Sacred Ground: Adkins Cemetery (Jellico Creek)
When Rev. Sterling Adkins died on March 5, 1905, he was 71 years old. He had spent 52 of those years in the ministry.
Adkins may best be remembered as the founder of the Upper Jellico Creek United Baptist Church of Christ, which is located just a couple of miles up the creek from where he was laid to rest in the remote Jellico Creek valley east of Winfield. But before he and his wife, Motlany Lowe Adkins, ever moved to Jellico Creek, he founded the Smokey Creek United Baptist Church in 1873 and had a hand in the formation of several other churches in Scott County — including the First Baptist Church of Oneida.
The Adkins Cemetery on Jellico Creek is the last namesake of Sterling Adkins, one of the most influential preachers in 19th century Scott County.
Last week, Sacred Ground visited Lone Mountain Cemetery near Robbins, and we remarked that it may be the most beautiful and peaceful cemetery in Scott County. If there’s a graveyard that can make a run at Lone Mountain for the “peacefulness” claim, it would be the Adkins Cemetery on Jellico Creek.
By the time you get to Upper Jellico Creek and the tiny Baptist church where Rev. Sterling Adkins preached in the final years of his life, you’re about as far away from Winfield as you can get by car without crossing over into Campbell County (which would only be possible by turning the other direction when you cross the creek at Gum Fork and traveling across Capachene).
As a matter of fact, you’re so far back in the woods that you’re almost headed out again. If the road were passable, it would be a quicker journey to go over the mountain and pop out at the head of Piney Grove. But the road over the mountain, while still showing up on road maps, is an impossible journey by two-wheel-drive, and nearly an impossible journey by four-wheel-drive unless you have a rock crawler with some modifications to lift it over the rocks that jut out up and down the mountainside.
Garrett: After all these years, Sterling Adkins’ Upper Jellico Creek church still stands
It’s beautiful territory back in here. And because the road back to Pine Grove is in such bad shape, Upper Jellico Creek Road is essentially a dead-end. That means it’s seldom traveled except by the people who live back here, the mailman who ventures in every morning, and the trash crew that come in once a week. And with fewer than a dozen homes between the bridge at Gum Fork and the end of the road on the old Chitwood property, that means there’s very little traffic to break the solitude.
As such, this is an abidingly peaceful place. There’s hardly a sound to be heard, except for the birds in the trees and an occasional plane overhead. It’s as though you’ve truly journeyed to the end of the earth.
Here, in a meticulously manicured cemetery that is well cared for by the family members of those who are buried there, is the final resting place of Rev. Sterling Adkins. In this modern world, where so much revolves around the convenience of Walmart and fast food, few people wish to make their homes in locations as remote as this — which is why this once thriving community is now mostly vacant, and perhaps a large part of what adds to its allure. But the people who made their home here over the years and are now buried at Adkins Cemetery embraced the solitude and peacefulness of Jellico Creek. Several of the headstones here make reference to the peace of “the creek.”
The Adkins family
Born Nov. 16, 1833, Sterling Adkins was the son of John Stanton Adkins and Mary “Polly” Saunders Adkins. His father, who died in 1882, is buried on the old Conrad Laxton farm less than half a mile further up the creek. It is not known where his mother is buried.
Sterling was the fifth of eight children. His father had been born in North Carolina, the son of Richard Adkins and Rebecca Burrows Adkins. After marrying Polly Saunders, John S. Adkins migrated to East Tennessee in the early 1800s and settled in Campbell County. The 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 censuses all find John and Polly Adkins living in the Straight Fork area of Campbell County.
In December 1857, about a week before Christmas and exactly one month after his 24th birthday, Sterling Adkins married Motlaney Lowe. She was the daughter of Phillip Low and Sarah Nancy Carroll Low, and the granddaughter of Mikel “Grand Mikey” Low, believed to be the first permanent white settler of Scott County. He migrated from Pennsylvania to Smokey Creek around the start of the 19th century.
The Adkins family was already a large one in Scott, Campbell and Anderson counties. And Sterling and Motlaney Adkins would have a large family of their own. They had eight children and at least 68 grandchildren.
