This has not been as easy as I thought it would be. First I have so many stories of my family that it is hard to choose. Second most of my sources came from research that had to be pieced together to create the whole picture. Going back and documenting my sources is next to impossible. I now know that when we copy a page out of a book that it is critical to copy the title page also. It has been fun and I have a feeling we, (my family and I) have only just begun to figure it all out.
Nine years ago my mother, Lela Carmon Smith Jones decided she was becoming aged. She was then 78 years old she being born Sept.. 30, 1917 she is now 87. She appointed me to carry the torch. (I don’t know why, I am the seventh child of ten). She and her sister Vivian Smith Broadway had worked together at genealogy for at least 40 years. In their days of research there were no copy machines or computers. They went to Salt Lake City to the Family History Library and made hand written then type written copies of their finds. They made laborious trips to Tennessee and North Carolina about every ten years. Along with some of their brothers and their wives they found most of the grave sites of their grandparents and great grandparents. My mothers family had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the late 1920’s. She was baptized when she was eleven. The main reason they took such joy in the new church was because it sealed families forever and gave hope to them for the loss of so many of their family from TB.1
Grandma Jones (my mother), decided that the first thing I needed to know was where all the cemeteries in Tennessee were. These were important to her, the last resting place for so many of our kin in that far away state. Thus in the spring of 1997 with Jacob (our second oldest son then age 24) Nathan (our third oldest son then age 22) driving an old motor home we set out. We had Grandma Jones and five of the other younger children, nine total in that motor home. Ray, my husband had to stay home and tend the water and our oldest son was married. Our goal was to trace the Mormon trail all the way to New York. Then go into North Carolina where Nathan had served his mission and where the trail ends in 1815 and 1816 for the Bunn side of the family.
We found the places in NC where our Bunn ancestors lived in the 1830 census then followed them into Tennessee where they show up in the 1850 census. As grandma showed us their cemeteries, houses, and their farms I too realized how important these places were. We found the Tiphouse cemetery so neglected we couldn’t walk all the way through it. This neglected spot is the resting place of two sets of my great grandparents. I wanted to make it better but had no vision of how. I came home with a need to share the experience with my brothers, sisters and any cousins that would listen. I had a good reception with my sisters and a cousin Linda. I thought it interesting that only the girls wanted to do anything about it.
We planed another trip where all the girls and my brother Tom would go. I couldn’t be gone long so most of us flew except Grandma, Tom and his wife. They took the same old motor home. Before the trip I decided to put together a booklet with all the research that Mom and Aunt Vivian had done along with the old family pictures. I compiled a 70 page book and we printed a two hundred copies. We gave them out to our cousins, to libraries, and to anyone who wanted one. It became our map. We found cousins all over the place as they looked at the book and knew where they fit in. It opened the door for much more research as we located the places and learned of the events of the past that were talked about in the book. The Tiphouse cemetery still looked like this.
The trip was a great success, but we could only do minimal work on the cemetery because we had no equipment and it need heavy duty stuff. We did get chiggers. I had already learned about chiggers from the first trip. Now everyone else could have the experience. We took all the precautions of insect repellent and garlic. Trust me nothing works. Those of us flying had to catch the plane right after the Tiphouse so we changed our cloths in a rest room on our way to Knoxville. As we put the dirty cloths in a bag and put them in our suit case Leila my sister made the comment as to what would happen to all the chiggers on the cloths in the luggage compartment that wasn’t pressurized, would they explode? That made everyone at the station laugh and we realized everyone there had been listening. I think we had entertained quite a few people on that trip. We had fun.
