Sacred Ground: Sunnyview Cemetery

Of the various families that settled the Pine Creek community west of Oneida through the years, there are two surnames that stand out: The Marcums and the Blevins. Today, you can find roots of both at the Sunnyview Cemetery, the community’s oldest cemetery.

Located on a forested knoll behind the Baker Watershed Lake, Sunnyview Cemetery — also known as Pine Creek Cemetery — is still somewhat active and well-maintained. It contains a total of 64 graves, many of them related to either the Marcum or Blevins families.

The Marcum family has deeper roots at Pine Creek than the Blevins family, of course. The Marcums can trace their roots in the community to John A. Marcum Sr. (1812-1905), who moved his family from Claiborne County to the Oneida area.

In 1901, Rosa Marcum, the granddaughter of John A. Marcum Sr., married William Houston “W.H.” Blevins, the son of Armpstead Blevins and the grandson of Jonathan Blevins, one of the Big South Fork area’s original white settlers. And that was how the Blevins family came into the picture at Pine Creek.

The Marcum family

The Marcum family has settled the Pine Creek area for almost two centuries, and remains prominent there today. The community’s church is pastored by one of John A. Marcum’s descendants — Keith Marcum — just as it was his father before him.

It wasn’t just Pine Creek, of course. The Marcum family was also prominent in the Grave Hill community, and further north into the area that is now Litton Road.

For the most part, though, the family of John A. Marcum Jr. settled the Grave Hill and Pine Creek areas, while the family of his brother, William Marcum, settled the Litton Road area.

John A. Marcum Jr. married Nancy Smith and, following her death in 1869, Arlena Phillips. He had at least 15 children.

One of those children, daughter Rosa, born in 1876, married W.H. Blevins in 1901.

The Blevins family

While the Marcum family came into Scott County from the east, the Blevins family came from the northwest. Originally settling in the Little South Fork and Rock Creek areas, the family of Jonathan Blevins Sr. joined several other families in moving to Big South Fork in the 1810s. He settled along Parch Corn Creek.

One of Blevins’ many children was Armpstead Blevins, who had 17 children. Among them was W.H. Blevins. He moved out of the river bottoms as a young man to attend school at Huntsville Academy. From there, he remained in the Oneida area, eventually settling down at Pine Creek after marrying Rosa Marcum in 1901. They had 10 children.

Related: Remembering Scott County’s ‘Ram’s Horn Orator’

The cemetery begins

The Sunnyview Cemetery dates back to 1927, with the burial of — you might have guessed it — a member of the Marcum family.

Fred Espy Marcum died on May 28, 1927, at the age of 41. He was the son of John A. Marcum and Arlena Phillips, a brother to Rosie Marcum. He married Rosa Mae King and they had four children. One of them was Allen Espy Marcum, a World War II veteran and longtime Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church of Oneida who died in 2016 at age 93 and is one of the more recent burials at Sunnyview.

All of Fred Marcum’s other children are buried at Sunnyview, as well: Robert Love Marcum, who died in 1984; Audrey Rose Marcum Parker, who died in 2002; and Elsie Arlena Marcum Bridges, who died in 2019.

Fred Marcum’s wife, Rosa Mae, was buried at Sunnyview when she died in 1987 at the age of 89.

Elsie Marcum’s spouse, Rev. Earl Kenyon Bridges, was buried at Sunnyview when he died in 2002.

The cemetery grows

While Sunnyview began with the burial of a Marcum in 1927, another member of the family would not be buried there for several years. As the cemetery grew, it was with burials of members of other families who lived in the community.

There is the shared stone of one-year-old Wilda M. Phillips and her 21-year-old brother, William Lloyd Phillips, who died in 1930 and 933. They were the children of Freeman “Mike” Phillips and Teema King Phillips, both of whom were later buried at Sunnyview, as well, in the 1970s. They also have a sister, William Jean Phillips Lay, who was buried at Sunnyview in 2016.

There was 30-year-old Barthelia King Perry, who was buried at Sunnyview after dying in 1930. Her father, William Oziah King, died just five months later and is also buried at Sunnyview. William King was the son of Kirby Sherman King and Nancy Ellen Hatfield King, who are buried at Coffey Cemetery in Oneida. His wife, Nancy Thomas, was later buried at Sunnyview in 1953.

Just two years after the deaths of Barthelia and William, William’s daughter-in-law, Eva Taylor King, died at age 23 and was buried at Sunnyview. Years later, her husband, Kirby Edward King, was buried there in 1986.

The Blevins graves

The first member of the Blevins family to be buried at Sunnyview was in February 1932, when William Howard Blevins died.

“Willie,” as he was called by his family, was only 15 when he died after being shot in the stomach. He was the son of W.H. and Rosie Blevins.

