brother — died in 1922 and was buried there. And infant O’Dell Griffith was buried there in 1923. He was likely another son of Horace and Armelda Griffith.
Later, in 1938, Horace Griffith was buried at the cemetery. His wife, Armelda, was buried there in 1956. They had another son, 33-year-old Harlin Griffith, who was buried there in 1946. And a daughter, Clodie Griffith Day, was buried there in 1967.
Another Griffith burial at the cemetery was James Ulas Griffith, the Harlin Griffith. The cemetery marker at his grave does not contain dates, but he would’ve been born and died in the 1930s or 1940s.
Another infant son of Harlin Griffith and his wife, Mertie Bowling, was Lowell J. Griffith, who was buried at the cemetery on an unknown date.
The Cole family
In 1931, Thomas Cole buried two of his children at Rob Sexton Cemetery.
One-month-old Ralph was the first to die, on May 10, 1931. Less than two months later, on July 29, two-year-old Fred died.
Thomas Cole would die 12 years later, at the age of 63, and was buried at the cemetery.
Thomas Cole was originally from Georgia and had several kids there. By 1920, he was listed as living with his brother in North Carolina. He had moved to Scott County by the 1930 census and was married to Ethel Cole. They had another son in addition to Fred: 3-year-old Howard.
Modern day
One of the last burials at Rob Sexton Cemetery was in 1980. Lee Gibson, age 92, was returned to Scott County for burial after dying in Ohio. His grave is inside a partition enclosed by wrought iron fencing.
Gibson had a daughter, Mertie, who was buried at the cemetery in 1914. She was only a little over a year old at the time.
Born in Scott County in 1888, Lee Gibson was the son of Alfred and Angeline Gibson. He originally married Gertrude Sexton in 1912. She was the daughter of Elijah and Melvina Sexton and was a second great-granddaughter of Timothy Sexton Sr. She died in 1920, though it isn’t clear where she was buried. Lee Gibson remarried and had several more children.
After Gibson’s burial, the Rob Sexton Cemetery was inactive for several years until the burial of Albert Bowling in 1996. Only 52 when he died, he was the son of Jasper Bowling and Clodie Griffith Bowling. His grandparents were Howard and Armelda Griffith, who had been buried at the cemetery years earlier.
In 2020, Albert Bowling’s wife, Ruth Frye Bowling, died at age 71 and was the last person to be buried at Rob Sexton Cemetery.
Cemetery Census
ROB SEXTON CEMETERY
GPS Coordinates: 36.30500, -84.47390
First Burial: 1832
Last Burial: 2020
Albert Bowling 1944-1996
Ruth Frye Bowling 1948-2020
Delany Byrge 1888-1908
Fred Cole 1929-1931
Ralph Cole 1931-1931
Thomas J. Cole 1879-1943
Clodie Griffith Day 1916-1967
Ransom Fritts 1839-1912
Lee Gibson 1888-1980
Mertie Gibson 1913-1914
Albert Griffith 1919-1920
Armelda N. Griffith 1879-1956
Harlin Griffith 1913-1946
Horace M. Griffith 1872-1938
James U. Griffith N/A-N/A
Joe Griffith 1899-1920
Lowell J. Griffith 1942-N/A
McKinley Griffith 1905-1922
O’Dell Griffith 1923-1923
Sarah Sexton Griffith 1825-1890
Emanuel Sexton 1827-1888
Esther Sisel Sexton 1755-1850
Infant Sexton 1906-1906
Laura C. Sexton 1882-1916
Levi Sexton 1847-1892
Lucinda H. Sexton 1853-1881
Nancy Ellis Sexton 1800-1860
Nancy Sexton 1842-1882
Nellie Jeffers Sexton 1896-1926
Rebecca G. Sexton 1824-1872
Robert Sexton 1850-1906
Timothy Sexton Jr. 1783-1850
Timothy Sexton Sr. 1750-1832
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.