We needed to go again. We had copied pages from books, censuses, and court records. We pieced together information that we hadn’t even guessed. We knew that Willis Webb had fought in the Civil War for the North. He is in the Tiphouse with his wife Margret Ann Stewart. His head stone had been broken off, now it was just gone. (Later we replace it). We find out that when he entered the army his two brothers and three of their sons joined with him. Willis left his seventeen year old son home and they thought it may be safer to take theirs. It was a hard time for the young men as well as the old. Here is a story told by my grandmother about Willis’s wife Margret, and you will see what I mean. 4
Siddie said she lived with her Grandmother Margret Ann Stewart Webb at night after her husband Willis Webb died in 1890 he was born in 1819. Grannie (Siddie) said that After they were married Margret and Willis moved to a farm a short distance from Mill Creek, Morgan Co.. Tenn. the house was built on a hill that dropped off straight down for fifty feet on three sides, called” Buzzard Cliffs” She lived there until her first five children were Born, they were Samuel born 1 Sept. 1842, Harm born 15 March 1846, James born 15 Nov. 1847, Nancy Webb born 9 May 1849, and Martin born 24 February 1852.
Around 1853 Willis and Margret moved to Glenmary ,Tennessee to the old home place. Just after they moved there Willis bought Margret her first pair of “store bougten shoes” she ever had, she had always worn shoe that were home made. She could make shoes as well as weave cloth and make clothes. Willis worked on the farm growing what they needed and selling what he grew for what little money they had. With growing their own meat and vegetables and her making the cloth for clothes they lived. It was a hard working life. Not much time for reading or relaxing. On the 22 Aug.. 1855 Hiram died, he was just nine years old, Willis and Margret put him in a wagon and took him back to be buried in the Nydeck Cemetery in Rugby Tenn. Which by today’s travel is only about 7 miles but in those days by wagon trail, I’m sure was a lot farther. One time Willis brought home a tomato for Margret, she tasted it and thought it was awful and threw it out the window, the next spring she had tomatoes growing ever where. She soon grew to like them very much. 4
When the Civil War started Willis joined the Union army. Company B 2nd Tennessee Infantry. 5 The next 5 years were the hardest years of her life. They lived on the border line of the war between the states, one time in the hands of the rebels and the next in the hands of the Yanks. When Willis left for the war he had their home nearly finished except for the windows and doors, the neighbor’s helped her put them in. Margret like her mother was the only one around who had any medical knowledge of that time and place. She was the herb doctor, and was call on to help the sick and deliver babies, Samuel was 18 at that time, he was at the age when if either side saw him they would force him into the army, there were several of the boys that age in the area, so during that time her and her neighbor’s sons were hid out in a cave above her house. At night when her other children were asleep, she would slip out and get on the old white work horse and ride through the woods to take food to the boys. She had to be careful and not run into any soldiers both rebel or Union for they were always raiding the farmers for feed, clothes, cows, or horses. The rebels were worse. Some of the rebels were good but most of them were bad.
When any of the army were in the area she would hang her red pettycoat on the line to show the boys there was danger around. When it was safe she would hang her white table cloth on the line. When the white table cloth was on the line the boys would come in and she would feed them a good hot meal. She had to keep her horse hidden to keep the army from taking it. One experience she had was with a neighbor named Redman. He was to old for the army and he was told that the Rebel’s killed all the men who were to old for them to use in the army. So when he hear that the rebels were coming, Redman and his wife hid out in the caves. When the rebels came to their home and found them gone, they told a Negro slave that if they were not back by morning they would burn their home and barn down. The slave did not know what to do, so he came to Margret for help. She went and got her old white horse where she had it hid under a cliff and went to find them. As there were several caves in the area it took her a while, she found them and got them home just before the sun came up. The rebels let him live and never burned their home down, they told him, he had come back so they let him go.
In return for the help she had given them, they helped her kill her pigs and clean them. Before she could kill and cure her meat, she had to have salt. As there was a shortage of everything during the war and travel was dangerous, there was none available in town. She had to get on her horse and with her baby in her arms travel over a hundred miles through the hills, hiding out from the army of both sides, to get to Somerset Tennessee to the salt. She carried a bushel of salt home on her horse with her small baby. After the meat was cured she would scrape the salt off the meat and use it for cooking, for salt was a precious thing and a very necessary one.
