Sacred Ground: Trammell Cemetery
Some months back, the Sacred Ground series visited Chitwood Cemetery off Pine Grove Road in Winfield, the final resting place of Revolutionary War veteran James Chitwood.
Chitwood, who was from a family that was strongly loyal to the British crown but was himself a Patriot who fought for independence, was just one of two Revolutionary War veterans who settled in what we now know as Winfield soon after the war. The other was Capt. Dennis Trammell. And, like Chitwood, he has a fascinating story to tell.
Today, the Chitwoods and the Trammells remain a key part of Winfield. Most of the community’s residents are descended from those two Revolutionary War veterans or related to them in some way. And the influences of those two families can be found all over this northern section of Scott County.
This week, we visit the final resting place of Winfield’s other Revolutionary War veteran, Capt. Dennis Trammell, who is buried at the Houk Trammell Cemetery off Alderville Road.
The Trammell Cemetery is a small family cemetery in a beautiful farm setting at the base of Chitwood Mountain, and isn’t to be confused with the Bauswell Trammell Cemetery, which is located a couple of miles away. It is also sometimes called the Pleasant Grove Cemetery.
The Trammell family
Dennis Trammell was born in 1759 in Amelia County, Va., the son of Thomas Trammell. The Trammell family appears to have come to America from England during the mid 1600s, with Dennis Trammell’s second-great-grandfather, Thomas Trammell. Much of what is known about Dennis Trammell today comes from his application for a Revolutionary War pension, which he filed in 1833, after his move to Tennessee. At the time, this area that would later be known as Winfield was part of Campbell County. Scott County was not formed until 1849.
The Trammell family moved from Virginia to North Carolina when Dennis Trammell was a boy. It was there that he married his first wife — believed to be “the widow Brassfield,” or Elizabeth Brassfield — in 1778.
Following his marriage, Trammell moved to South Carolina, and it was there that he volunteered for service in the Revolutionary War. He would go on to see more action than just about any of the other 13 known Revolutionary War veterans who would later move to the area that would become Scott County. He saw action at the Battle of Cowpens, Blackstock’s Farm, the Siege of Augusta, Eutaw Springs, Hogskin’s Mill, Musgrove’s Mill and Long Cane. All of those battles were fought between 1779 and 1781 in South Carolina, with the exception of the siege of Augusta, which was fought in Georgia.
When Trammell applied for a pension after the war, it was denied because a record of his cavalry unit could not be found. He provided more proof, and a pension was approved by Congress in a special vote.
However, that vote caused outrage by Congressman Martin Beaty from Kentucky. This was the same Martin Beaty who owned substantial land holdings on the Big South Fork River. It was him who owned the “Beaty Well,” perhaps the first commercial oil well in North America. Beaty was a salt producer, but his workers accidentally discovered oil — though they had no idea at the time what the black, tarry substance was — when they drilled into the ground along the river, near the mouth of Bear Creek on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.
Beaty claimed that “there never was a greater fraud practiced on the government” than Trammell’s war pension, adding that Trammell was a captain of the Tories during the war. (Tories were settlers who were loyal to the British crown.) There was no evidence to substantiate his claim. On the other hand, there was substantial evidence in the form of sworn testimony from witnesses to support Trammell’s claim that he had served as a captain in the Continental Army during the war. One of those witnesses was former Kentucky Gov. John Adair. Another was James Chitwood, the other Revolutionary War veteran who settled in Winfield.
It’s not clear exactly when Trammell moved to the Winfield area. He returned to Virginia in the immediate aftermath of the war, and may have traveled back to North Carolina for a while. There was even a Dennis Trammell in Rowan County, N.C. who was convicted of robbery and sentenced to death in 1783. That person was pardoned by the North Carolina General Assembly at the request of Gov. Alexander Martin. However, because a Dennis Trammell also appears in court records in Virginia in the interim, it seems possible — if not likely — that the man arrested in central North Carolina in 1783 was a separate Dennis Trammell.
In any event, Trammell had moved to Grainger County, Tenn. by 1797, and moved further west soon thereafter. An early tax list from Knox County, Ky. shows Trammell owning 150 acres on Jellico Creek, and he later owned land on Pine Creek in Anderson County.
It was at some point between 1810 and 1816 that Trammell moved to the Winfield area. One of his daughters, Nancy Trammell, married Archibald Angel in 1804, before the move to Winfield. They established a farm on the banks of Jellico Creek at Gum Fork that became known as Angel Valley, and is still called that today. James Trammell — Capt. Dennis Trammell’s son, and Nancy’s brother — was buried in the Angel-Wright Cemetery in the center of the farm in 1826. It is the oldest known, verifiable grave in Scott County.
At some point between 1820 and 1840, Trammell’s wife, Elizabeth Brassfield, died. It is not known where she was buried. In April 1841, Trammell remarried to a woman much younger than him, Martha Cooper. He was about 81 at the time and she was about 21. However, it seems that they later separated.
It isn’t clear exactly how many children Trammell had. There were at least four children with his first wife — James, Nancy, Peter and David. Some records indicate that there was also another son — Dennis Jr. — and a daughter who married Ephraim Branham. Family histories have traditionally suggested that Trammell fathered several more children with his second wife, Martha. Those accounts are doubted by some descendants, however.