Sterling Adkins was a prominent early Baptist preacher in Scott County. He traveled by foot to churches throughout Scott and Campbell counties, preaching the gospel. It was in 1873 that he founded the Baptist church at Smokey Creek, and 12 years later that he started the Baptist church at Jellico Creek. By that point, he and his family had moved to Upper Jellico Creek.
Related: Sterling Adkins founded churches at Smokey Creek, Jellico Creek
The Baptist Church of Christ is an unfamiliar denomination today. In the late 19th century, it was just taking root as a new denomination that had begun in Tennessee and would spread into other parts of the South. The teachings of Christian reformer John Calvin — commonly known as Calvanism — were becoming prominent in Baptist churches across the region, and the Baptist Church of Christ was intended to be an alternative to those teachings.
On the fourth Saturday in May, 1885, a group of members from Sugar Grove Missionary Baptist Church met to start a new church. Adkins was appointed the group’s moderator. Among those present were Robert Burchfield, Lucinda Burchfield, Margaret Burchfield, Jarret Burchfield, Lusia Trammell, Nancy J. Chitwood, Rachel Honeycutt, Maynard Cross, Cordelia Cross, Melvina Crabtree, Jon Webb, Mary J. Honeycutt, Sterling Adkins and Motlaney Adkins. Maynard and Cordelia Cross were Adkins’ daughter and son-in-law.
Adkins pastored Upper Jellico Creek for four years, then returned for another four years from 1900 to 1904. His son, Gallant Lee Adkins, would later pastor the church in 1913 and 1920. He had a grandson, Harvey Adkins, who pastored the church from 1940 until his death in 1944.
In the meantime, Adkins was one of seven men who met in Oneida in November 1887 for the purpose of starting a new Baptist church there. He was appointed moderator of the meeting, and the result was the formation of the First Baptist Church of Oneida.
Sterling and Motlaney Adkins had eight children in all: Nancy Rene Adkins Lowe, Sarah Jane Adkins Low, Gallent Lee Adkins, Phillip Adkins, Cordelia Adkins Cross, Floraney Adkins, John Stanton Adkins and Henry Sherwood Adkins.
Sterling Adkins died in 1905 and his wife died in 1907. They were the first two people buried in the Adkins Cemetery on Upper Jellico Creek.
One of Adkins children, John Stanton Adkins, died in 1894 at the age of 25 and was buried just a stone’s throw from where his parents would be buried. His is the only grave at the John S. Adkins Cemetery.
Of Sterling and Motlaney’s eight children, only two are buried at the Adkins Cemetery: Flaranzo Adkins (1868-1933) and Henry Sherwood Adkins (1870-1955) and his wife Mary Phillips (1876-1956).
A number of their descendants are buried there, however. Among the ones with the Adkins surname are a grandson, Andrew Adkins (1901-1976), son of Henry S. Adkins; a great-grandson, Floyd Lee Adkins (1931-2017) and his wife, Irene Perkins Adkins (1931-2019); a third-great-grandson, Dwayne Allen Adkins; a daughter-in-law, Elisabeth Davis Adkins (1870-1953, wife of Flaranzo); a grandson, William “Willie” Adkins (1906-1939, son of Henry S. Adkins) and his wife, Golda Elizabeth Duncan Adkins (1914-2000); a great-grandson, Haven Adkins (1929-1929); a grandson, Herman Adkins (1916-1984, son of Henry S. Adkins) and his wife, Ocie Stephens Adkins (1933-2014); a grandson, Hilary Adkins (1911-1971); a great-great-grandson, Kenny Lee Adkins (1944-1992); a great-grandson, Phillip Ervin Adkins (1933-2013); a great-grandson, Robert L. Adkins (1934-2014); a grandson, Robert Lee Adkins (1913-1918, son of Henry S. Adkins); and a great-great-grandson, Floyd Dwayne Adkins (1950-2022).
Other Adkins buried at the cemetery, also descendants of Sterling and Motlaney Adkins, are Judy Gilreath Adkins (1954-2022, wife of David Adkins) and her son, Jason Adkins (1978-2017), along with a baby, Myrtle Adkins.
The cemetery grows
After Sterling and Motlaney Adkins were the first people buried in the Upper Jellico Creek cemetery in 1905 and 1907, the cemetery would sit quietly for a decade until the death of Zele Byrd in 1917.