While alone during the war her children came down with the dipthirera. Her daughter Nancy died (on the 16 Sept... 1862,) Nancy was 14 years old at that time. She got her ready to bury and the morning of the 18th she got up early to put her in the wagon to take her to Nydeck Cemetery at Rugby, Tenn.. Her son Samuel then 18 years old was standing at the door watching the sunrise, he turn to his mother and said, “Come see the beautiful sunrise,” then he told her that would be the last sunrise he would ever see. She put her daughter in the wagon and went to Nydeck, it was an all day trip. When she got back home Samuel was dead. He died 18 Sept.. 1862, two months later on the 14 Nov. 1862 her son James died, he was only 15. The road to the cemetery at Nydeck was a road of heart ache and sorrow. She did not even know if her husband was still alive or not.
By this time she had eleven children born to her, Martha born in 1853, then John Franklin born 26 Sept.. 1854, next was Mary in 1856, then William David made his appearance 22 march 1858, then Adline came along 26 Sept... 1860, Emiline came along about the time Willis left for the army in 1961. Her 12th child Annie was born 28 March 1864 in Glenmary Scott Co.. Tenn... By 1866 their first six children had died. Franklin was born in 1866, then Amanda on 6th of January 1868, and Tabitha (Tilda) born 30 Oct. 1871, then came the baby and the 16 child Elizabeth Jane on 13 Mar 1876. Margret gave birth to Sixteen children in all.
We found records of the civil war that one of the boys taken with Willis and his brothers died in the first battle and another died in the Andersonvile prison. What a tragedy for those families. Two of the three older men were wounded.
This story had always made me sad and I wondered if the children had proper headstones as no one had ever figured out where the Nydeck cemetery was. My sisters and cousins and I have made four trips back to Tennessee so far, each time we took Lela (our mother) and her sister Vivian (cousin Linda’s mother) with us. The third trip we finally found the Nydeck cemetery. We didn’t do it the easy way either. We were in Rugby, had asked directions, no one knew, (we had already found that no one in that part of Tennessee knew where anything was). Mom wasn’t taking any chances. We had passed a cemetery and she was wanting us to turn around and go back. She is like the grand duchess. Giving orders and expecting immediate action. I was riding with Linda in a blue rented something. Aaron, my 18 year old son had come along this time to take care of the grannies. He was doing a very good job so the Grannies had him driving the white Grand AM. My sister Terry was his co- pilot and the Grannies were in the back seat. We had walkie talkies so with the order to go back Linda pulled into a long driveway and Aaron pulled up behind us. Then he pulled out into the road to turn around. As he was out into the other lane and was backing up a woman in a red car hit into the front bumper of the White Grand AM. It scared us all. Our 83 and 81 year old mothers were in that car. The woman driving the red car was an idiot. She had just bumped the car and moved it about five inches and no one was hurt. She was smoking a cigarette and when we went over to her car the cigarette still had over an inch of ash hanging on to the end of it just to show how light the accident was. The girl was shaking so bad I couldn’t figure how the ash had stayed on through the accident and now her shaking. Her mother who was a passenger in the red car thought she was having a heart attack. There was a nice older lady that came down from the house at the end of the driveway so we had her call for an ambulance for us. There were log trucks hauling down the road and so Leila got into the White Grand AM and pulled it off the road. The ambulance came and took the older woman. When the Tennessee trooper came he was mad at us for moving the car. He talked to the woman in the red car first then came over to talk to Aaron. We were all feeling a bit defensive for Aaron. Terry was feeling she should have been able to prevent it because she was the co-pilot. Grandma was feeling she just wasn’t going to let the trouper bully her grandson. Leila felt responsible for moving the car and wasn’t going to let him blame Aaron, and I was Aaron’s mom and just felt like defending him. We were all standing there trying to tell him our side when he said in a rather loud voice. “I don’t mean to be rude but I just want to talk to this young man alone!” He then took Aaron over to his car and they talked for the longest time. When they came back they acted like old friends. It started to rain hard. The woman in the red car wanted her car towed so the trouper called for one. We couldn’t figure out why it didn’t look like there was much damage. The tow truck driver was nice and fixed our bumper so we could drive our car. The woman’s father came and wanted to know why she was towing the car. After the trooper told them that they had to pay for the tow even if they didn’t have it towed they had it towed so the insurance would pay for it. After we had every thing settled I tried to pay the tow driver and he wouldn’t let me. Grandma gave him a hug and found out they were distantly related. The trooper wanted to know what we were doing there and when I said we were looking for the Nydeck cemetery he said “Why are you doing that I know right where it is.” He took us to the turn off and turned on his blue and red lights as a farewell and drove off into the sunset.. We drove right into the Carpenter Cemetery earlier known as the Nydeck Cemetery. Celia and I walked right to the graves that were sticking out of the ground and there was the graves that we were looking for. They were the children of Margaret Ann Stewart Webb some died during the Civil war while Willis was away fighting the war. Some died from other tragic reasons. I was so emotional by now I couldn’t stay standing and my knees buckled and that’s where I sat for a long time.