Several of Trammell’s grandchildren served in the Civil War. Among them was Capt. Dennis Trammell (1815-1891, the son of James Trammell), who lived on Jellico Creek and is buried in a separate Trammell Cemetery there. Confederate guerrillas burned his home during the war after allowing his blind wife, Polly, to be led from the home.
The cemetery begins
The Trammell Cemetery began with Capt. Dennis Trammell’s death in 1849, at the age of 90. Like many of Scott County’s Revolutionary War veterans, he was remarkably long-lived for that era.
It was many years after that before a second grave appeared at the cemetery. In either 1895 or 1905 — a newborn Julien Duncan was buried there. There are two headstones, one listing the birth and death dates as Jan. 28, 1895 – Jan. 29, 1895, and the other listing the same dates in 1905. Given that both list the date of birth as Jan. 28 and the date of death as Jan. 29, it seems incredibly unlikely that these were different babies. It’s also not clear who the parents of this baby were, though the Duncan family was prominent in the Alderville area at the time.
In 1896, David Trammell died and was buried at the cemetery, at age 49. He was a great-grandson of Dennis Trammell, the son of James Marion Trammell and Rebecca Hamby. He married Betty Chitwood (1850-1946), who would later be buried at the cemetery.
Of the more than 80 graves at Trammell Cemetery, more than one-fourth are Trammells — either by birth or by marriage. A great many of the other graves there are relatives of the family.
The cemetery is often called the Houk Trammell Cemetery, after Leon Houk Trammell (1890-1966). He was the son of David Trammell, who was buried at the cemetery in 1896, and a second-great-grandson of Capt. Dennis Trammell. His wife, Emma Thompson, was also buried at the cemetery in 1978.
Indeed, while Capt. Trammell himself was buried here in 1849, this cemetery largely became the David Trammell family cemetery beginning in the 1890s, when more people began to be buried there.
Only one of David Trammell’s other children — Blanie Thompson (1938) and her husband James (1954) — was buried at the cemetery. However, several of Houk Trammell’s children were buried there. These include Opal Hill (2012) and her husband Cleveland (1994), along with their daughter, Phyllis (2008); Willard Trammell (1967); Marshall Trammell (1985) and his wife Nola Cross (1994); Shirley Strunk (1963); and Rudolph Trammell (1977). The only of Houk Trammell’s children not buried at the cemetery was his oldest, Flora Mae Murphy, who moved to Roane County after marriage.
That isn’t to suggest that it was only David Trammell’s line of the family buried at the cemetery on Alderville Road. Several other Trammells were buried there between David Trammell’s death in 1896 and Houk Trammell’s death in 1966.
The Duncan family
As we noted when we profiled the Chitwood Cemetery earlier this year, the Duncan family was also prominent in the Winfield area in the late 1800s, and several of them are buried at Trammell Cemetery.
The Duncan family dates back to Josh Duncan Sr. (1808-1890) and Rosie Sartin (1810-1878).
One of the Duncan children, Joshua “J.J.” Duncan Jr. (1836-1877) was a Union army veteran of the Civil War who married Sarah Ann Chitwood (1834-1901), the daughter of Joel Chitwood and Elizabeth Trammell. She was a great-granddaughter of both James Chitwood and Dennis Trammell.
Newborn Julien Duncan may have been the first Duncan buried at the Trammell Cemetery, if the stone dated 1895 is correct. Nineteen-year-old F.M. Duncan was buried there in 1903. Two-year-old Mary Mona Duncan also died in 1903 and was buried at the cemetery.
William G. Duncan, age 24, died in 1905 and was buried at the cemetery. Two-year-old Bulah Duncan was buried there in 1908.
The Chitwood family
Just as there are Trammells buried at the Chitwood Cemetery, there are Chitwoods buried at the Trammell Cemetery. That isn’t surprising; these two founding families of Winfield have been deeply connected through the years.
The first Chitwood buried at the cemetery was baby Silas Chitwood, who died just four days shy of his first birthday in 1904. He was the son of John Marion Chitwood and Louisa Trammell, who are buried at Chitwood Cemetery. His grandfather was David Trammell, who was buried at the cemetery in 1896.
Silas Chitwood’s brother, eight-year-old Canie Chitwood, was buried at the Trammell Cemetery in 1923. And another brother, Ernest Chitwood, was buried at the cemetery when he died in 2005 at age 94.
Molly Miller Chitwood was buried at the cemetery in 1907. She was the wife of Bailey Chitwood, who would also be buried at the cemetery in 1917. Bailey Chitwood was the son of Pleasant Chitwood Jr., who is buried at the head of Jellico Creek, and a great-grandson of James Chitwood, the Revolutionary War veteran. His grandfather, Pleasant Chitwood Sr., is who Pleasant Grove was named after.
