It is whispered that some who lie in Knoxville's Old Gray Cemetery do not sleep quietly. Some say a "Black Aggie" roams the quiet paths-a shadowy presence-on missions unknown.
The Old Gray Cemetery is haunted, certainly -haunted by history and countless memories and the legacy of a bygone age. Named after the 18th Century British poet Thomas Gray, author of "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," it has borne witness to grief and memory, love and farewell, for nearly 150 years.
The monuments have grown gray, too-darkening with smog and lichen, dyed with passing years. Some follow the popular Egyptian Revival styles that characterized the early to mid-19th Century. Obelisks loom. Others follow Victorian conventions. The heart catches at the stony likenesses of children and maidens, memorials to lives cut short. One depiction of a little girl is particularly touching. Passersby, struck by the sadness of the work, sometimes leave toys and stuffed animals in her lap.
Jack Neely, co-author of The Marble City, a photographic tour of Knoxville's Graveyards, which is available from the University of Tennessee Press, said he finds the monument moving. "The Lillian Gaines statue, the mournful little girl, tears me up every time I see it," he said. "I've noticed more than once people put flowers in her lap."
The cemetery was designed according to the principles of the "rural" cemetery movement, popular in the first half of the 19th Century, modeled on the Mount Auburn Cemetery founded near Boston in 1831. The cemetery's first forty lots were auctioned following its dedication on June 1, 1852.
Neely, who wrote the text for The Marble City, said the cemetery is filled with notable monuments. "A dependably startling grave is the one that depicts the bridge-collapse train wreck that killed the man memorialized," he said, referring to the D.H. Holloway grave, inscribed "KILLED AT SWEETWATER BRIDGE, MARCH 4TH, 1875."
The grave of Lazarus C. Shepard (1816-1902) features a hollow monument that was reputed to be a popular drop-off point for bootleg liquor during the Prohibition.
Look around the cemetery, and you'll also find three grave markers inscribed with the same death date: Oct. 19, 1882. It's no coincidence, Neely said. "Thomas O'Conner, and Joseph Mabry Sr. and Jr. all shot each other simultaneously in a remarkably efficient gunfight in downtown Knoxville. It made national news, and Mark Twain remarked on it in Life on the Mississippi."
One now-empty plot is also of historical interest. "It was originally the burial site of Gov. and Sen. Bob Taylor, a charismatic figure in late 19th and early 20th century Tennessee," Neely said. "His burial there in 1912, attended by a reported 40,000, was probably the most popular graveside service in Tennessee before Elvis. Pictures of it are incredible -a sea of hats.
"But in the 1930s, the family chose to exhume him to rebury him at the family home, and the coffin reportedly came apart as they were doing so. The incident as described in the early part of his grandson Peter Taylor's well-known novel, In the Tennessee Country, is apparently thinly disguised fact."
One of the graves in the Old Gray Cemetery is that of Frank S. Mead, first President of the Ross-Republic Marble Company. The modern Knox County Metropolitan region itself is the graveyard of a marble industry that thrived through the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Many of the tombstones and monuments found in cemeteries around Knoxville are made of native Tennessee marble.
Writing in the Chattanoogabased Tradesman in the 1890s, H. V. Maxwell described Knoxville as "the `marble city' of the union."
"xx...A recent suggestion that she adopt the name came like a welcome ray of light to her citizens and at no distant date a handsome arch of Tennessee marble will span one of her thoroughfares -a lasting monument to her sons and a matter of pride to all within her borders," Maxwell wrote. "There is practically no limit to the amount of stone, and although the number of quarries now in operation is limited to about twenty it is due alone to the present general financial condition of the country, and not to a lack of opportunity to secure a quarry, as the country is full of them."
A defunct quarry, once operated by the RossRepublic Marble Co. quarries, located in South Knoxville, is now utilized as a public park. According to Ijams Nature Center, which operates the park on behalf of Knox County, the Ross Marble Company purchased the land that is now Mead's Quarry for $100 and began mining operations in 1881. The company merged with the Republic Marble Company in 1892 to become the Ross-Republic Marble Company. The company once employed 150 workers and cut 25,000-35,000 cubic feet of marble annually.
The Tennessee Producers Marble Company of Knoxville designed the entrance posts to the Old Gray Cemetery, which were constructed in 1902 for the cost of $650. Composed of smooth-faced marble, the posts are square and feature an ashlar design.
Even as the Old Gray Cemetery grew and evolved, tastes in cemetery design were changing. By 1890, the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents was pushing standardization in cemeteries. Adolph Strauph's taste for "scientific management" at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati and the publication of Jacob Weidenmann's "Modern Cemeteries: An Essay on the Improvement and Proper Management of Rural Cemeteries" in 1888 were milestones of the transition that ultimately led to the more uniform and, some might say, characterless "modern" memorial parks.
Even without "improvements," Old Gray Cemetery is still a fascinating place to pay a visit. So, whether you're visiting Gray Cemetery to study the history of the stone or the history of its inhabitants, don't forget to say "Hello" to the Black Aggie when you see its shadow... and bring a friend for moral support.
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