Sacred Ground: William Smith Cemetery

At the Old Litton Place near Leatherwood Ford, just a stone’s throw from the Keeton Cemetery, is the William Smith Cemetery. Little is known about this cemetery, except for the man whose name is lended to the cemetery, and his wife.

Keeton Cemetery is one of the more intriguing cemeteries profiled by the Sacred Ground series so far. Located on a wooded knoll on a farm near the Big South Fork River, it is a cemetery that has been nearly forgotten to time.

The Smith Cemetery nearby isn’t as forgotten or neglected as the Keeton Cemetery; it is still kept clear of woody new growth and is right by a single-lane, dead-end road. But it’s been a long time since anyone was buried here, and the cemetery is not regularly maintained.

There are nearly a dozen people buried at the cemetery. But the only identifiable graves are those of William Smith (1870-1931) and his wife, Sarah H. Smith (1865-1933). The rest of the graves are either unmarked, or are marked with uninscribed field stones.

The Smith family

Known to friends and family as “Bill,” William Smith was the son of Samuel Smith (1832-1918) and Sally Smith. He lived near where the cemetery is located, and was a brother to John J. “Hawk” Smith, the noted Big South Fork resident who lived near what is today Angel Falls Village a few miles away.

Samuel Smith was the son of Anderson Smith (1800-1890) and Sarah Slaven (1796-1888), who had a farm at Station Camp, where Station Camp and Laurel Fork creeks merge on the west side of the Big South Fork River. They’re both buried at Chimney Rocks Cemetery at Station Camp. Sarah was a daughter of Richard Harve Slaven, who is buried at the Nancy Smith Cemetery at No Business and is believed to have been the Big South Fork region’s first permanent white settler.

The Smith family played a prominent role in the early days of the Big South Fork settlements. Anderson Smith and his brother, Samuel Smith, were among the first white settlers on Station Camp Creek. Anderson Smith at one point owned the farm that is today Charit Creek Lodge. His farm was one of those raided by Confederate guerrillas in 1863.

One of Anderson Smith’s children, Catherine, married Jacob Blevins and became the namesake of the Katie Blevins Cemetery near Bandy Creek.

Long before many of the early BSF families had begun to spread their roots beyond the river settlements, the Smith family was branching out into nearby communities. Two of Anderson and Sarah’s children, James and Anderson Jr., settled in the High Point community outside Oneida. And Bill Smith settled in the Black Oak community. James Smith was the oldest of the Smith children. Bill was the second born.

Bill Smith married Sarah Jane Slaven on Nov. 12, 1882, when he was 21 and she was 17. Sarah’s parents were listed as “unknown” on her death certificate many years later. When the 1880 census was taken, she was living with her grandfather, James Slaven. Also living in the residence was James Slaven’s daughter, Jannie (Jane) Slaven, and a grandson, John W. Slaven. The three were also living with James Slaven 10 years earlier, in 1870.

James Slaven was likely the son of Richard Harve Slaven. John W. Slaven may have been John Wesley Slaven, who went by Jack and married Arbana Smith, a granddaughter of the Methodist circuit rider Isaac Smith. If that’s the case, his parents, according to an old death certificate, were John Slaven and Rachel Waters Slaven. There was a Rachel Slaven living in James Slaven’s residence in 1870. However, court records show that Rachel Waters and James Slaven were not married until 1876.

So, all of that is to say that it isn’t clear who Sarah Slaven Smith’s parents were, but she was almost certainly a great-granddaughter of Richard Harve Slaven.

Bill and Sarah Smith had at least six children: Amanda Wright (1884-1959), Luvernia West (1888-1975), Martha Terry (1892-1975), Sallie Terry (1897-1954), Flora Keeton (1903-1981) and James Elmer (1906-1972). There may have been as many as three others: Mary Owens, Polly Davenport and Cora Slaven.

Flora, one of the youngest Smith children, married Henry Terry, from the Terry family that was prominent in the Black Oak community and descended from the family that first settled Oneida. He died young, at just 27, and was buried at Terry Cemetery near O&W. Following his death, Flora remarried to Sullivan Keeton and moved to Anderson County.

Two of the other Smith girls — Martha and Sallie — also married into the Terry family, marrying Carnelon and Elmer. Henry, Carnelon and Elmer were brothers. Another of their brothers was James Calvin Terry, the father of sisters Bertha and Dorothy Terry, of Terry & Terry Store.

James Elmer married into the Terry family, as well. He married Zelta Terry, who was a relative to the Terry brothers that his sisters married.

Bill Smith died of a heart attack on July 7, 1931, at the age of 70. His wife, Sarah, died two years later, on April 22, 1933, at age 68, also of heart disease.

The Smith Cemetery

Bill and Sarah Smith were buried side-by-side near their home at what is now known as Old Litton Place. There were more than half a dozen other people also buried at the cemetery; alas, none of those graves are identifiable. Today, the stones are illegible — when they exist at all. Robert Bailey was unable to identify any of them in his 1994 cemetery census. Later, Tim West transcribed the cemetery and also was unable to identify any of them.

Attempting to speculate on the identity of those graves would be an exercise in futility. What can be said with certainty is that the burial location of almost all of the Smith children can be verified — and most of them lived until the 1950s or later, after the practice of marking graves with uninscribed field stones had largely ended.