Baby Sterling Chitwood is purported to have been buried at the cemetery in 1945, though there is no stone. He was the newborn son of Robert and Lillie Chitwood, who lived on Jellico Creek. Robert Chitwood was buried at the cemetery when he died in 2012. His wife of 73 years, Lillie Dingus Chitwood, was buried at the cemetery when she died just one year later. She was the oldest member of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church at the time of her death. Lillie was the daughter of Bill Dingus and Martha Thompson. Martha Thompson was the daughter of George Washington Thompson and Parzida West, mentioned below.
The Thompson family
Several members of the Thompson family were also buried at Trammell Cemetery. Like so many of the families represented here, the Thompsons were an offshoot of the Trammell family. Blanie Thompson, who was buried at the cemetery in 1938, was the daughter of David Trammell and Betty Chitwood. She married James L. Thompson, who was buried at the cemetery in 1954. Their last child, Merk Thompson, died in 2011.
The first Thompson buried at the cemetery was two-year-old Edison in 1919. It’s not clear who his parents were.
George Washington Thompson, who was James L. Thompson’s father, was buried at the cemetery in 1941. His wife, Parzida West, was buried there in 1945.
The cemetery today
Just over 80 burials in all have occurred at Trammell Cemetery, which is situated in a pastoral setting overlooking the Alderville community by Chitwood Mountain Farm. The most recent burial there was Carolyn Smith Trammell, who died in August 2022. She was the wife of Darrell Trammell and was a lifelong resident of the community. (Her mother, Beulah Posey Smith, is buried at the Davis Cemetery just across the farm, and her father, Sherman Smith, is buried in a small family cemetery just a stone’s throw beyond that.)
Cemetery census
HOUK TRAMMELL CEMETERY
GPS Coordinates: 36.56331, -84.40574
First Burial: 1849
Last Burial: 2022
James H. Acres, 1945-1945
Paula K. Acres, 1944-1944
Jocie Chitwood Anderson, 1892-1918
Sarah Trammell Anderson, 1876-1912
Josephine Cox Chambers, 1941-2009
Bailey Chitwood, 1852-1917
Canie Chitwood, 1915-1923
Ernest Chitwood, 1911-2005
Lillian Dingus Chitwood, 1919-2013
Molly Miller Chitwood, 1856-1907
Robert E. Chitwood, 1921-2012
Silas Chitwood, 1903-1904
Sterling Chitwood, 1945-1945
Infant Coffey, 1935-1935
Mark A. Coffey, 1965-2007
Charles L. Cox, 1917-1971
Myrtle Trammell Cox, 1919-1995
Mary Cox Davis, 1937-1995
James A. Dingus, 1928-2012
Martha Thompson Dingus, 1893-1977
Willard Dingus, 1894-1970
Bulah Duncan, 1906-1908
F.M. Duncan, 1883-1903
Julien Duncan, 1895-1895
Mary M. Duncan, 1900-1903
William G. Duncan, 1881-1905
Ervin J. Foster III, 1935-2001
Sandra K. Foster, 1964-1977
Virginia Dingus Foster, 1934-1971
Helena Lay Grant, 1832-1911
James H. Grant, 1827-1903
Lona M. Hayes, 1906-1913
Ruth E. Hayes, 1916-1922
Grover C. Hill, 1922-1994
Opal Trammell Hill, 1916-2012
Phyllis Hill, 1948-2008
Robert J. Meadows, 1919-1919
Edna Ross Norman, 1929-2016
Louisa Chitwood Reynolds, 1843-1925
Christopher A. Strunk, 1981-2013
Linda Trammell Strunk, 1928-1979
Norman Darrell Strunk, 1950-1950
Shirley Trammell Strunk, 1934-1963
Thomas M. Strunk, 1954-1972
Blanie Trammell Thompson, 1885-1938
Edison Thompson, 1916-1919
George W. Thompson, 1857-1941
James L. Thompson, 1880-1954
Parzida West Thompson, 1858-1945
Flossie Tramel, N/A-N/A
Herman Tramell, 1915-1943
Jim D. Tramell, 1892-1909
Latha Tramell, 1918-1919
Majel Tramell, 1913-1914
Virginia Tramell, 1934-1934
Carolyn Smith Trammell, 1957-2022
David Trammell, 1847-1896
Dawsie Trammell, 1898-1953
Dennis Trammell, 1759-1849
Edna Wright Trammell, 1896-1984
Elizabeth Chitwood Trammell, 1850-1946
Emily Thompson Trammell, 1899-1978
Francis Trammell, 1924-1986
Leon H. Trammell, 1890-1966
Louisa Chitwood Trammell, N/A-N/A
Marion Trammell, 1891-1962
Marion E. Trammell, 1963-1963
Marshall F. Trammell, 1922-1985
Nola Cross Trammell, 1917-1994
Prince Trammell, 1898-1943
Robert E. Trammell, 1935-2013
Rudolph B. Trammell, 1938-1977
Willard J. Trammell, 1919-1967
William Trammell, 1887-1910
William Trammell, 1929-1986
Martha A. Webb, 1869-1913
Sam Webb, 1903-1903
Jason A. West, 1980-1982
Latham Wilson, 1887-1923
Daughter Wright, N/A-N/A
Virginia L. Wright, 1919-1919
Brent G. Wright, 1879-1918
Ronnie Yancey, 1945-2014