Old Gray Cemetery

10/26/2026

Yesterday was a beautiful day for the annual Spirits Tour in Old Gray. Many thanks to our reenactors; to Danette Welch at the East Tennessee Historical Society for finding interesting characters and providing scripts; to Jack Neely of the Knoxville History Project and Laura Still of Knoxville Walking Tours for leading tours; to Katie Helms, Bagpiper; to the booksellers; and, especially, to the many history lovers who came out to celebrate this little plot of Knoxville's past.

10/21/2026

This Sunday! 👻 Come spend the afternoon with us at Old Gray Cemetery for re-enactors, walking tours, a bagpiper, food trucks, w**e, b**r, and amazing stories. Join us from 3–6 PM at 543 N Broadway. 🩶

10/16/2026

Sisters Martha Ann Stakely Hall (1831-1880) and Caroline (“Carrie”) Rachel Stakely Hall (1843-1922) were born Madisonville, Monroe County, TN. Their father, William Maulsby Stakely (1804-1898), was born in Hawkins County, TN, and married Sarah Smith (1811-1857) in 1828. Five generations prior, the Stakely ancestors were from Bern, Switzerland, and the name was spelled Stockli; the Hall ancestors were from Scotland. William Stakely was a postmaster, a merchant, and a trustee of the Bolivar Female Academy in Madisonville. Martha graduated with honors from the Knoxville Female Seminary in 1849 and taught there for a few years. In Apr 1860 she married Elijah Thomas Hall (1822-1896), a Knoxville attorney, in Madisonville. Hall became a judge of the third judicial circuit of TN and served 1864-1877.

Carrie Stakely also graduated from and taught at the Knoxville Female Seminary. She also married a Hall cousin, James Spears Hall, in 1874 in Union Springs, AL, where the Stakely family had moved in 1863. William Stakely had a mercantile business there until 1882 then retired to his 1,000-acre farm. For 40 yrs James Hall also engaged in mercantile. He ran a popular general merchandise store in Knoxville which became J.S. Hall and Sons, and later, Hall-Brown, Inc. In 1895, patriarch William Stakely, in his 91st year, visited Carrie and James Hall and was much impressed with the business enterprises on Market Square.

The Stakely sisters and Hall cousins are buried in the Hall plot in Old Gray. Halls Crossroads was named for the Hall family, specifically Elijah’s grandfather Thomas Hall who settled there in the late 1790s, and many of his descendants are buried in the Thomas Hall Cemetery on R***e Range Road in Halls.

10/11/2026

10/08/2026

Thank you East Tennessee PBS for this great promo. We love our sponsors! 👻 💕

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10/03/2026

We return to the Nancy (“Nannie”) Cowan Meem (1842-1869) monument for its distinction as art. We wrote extensively here about Nannie’s connection to poet Emily Dickinson of Amherst, MA, in June of 2020 and included letters of consolation from Emily to Nannie’s brother Perez (Emily’s favorite “cousin Peter”) after Nannie’s death at age 27 from tuberculosis.

Nannie’s monument was carved by the Gaddess Brothers Steam Marble Works in Baltimore, MD. The Gaddesses were a family of stonecutters specializing in cemetery work, producing marble and granite statuary, monuments, tablets, and vases. The proprietors were brothers Charles W. (d. 1897), Thomas S., and Virginius Gaddess who took over the business in 1864 from their father, Alexander Gaddess, Jr. (1799-1873), who learned the stone working craft in apprenticeship to Thomas Towson of New Church Street, ca. 1817. Towson, a marble cutter and quarrier by trade, was the primary cutter and supplier of sandstone, also called freestone, for the building of Washington D.C. In fact, Towson’s most important job was cutting the columns for the U. S. Capitol from stone quarried at Government Island in Aquia Creek, a 27.6-mile-long tributary of the tidal segment of the Potomac River in northern VA 45 mi south of D.C. At the time of Nannie’s death, John B. Gaddess and brother were proprietors of Lynchburg Marble Works and was advertising that location in Knoxville newspapers.

On December 11, 1862, just seven years before her death, Nannie married Lt. John G. Meem, Jr., a native of Lynchburg, VA, who was garrisoned in Knoxville during the Confederate occupation (Jul 1861-Sep 1863). Meem, a Lynchburg native, no doubt knew the Gaddess brothers because his father John G. Meem, Sr., owned a dry goods store in downtown Lynchburg.

The monument has suffered some damage over time, losing one of the dove’s wings and part of the beak that once held a blossom, but it is still arresting in its detail. On one side of the base is the name “Gaddess Bros.” and on the other “Balt., Md.” At that time, it was common practice for the marble cutter to add in one corner of the stone his advertisement, or his signature, if he considered the monument a work of art. Nannie’s monument may be the only one in Old Gray that is signed by the stonecutter who created it, and it is definitely a work of art.