Zele Byrd was just 47 years old when he fell ill of typhoid fever in November 1917. His death certificate notes that a physician was unable to be reached in time, and he died on Nov. 6, 1917.
Like most of the others buried at Adkins Cemetery, he was of Adkins descent. His parents were Jesse Byrd and Martha Adkins, though Martha Adkins was not directly descended from Sterling and Motlaney Adkins.
Following the deaths of little Robert Lee Adkins in 1918 and baby Haven Adkins in 1929, another child, Denver Davis, died in August 1930 and was buried at the cemetery. He was just five months old, the son of Louie Bryant Davis and Zilah Adkins Davis. He was a great-grandson of Sterling Adkins; Zilah’s father was Henry Sherwood Adkins.
Floranzo Adkins died in 1933 and was buried at the cemetery, and then baby Alta Ruth Laxton was buried there in 1935. She was less than six months old. Her parents — who are also buried at the cemetery — were Conrad Laxton and Texie Meadows.
While they were not members of the Adkins family (making baby Alta the first person to be buried there who was not a member of the family), Conrad Laxton lived nearby. In fact, it is on Laxton’s old farm that Sterling Adkins’ father, John Stanton Adkins, was buried.
The cemetery had seen a number of children and babies buried there in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, and Willie Adkins was only 33 when he was buried there in November 1939. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage after being hit in the head.
Five years later, in April 1944, 72-year-old Tilmon F. Laxton was buried at the cemetery. He was the father of Conrad Laxton, the grandfather of baby Alta Ruth Laxton who had been buried there nine years earlier. His second wife, Laura Neal, was also buried at the cemetery when she died in 1972.
The Daugherty family
Besides the Adkins family, the most prominent family at Adkins Cemetery is the Daugherty family that once lived at Upper Jellico Creek.
Henry Sherwood Adkins’ daughter, Ruth (one of Sterling Adkins’ 68 grandchildren) married into the Daugherty family. Her husband’s name was, perhaps ironically, Sterling Daugherty. Sterling died in 1993, at the age of 78, and Ruth died in 2014, at the age of 94. They once lived next-door to the cemetery; their house is today an AirBNB called “The Creek Rental.”
Sterling Daugherty was himself descended from Sterling Adkins. His mother, Ocie Violet, was the daughter of Floranzo Adkins; she was a granddaughter to Sterling Adkins. She married Henry Lee Daugherty, and they’re both buried at Adkins Cemetery, along with Sterling and Ruth Daugherty.
Henry Daugherty was the son of James Mordaci and Mary Bell Goodwin Daugherty of Kentucky. The Daugherty family eventually moved to Scott County, and James Mordaci Daugherty is buried at the Coffey Cemetery in Oneida.
Other Daughertys buried at Adkins Cemetery include Sterling and Ruth’s daughters, Lula Bell Daugherty Ball (1940-2007), Anna Lee Daugherty Phillips (1937-1989), Eva May Daugherty Wilson (1935-1998) and her husband, Eugene (1931-2016), and Lida Agnes Daugherty Phillips (1939-2022) and her son, Rex Dean Phillips (1958-2015); their daughter-in-law, Brenda Jean Wales Daugherty (1943-1997, wife of Carl Daugherty Sr.); and Sterling’s brothers, James Virgel Daugherty (1911-1974), Ohlen Daugherty (1927-1979), and Silvanus “Sly” Daugherty (1919-1988); along with his sisters, Flora Daugherty King (1929-1983), and Marjie Daugherty Weaver (1924-1996) and her husband, James Herbert Weaver (1920-1989).
Additional family members
Through the years, other members of the Adkins family were buried at the cemetery. The first, in 1960, was Louie Bryant Davis, the husband of Sterling Adkins’ granddaughter, Zilah Adkins Davis, and the father of baby Denver Davis. Zilah was buried there, as well, in 1980. Another of their sons, Bobby James Davis, was buried at the cemetery in 1998.
Another descendant was Levi Chambers (1961-1977), a grandson of Sterling and Ruth Daugherty, and son of Lula Bell Daugherty Ball.
