Sacred Ground: The mystery of Foote Cemetery
Old cemeteries hold many mysteries. In Scott County, there is perhaps no cemetery as mysterious as the Foote Cemetery overlooking the Clear Fork River near Robbins.
Located near Burnt Mill Bridge in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, the Foote Cemetery consists of at least seven graves — six of which are marked with uninscribed field stones. The identities of those buried there are unknown.
It was Lathern Hull — a lifelong resident of the Honey Creek community on the west side of the river — who first asked if I had any information on a cemetery near Burnt Mill that he had last been to more than 40 years ago, when he was just a boy.
I was intrigued by the possibility of a cemetery near Burnt Mill because that area is my old stomping grounds; I grew up less than two miles away, as the crow flies. I spent countless hours along the river in my youth, but I had never seen a cemetery there.
On my first trip to search for the cemetery Hull mentioned, I walked a ridge top above the river that was in the vicinity of where I believed the cemetery to be, based on Hull’s description. But I couldn’t locate the cemetery itself.
Later, I was flipping through Robert Bailey’s 1994 book Cemeteries of Scott County, Tennessee and noticed that he had a listing for a Foote Cemetery near Burnt Mill. Turns out, the National Park Service has a listing for it, too, including it among the nearly six dozen cemeteries that are within the boundaries of the Big South Fork NRRA.
Bailey’s directions from 1994 were somewhat vague, if only because things have changed greatly in the past 29 years. His book said to park at Burnt Mill and “walk on an old logging road for about 0.2 miles.” But there are a lot of old logging roads around Burnt Mill.
Likewise, the NPS’s GPS coordinates for the cemetery are inaccurate, depicting it just outside the river flood plain, near where the original Honey Creek Road turns away from the river and turns up the “mountain.” I spent my second trip in search of the cemetery within the gorge, in the area of the NPS’s coordinates, to no avail. Many of the NPS’s coordinates for cemeteries within the BSF boundaries are inaccurate. A park ranger explained it this way: that list was compiled in 1981, before GPS technology improved. Many of those cemeteries have not been mapped again since that time.
It was Hull who finally pointed me in the right direction. “Go up river to where the old rope swing used to be, and the old road turns up the mountain there. At the top of the mountain, it’ll be on the left side of the road.” Armed with this new information, I set out again. I parked at the top of the ridge above the river and walked “backwards,” following the old Honey Creek Road trace towards Burnt Mill.
When I got to near where the road enters the river gorge, it was pretty easy to pick out the first stone in the old cemetery — a field stone that, at first glance, appeared to stand solo on the end of the ridge. I don’t know what it was that I thought I’d find in the “Foote Cemetery,” but it probably wasn’t this. I snapped a photo of the stone, just in case, but initially assumed that it was just a random stone sticking out of the dirt.
I’m not an archaeologist, though I think it would be a fun line of work, but one thing I know is that when you’re looking over ruins of any kind, you have to be patient and let your eyes adjust to your surroundings, and then the above-ground features that remain will become clearer. It’s not unlike walking into a dark room and letting your eyes adjust to the dark. As I knelt beside the field stone, I noticed a second stone, then another, and another. There wound up being six in all, none of them inscribed but all of them in a perfect row. That was hardly coincidence. I was standing in the old Foote Cemetery.
Each of the five additional stones were nearly completely submerged in the earth, as cemetery stones are apt to do. As the ground freezes, thaws, loosens and shifts over the years, it swallows up rocks that are on its surface. As any seasoned gardener can tell you, the ground spits up new rocks, almost as if it grows them. Indentations in the earth indicate that there is at least one more grave in the cemetery not marked by a field stone.
If I hadn’t seen the initial stone that I paused to photograph, I would’ve walked right past the Foote Cemetery without realizing it was a cemetery at all. And I wondered how many others have walked through it over the years without realizing they were walking through a graveyard.
Who is buried here, and when did they die?
The mystery of the Foote Cemetery remains. In remote areas of Scott County, it was most common to bury people without commercial stones to mark their graves prior to the Civil War, which was fought between 1861 and 1865. But field stones continued to be used by the poorest families to mark graves well into the 20th century.
The graves at Foote Cemetery seem to predate the 20th century, if only because the stones have sunk so far into the earth. Pinpointing the date the route of Honey Creek Road changed to its current location would probably help date the cemetery; this would have been a “roadside” cemetery before the road changed course. That was likely in the 1910s or 1920s.
Because there’s no way to date the cemetery with certainty, there’s also no way to even begin to guess who is buried in the seven — at least — graves that are contained in the cemetery. Both Bailey in his 1994 book and the National Park Service in its records call it the “Foote Cemetery,” but there are no historical records of anyone named Foote in Scott County. Census records list no one in Scott County with the surname Foote in either the 19th century or the early 20th century.
Of course, if the cemetery dates back to before 1849 — which is possible, if not likely — this area would have fallen into Morgan County. But census records also show no one named Foote in Morgan County, or in Fentress County.
Settlement along the Clear Fork River dates back to the 1820s. The mill that eventually gave the Burnt Mill Ford area its name was built in 1829. But there is no record of Footes among these early settlers.
So, unfortunately, the mystery remains — at least for now, until or unless more information emerges.
Cemetery Census
GPS Coordinates: 36.38507, -84.63143
First Burial: N/A
Last Burial: N/A