09/26/2026

Rhoda King Shields Callaway (1874-1917) had an interesting life which includes a connection to the mythic Tuskega/Tuskeega plantation on the Little TN River. Rhoda, like so many women of her generation who married men who had left the family farm to become businessmen, never lived in one place very long. She was the daughter of Knoxville Judge James M. King who had studied at Emory & Henry, fought in the Confederate Army and been imprisoned in Delaware, and later partnered with prominent Knoxville attorney William G. Swan. Her mother, Mary McClesky King, died at age 44, when Rhoda was twelve. James King never remarried. His late wife’s mother helped care for Rhoda and her three brothers.

Rhoda attended the East TN Female Institute and graduated in 1883. She then attended Mount St. Joseph Academy and graduated in Jun 1884. St. Joseph’s, a Catholic school on W. Summit Hill run by sisters of the convent from 1879-1885, taught music, languages, painting, and “fancy work.” In Aug of 1884 she traveled to Lexington to enter Sayre Female Institute. Locally, she was a popular vocalist and sang at many functions. She was a member of the Mozart Club and Ossoli Circle, was an officer of the Daughters of the Confederacy. She was also a member of the Joie de Vie Club popular in the 1880s which held dances in Mozart Hall and the Fountain Head Hotel in Fountain City, no alcohol allowed. In Jan 1891 she married Milton Shields, who worked in Knoxville wholesale at Shields Bros. The couple moved to Greensboro, NC, where Milton owned a boot and shoe business. He died there of pneumonia in 1902.

In May 1909 Rhoda married Thomas Howard Callaway (1870-1925), the grandson of Thomas Howard Callaway, Sr. The Callaways of Monroe County were major players in the region's early history. In 1870 Callaway, Sr., had traded his shares in the ETNV&G RR to Col. Charles McClung McGhee* for the 4,000 acre plantation McGhee had built on the Little TN River known as Tuskega, the name of a Cherokee village there some 300 yrs prior. McGhee was the first white settler after the Cherokees were “subdued,” and historians conceded the land was the first cultivated by white settlers in TN. The property included 20 miles up and down both sides of the Little TN where 7-8 Cherokee villages once existed. The house was built 1/3 of the way from the peak of the hill toward the river. Asked why he didn’t build his house at the top, McGhee replied, “I don’t want to live where I can see any land that doesn’t belong to me.” (Sep 18, 1932, Chattanooga Daily Times) Tuskega began with log walls which were later weatherboarded. Nearby was Callaway’s Island* which Callaway, Sr., left to Thomas’s father Luke Lea Callaway.

After the wedding trip through Southern cities, Rhoda and Thomas were at home in the Addison Flats, Walnut St and W Main Av in Knoxville. In the spring of 1910 Rhoda’s husband sold his interest in a Gay St. clothing business and purchased a gentlemen’s clothing store in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. In Sep 1910, they returned to Knoxville and Thomas filed for bankruptcy. The following Oct they moved to Chattanooga. In Mar 1911, they were reported to be moving to NYC, but a few days later were reported to be living once again in the Addison Flats. In May Thomas took a traveling sales position and was off to Atlanta and NYC, the latter where Rhoda joined him for 4 mos. In Jan 1912 they moved to their “new country place (five miles) east of Knoxville near Love’s Cave.”

Sadly, Rhoda died in 1917 at age 42. Thomas served in WWI as a clerk in the US Army 1917-1919. He never remarried and in Aug 1925 was hospitalized in Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD. In Oct he was back in Ft Sanders hospital. He died “of a lingering illness” on Oct 30, 1925, and is buried in Madisonville Cemetery, TN, alongside his mother and sister. Rhoda had no children and is buried near her parents and three brothers in Old Gray.

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NOTES: In 1932 Tuskega, or at least a small part of the original acreage, was owned by Thomas’ aunt Annie Callaway Hutchison. Four generations of Callaways lived in the house at Tuskega. *Callaway’s Island was flooded by Alcoa’s Chilhowee Dam completed in 1957 as part of broader landscape alterations for power infrastructure. “Tuskega was burned in 1984 by protestors of TVA’s actions in the area.” (Calvin McClung Collection) The 9/18/32 Chatt Daily Times article on Tuskega gives a detailed desc of the home. *Charles McClung McGhee, also buried in Old Gray, was a seminal figure in Knoxville’s development and, among other contributions, “established the Lawson McGhee Library, which was the basis of Knox County's public library system.” (East TN Historical Society, Mary Rothrock (ed.), The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee, p. 448.)