Ethel June Adkins Chitwood (1909-2009) was a granddaughter of Sterling Adkins and is buried at the cemetery. She was the oldest member of the church at Upper Jellico Creek at the time of her death, having been a member there for 87 years. She taught Sunday school and was a church clerk. Her husband, Lee Bannon Chitwood (1904-1990) is also buried at the cemetery. So is her son, Norman Dwayne Chitwood (1946-2017), a great-grandson of Sterling Adkins.
Sterling Allen Chambers (1959-1992) was a third-great-grandson of Sterling Adkins, the son of Lula Bell Daugherty Ball and grandson of Sterling and Ruth Daugherty. His son, Joey Ellis (1986-2009) is also buried at the cemetery.
Deloris Adkins Roark (1948-2016) was a second-great-granddaughter of Sterling Adkins, the daughter of Floyd Lee and Irene Perkins Adkins.
Gerald Wayne Wilson (1962-2018) was a second-great-grandson of Sterling Adkins, the son of Eugene and Eva Daugherty Wilson, and grandson of Sterling and Ruth Daugherty.
The cemetery today
The Adkins Cemetery is still very much active. It is very well-maintained and burials frequently occur there. The most recent burial was Alexander Craig Chambers of Mooresville, N.C., who died March 30, 2023 at the age of 28. He was the son of Ottie and Tommie Chambers of North Carolina. His grandmother was Lula Bell Daugherty Ball. He was a great-grandson of Sterling and Ruth Daugherty, and a third-great-grandson of Sterling Adkins.
Cemetery inventory
ADKINS CEMETERY (JELLICO CREEK
GPS Coordinates: 36.53532, -84.34666
First Burial: 1905
Last Burial: 2023
Burials since Robert Bailey’s 1994 cemetery census? Yes
Andrew Adkins 1901-1976
Dwayne A. Adkins 1968-2002
Elisabeth Davis Adkins 1870-1953
Floyd Lee Adkins 1931-2017
Golda Duncan Adkins 1914-2000
Haven Adkins 1929-1929
Henry S. Adkins 1870-1955
Herman Adkins 1916-1984
Hilary Adkins 1911-1971
Irene Perkins Adkins 1931-2019
Jason Adkins 1978-2017
Judy Gilreath Adkins 1954-2022
Kenny L. Adkins 1944-1992
Mary Phillips Adkins 1876-1956
Motlaney Lowe Adkins 1838-1907
Myrtle Adkins N/A-N/A
Ocie Stephens Adkins 1933-2014
Philip E. Adkins 1933-2013
Robert L. Adkins 1934-2014
Robert L. Adkins 1913-1918
Sterling Adkins 1833-1905
William Adkins 1906-1939
Lula Daugherty Ball 1940-2007
Phillip L. Burchfield 1977-2019
Zele Byrd 1870-1917
Levi Chambers 1961-1977
Ottis B. Chambers 1932-1997
Sterling A. Chambers 1959-1992
Ethel Adkins Chitwood 1909-2009
Lee B. Chitwood 1904-1990
Norman D. Chitwood 1946-2017
Brenda W. Daugherty 1943-1997
Deborah Daugherty 1956-1956
Henry L. Daugherty 1891-1971
James V. Daugherty 1911-1974
Ocie Adkins Daugherty 1889-1971
Ohlen Daugherty 1927-1979
Ruth Adkins Daugherty 1919-2014
Silvanus Daugherty 1919-1988
Sterling Daugherty 1915-1993
Bobby J. Davis 1935-1998
Denver Davis 1927-1930
Louie B. Davis 1893-1960
Zilah Adkins Davis 1894-1980
Joseph A. Ellis 1986-2009
Flora Daugherty King 1929-1983
Alta R. Laxton 1935-1935
Conrad Laxton 1898-1969
Laura Neal Laxton 1908-1972
Texie Meadows Laxton 1900-1987
Tilmon F. Laxton 1871-1944
Anna D. Phillips 1937-1989
Lida Daugherty Phillips 1939-2022
Rex D. Phillips 1958-2015
Delorise Adkins Roark 1948-2016
James H. Weaver 1920-1989
Marjorie D. Weaver 1924-1996
Eugene Wilson 1931-2016
Eva Daugherty Wilson 1935-1998
Gerald W. Wilson 1962-2018
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.