Several of the Blevins’ 10 children died young but perhaps none more tragically than Willie and his older brother, Ralph Emmett. Both were shot at the family home, reportedly by Whitney Marcum. Marcum was also wounded in the fray. A cause for the shooting was not revealed in newspaper accounts written at the time. While Willie Blevins was fatally wounded, his brother Ralph was shot in the foot. He died the next year, at the age of 23, and was buried alongside his brother at Sunnyview. (Whitney Marcum also died in 1933, during a shootout at Hazel Valley Church, and is buried at Coffey Cemetery. He was the son of Leander Marcum and Alice Forbus Marcum, grandson of John A. Marcum and Nancy Smith Marcum.)

Earlier deaths in the family had included infants John in 1907 and Ola in 1914. They were both buried at Grave Hill.

Of the Blevins children who survived to adulthood, Lue Maud Blevins died in 1958 at age 55, and she is buried at Sunnyview. Lucy Bell Blevins died in 1985 at age 70 and is buried at Sunnyview. Helen Blevins died in 1988 at age 80 and is buried at Sunnyview. Lucy and Helen never married, and share a stone at the cemetery.

W.H. and Rosie Blevins also have grandchildren buried at Sunnyview. The infant son of their oldest son, Lawrence, was named Lindburg and died in 1933. He is buried at Sunnyview, as is his infant sibling, who died in 1938.

Sunnyview through the years

Through the 1930s and 1940s and beyond, members of several other families from the Pine Creek community that weren’t closely tied to either the Blevins or the Marcums were buried at Sunnyview. The first was John Fowler Hatfield in 1933, followed by one-year-old Delma Terry in 1934 and Henry Clay Webb in 1935.

Jacob Blevins, a brother to W.H. Blevins, died in 1951 at age 83 and was buried at Sunnyview.

There has never been a large influx of new burials at Sunnyview, but the cemetery has never become inactive, either. There have been 14 burials there since 2000.

Beth Marcum, the 39-year-old daughter of Steve and Carol Marcum, and granddaughter of Allen Marcum, was buried there in 2020. More recently, Franklin D. Lloyd was buried there in August 2022, and Charles Beets was buried there in September 2022.

Cemetery census

SUNNYVIEW CEMETERY
GPS Coordinates: 36.513938904, -84.539886475
First Burial: 1927
Last Burial: 2022
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? Yes.

Charles B. Beets                 1958-2022

Dillie Marcum Bell           1890-1966

Harrison B. Bell                 1884-1955

Emmett Blevins                 1904-1933

Helen Blevins                     1908-1988

Jacob Blevins                      1867-1951

Lindburg Blevins              1933-1933

Lucy B. Blevins                  1914-1985

Lue M. Blevins                   1902-1958

Ralph E. Blevins                1910-1933

Rosa Marcum Blevins     1876-1968

Willie Blevins                     1916-1932

W.H. Blevins                       1869-1964

Earl K. bridges                   1921-2002

Elsie Marcum Bridges     1927-2019

Clona King Burke              1909-1987

Jesse O. Burke                     1907-1957

Kermit L. Carson               1941-N/A

Lizzie Marcum Carson    1942-1993

Willie Duncan                    1891-1943

Anne Burke Gregory        1928-1990

Beatrice Bell Gregory      1908-1974

Hershel C. Gregory           1922-2001

Jimmy R. Gregory             1951-1951

John F. Hatfield                 1890-1933

Eva Taylor King                 1908-1932

Isaac M. King                      1916-1932

Kirby E. King                      1904-1986

Nancy Thomas King        1869-1953

William O. King                 1867-1930

Thomas C. Lay                   1931-2018

Wilma Phillips Lay           1929-2016

Dawn Lincoln                     1970-2008

Linda Spradlin Lincoln   1945-1996

Franklin D. Lloyd              1937-2022

Allen E. Marcum                1922-2016

Arlena Phillips Marcum 1853-1945

Fred E. Marcum                 1885-1927

Lemuel Marcum                1887-1967

Nancy Phillips Marcum  1911-2001

Beth Marcum                     1981-2020

Robert L. Marcum             1920-1984

Rosa King Marcum           1897-1987

Audrey Marcum Parker  1925-2002

John Payne                          1922-1993

Elizabeth King Payne      1931-2008

Barthelia King Perry        1899-1930

Oza Phillips                         1914-1978

Lizzie King Phillips          1890-1962

Finley L. Phillips               1968-1969

Mike Phillips                      1893-1973

Lora Phillips                       1886-1970

Teema King Phillips        1885-1976

Wilda M. Phillips               1929-1930

William L. Phillips            1912-1933

Arnold Spradlin                 1910-1973

Georgia Bell Spradlin      1912-1987

Jimmie Spradlin                1933-1945

Delma A. Terry                   1932-1934

Henry C. Webb                   1860-1935

This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.