09/16/2026

A tombstone in a historic cemetery can offer a window into the world the deceased experienced. It can offer a journey into a strange, beautiful, or troubling past. An example in Old Gray is this small, easily overlooked tombstone of Emma Etta Jenkins Webber (1870-1924). Little is known of Emma’s personal life. She was one of eleven children and in Knoxville in 1888 she married Madison H. Webber (1866-1951) who advertised as a contractor, builder, and realtor who also did repair work. In 1903 the Knoxville Sentinel reported Madison Webber bankrupt. The family relocated to Florida and from approx 1913-1920 they lived in Jacksonville. They had four sons and three daughters, two of whom died at childbirth. At the time of Emma’s death, they were all living in Atlanta, GA., and her body was sent by train back to Knoxville. Her tombstone, though, is rich with cultural significance.

“Gates Ajar” became a popular motif on tombstones from the 1870s through the 1930s. The design is an offshoot of spiritualism, a religious movement beginning in the 19th century in America and Europe based on the belief that departed souls can interact with the living, that when the loved ones entered Paradise, they left the gates ajar, that the connection with those who had passed was not completely severed.

Two early poets who incorporated this image in their poems and prose were Emily Chubbuck Judson (1817-1854) who wrote under the pseudonym F***y Forrester, and Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 1788 – 1879), the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Though thirty years his junior, Emily became the wife of the renowned Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson in 1846, following the death of his second wife, Sarah Judson. She accompanied him to the Baptist mission in Burma, where they remained until his death in 1850. In the 1850’s a poem by F***y Forrester "My Angel Love" (or “My Angel Guide”), began circulating in American newspapers. It was devoted to her deceased husband. Other poems appeared using titles “Adamantine Gates Ajar” or “Pearly Gates Ajar.” “The Life and Letters of Mrs. Emily C. Judson,” pub’d 1861, is interesting and the circumstances of her husband’s death harrowing. The book can be read online at Internet Archive.

These women were highly educated and no doubt had read earlier mentions of gates ajar, one of which was Henry Beck Hirst’s “Endymion. A Tale of Greece” published in 1848 with the lines

Few were the words they said
Yet sweet as few. It seemed Elysium’s portal
Was open to them, whence, thru gates ajar,
Shone love’s delicious star.

And in which a dove, flying through, leading the way, also figured prominently:

...his plumage on the night
Making a milky light
Among the somber leaves.

But the biggest influence in America was "The Gates Ajar," a religious novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps published in 1868 which became the second best-selling religious novel of the 19th century. From the 1870s through the 1930s “the gates ajar” became a popular motif in Europe and America. It appeared in sermons, hymns, floral arrangements, public park landscape designs, even scenic art in Memphis Theatre’s 1878 production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And to those readers of Gates Ajar who found fault with the orthodox tendency of that volume, there was a London 30-pg pamphlet edition titled “An Antidote to Gates Ajar.”

Phelps began writing The Gates Ajar in the final year of the Civil War, inspired in part by the death of her mother, stepmother, and her fiancé who was killed at the Battle of Antietam. It tells the story of Mary Cabot, who grieves her brother's death in battle and loses her faith. Through conversations with her widowed aunt Winifred, Mary discovers a comforting vision of heaven as a corporeal place similar to Earth, where the dead live in spiritual bodies and maintain earthly relationships, ultimately restoring her hope and faith (Project Gutenberg). Phelps later claimed the book came from divine inspiration: “‘The angel said unto me 'Write!' and I wrote.’ She spent two years revising the book in her father's attic. Frustrated by the insignificant role women played during the War, she wrote the book specifically with a female audience in mind. In an autobiography, she reflected, ‘Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling... I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men... but the women, - the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women.’" (Everything.Explained.Today)

The death and suffering inflicted by the Civil War is unequaled in U.S. military history. The war resulted in approximately 620,000 to 750,000 deaths, which is significantly higher than the combined fatalities of the Revolutionary War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War. And it happened on American soil. The disruption of daily life and devastation were incalculable. For women who had no voice but who were left with inconsolable grief, Phelps’ novel gave more comfort than their church leaders. In the 1870s and early 1880s, Phelps was among the “distinguished contributors” to popular magazines along with Alcott, Longfellow, Harte, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Victorian Sentimentalism was a way of enduring, but a hundred years later sentimentalist works had seemingly been erased from history. Until the last two decades of the 20th century the only 19th century woman writer that American college students read was Emily Dickinson. Today, Phelps is often included in women's literature courses, and in 2019, for the first time, Penguin Classics published her Civil War classic.

The Gates Ajar tombstones were available via mail-order from Sears & Roebuck catalogs but probably lost appeal before the catalog’s termination in 1952. There are several of these tombstones in Victorian-era and early 20th century cemeteries in the US, some huge and elaborate. Old Gray is proud to have one, however small.