Graving this past weekend

It was a very nice weekend and we finally had the chance to get out and see some things.

First we stopped at 5 cemeteries:

• Richards Cemetery, near Hickory Hollow Mall. It has been nicely fenced, grass added and a small historical marker added recently. It doesn't mention anything about the one person I was interested in here, Guy McFadden died 1835. Possible relative? I'm not sure yet.

• Johnson-Thompson Cemetery,(thanks for the info!) near where Starwood Amphitheater used to be. Unfortunately it is behind a warehouse-type building that is currently unoccupied and it appears nobody has been around to clean this one out inside the fence in quite awhile. Despite not having to worry about snakes and whatnot, the brush was simply too thick to even get close enough to the headstones to read the names on them.

• Eskridge Cemetery, off Hobson Pike near Percy Priest Lake. This one is an enigma. Rutherford County cemetery book states these graves were moved to other places for Percy Priest Lake, and was near to an old slave cemetery. First thoughts say this is the slave cemetery then. There are many depressions that show that clearly there are still burials here. And then there are the headstones. There are quite a few fieldstones(typical of slave cemeteries). But I also found the clearly marked headstone of WB and Addie Charlton Eskridge. They are mentioned as having been removed, not only by the Rutherford County book, but also on this page of the Davidson County Cemetery Survey(it says they were moved to Merritt Cemetery-which is not listed on their site!). However THIS listing, also on the Davidson Co site, simply lists an Eskridge Cemetery with them being buried there. There are also 2 other names listed-we did not find those headstones, but we DID find the headstone of someone not listed there-John J Leigh...SO...That leads me to look elsewhere. And lo and behold I find the LEIGH CEMETERY listed in the Rutherford County book, but NOT on the Davidson County site(it is in Davidson Co). And voila! listed here are John J Leigh 1856-1875 AND (drumroll please) WB and Addie Eskridge! And it says in the book that this cemetery was surveyed by Army Corps of Engineers but NOT moved. So we solve it. It is the Leigh Cemetery, the Eskridge Cemetery was somewhere else, WB and Addie were moved HERE. There *is* a Johnie Merritt buried here, but it is listed as 'Leigh Cemetery' and not 'Merritt'. AND Davidson County does NOT have John J Leigh or Johnie Merritt listed. Though they clearly still think this is the Eskridge Cemetery and have a photo from the road of the woods it is located in. The other 15 or so names listed for Eskridge Cemetery *may* be at Mt Juliet(or somewhere else), but I've never searched for Davidson County names at Mt Juliet-I may in the future now!

• HAYS CEMETERY - or Vivrett or Eatherly Cemetery, Old Mt Juliet Rd, Mt Juliet. I didn't spend much time here, just took a few photos. This is an old cemetery with many of the graves being marked by fieldstones. There is a section surrounded by large cement bricks(which appeared to me to have been placed a number of years after the headstones inside as the names on many of them are nearly up against the edge of the wall and as such are unreadable), the names inside primarily being Vivrett. The older markers that could be read had the surnames of Hays. I wasn't certain on many others. Mt Juliet official records list this as Hays Cemetery. A quick search for Vivretts has someone listing them as being buried in a 'Vivrett-Eatherly Cemetery'. I'll go with city records right now.


• Mt Juliet Cemetery -just came here to rephotograph 2 headstones for a relative who was searching for them. Showed up just in time to get a photo of the front of the Watertown Excursion Train as it zoomed by! We actually were IN Watertown later in the day and saw the same train, already turned around and ready to head back to Nashville!

After leaving Mt Juliet, we went downtown Nashville to visit Fort Nashborough. Then we took 1st Avenue back east, as it became Hwy 70 and followed that all the way to Crossville. There were went to Cumberland Mountain State Park. From there we drove back to Sparta and then headed south and went to Rock Island State Park to take some photos of the waterfalls there. It was a good day.

Photos to be added later.