It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was only seven miles down the Nydeck road to Glenmary where Margaret Ann and Willis Webb and Cidia and Clemmons Bunn are buried in the Tiphouse cemetery. We went on to there and fixed some of the markers that had been lost.
The next time we went we were prepared. There was eleven women with a mission. That mission was to clean the Tiphouse cemetery and put the new headstone on Willis Webbs grave. We hired a young man with a landscaping business to bring his equipment and he brought another friend. When they saw that it was only women to help they almost left. We worked them good. This part of Tennessee has been having a problem with ticks. There were so many ticks the evening before we were to clean the place that as you drove down the dirt track into the cemetery they were falling off the trees by the dozens and sliding down the windshield. We almost didn’t get out that evening but we braved it then went back to the old house we had rented and showered. The next morning it was my turn to say the prayer. I was extra fervent about the ticks not troubling us and the heat not hurting anyone. As we got to the cemetery a light rain started to fall and that must have made the ticks stick to the foliage better because they were no longer falling on us. The two young men told us they had been there a few days before and the ticks were so bad they didn’t even get out of the truck. They said that they were surprised that they were better to day. Someone told them that I had prayed them away and they shouted Amen! It kept raining lightly off and on and kept us just cool enough. A thunder cloud started to approach the hill we were on with lightning and thunder and we wondered what we were going to do. The two young men got in their truck and we worried that we were in danger and should do the same. They got out and told us not to worry they had prayed the storm away. Amen! It went around us without bothering us. We started wondering where the edge of the graves were in the woods so I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the brush and trees to find the end. It was much bigger than any of us expected. When we were getting close to the finish Linda had taken the two old ladies to Oliver Springs to get the headstone and they came back. They were so surprised and Linda started to cry. It was truly amazing. I wanted to put a picture of the finished product in at this point but I couldn’t find the book they are in.
There side by side in that cemetery is Willis Webb and Margret Ann Stewart and Clemmons Bunn and Cydia Powell. Willis fought in the Civil War and Clemmons and Cydia had three sons fight in the war. Two for the north and one for the South. We had been told the story from the time we were young that Clemmons had a farm in Tennessee that a big battle was fought on. They were told to leave so they did. All day and night they could hear the battle raging then when it was over they went back. The yard and fields were covered with dead soldiers. It was said that you could walk across the field on soldiers with out ever running out. Clemmons was so concerned that he looked through all the dead to see if any of his sons were there. They weren’t but he was so sickened by the experience that they left and went to Kentucky and never came back. My uncle Kenny had a certificate for $500 dollars, damage done to the farm that had never been cashed in and he gave it to a lawyer to see if it was still worth anything in the 1950. The lawyer never gave it back and said that it was worthless.
While we were there we decided to see if we could find the farm. It was close to Oliver springs. We are fairly sure we did. The local historian showed us where he thought it was. His name was Sunny Harvey. He took us out and showed us where the people who left the valley for the fight went and told us how they fed some of the soldiers during the night. We felt sure that we had found the spot.
We have learned so much about the history of North Carolina and Tennessee. I sometimes get carried away with my passion for the subject. One of my sisters has liver cancer. Her wish is that we can go back one more time. I pray with all my heart she will be able to go again. It is hard to get every one scheduled that wants to go. Most can’t go until August and I hope we can wait that long.
