Scott County, Tennessee
(1) Goad Cemetery at Brimstone

This cemetery was inventoried and transcribed by Timothy N. West and Sue Posey on 29 May 2005.

From the intersection of Highway 27 and Brimstone Road in Robbins, travel east on Brimstone road for about 7.8 miles. The cemetery is on the left in field.

The Goad Cemetery is located on the farm of Brenda Sue Byrge and the late Robert Byrge along Brimstone Road. (Photo: Leo York.) There are at least 14 Revolutionary War veterans who moved to the northern Cumberland Plateau in the aftermath of the war, settling in what would eventually become Scott County.

The final resting place of all 14 of those war veterans isn’t known. But the burial location is documented for 10 of the 14, including Joseph Griffith.

Any list of Revolutionary War veterans in Scott County has to begin with Joseph Griffith. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some other very notable names on the list; all of them are notable in their own way, and a couple really stand out – such as Winfield’s Dennis Trammell.

But there may have been no Revolutionary War veteran in Scott County who obeyed the Lord’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” quite like Joseph Griffith, who is the ancestor of all the Griffiths in Scott County today – and it is a substantial family.

Additionally, Griffith is the only of Scott County’s Revolutionary War heroes who served as a personal bodyguard to Gen. George Washington. Griffith was there by Washington’s side at Yorktown when George Cornwallis handed over his sword in surrender, effectively ending the war and granting the United States its independence from Great Britain.

Griffith’s grave was the first in a small cemetery that came to be known as the Goad Cemetery in the Brimstone community (not to be confused with the Goad Cemetery further down the creek between Indian Fork and Huntsville Branch that is also sometimes called the Hughett Cemetery).

The Goad Cemetery where Griffith is buried is located in the middle of a cow pasture on the farm of Brenda Sue Byrge and the late Robert Byrge. Unfortunately, we don’t know if this is where Griffith’s farm was located on Brimstone, although it was common practice in the early 19th century for people to bury members of their family on the family property. In fact, several of Scott County’s largest community cemeteries started as family plots before growing into larger communal burial grounds.

The Griffith family

What we do know is that Joseph Griffith was granted a plot of land somewhere on Brimstone Creek and moved his family here after the end of the Revolutionary War. He married Phoebe Hudson in 1792, when he w as 37 years old and she was about 32, and it w as after that that the family made the move from Virginia to the area that would become Scott County – though at the time it was still part of Morgan County, and would be until after Griffith’s death.

Court records show that Griffith was granted 190 acres in two plots on Brimstone Creek. The grants were filed in 1808 and 1809. Based on that, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Joseph and Phoebe Griffith were the first settlers at Brimstone.

The Griffith family traces its roots back to Wales in the 17th century, to a man named Lewellyn Griffith, who was Joseph Griffith’s second-great-grandfather. Joseph Griffith was a second-generation American. His grandfather, Abraham Griffith, was born in Wales in 1678, but migrated to the American colonies, settling in Pennsylvania. Joseph Griffith’s father, Isaac Griffith, was born in Pennsylvania in 1721. He apparent ly didn’t stay on the family farm in Pennsylvania; records indicate that Joseph Griffith was born in Maryland in 1755.

At least one of Joseph and Phoebe’s children – and perhaps more – was born in Montgomery County, Va., before the family made the move to Brimstone Creek. Montgomery County was located near present-day Blacksburg, which is the home of Virginia Tech University.

Fielding Griffith was the oldest child, born in 1793. The ones that came after were Keziah, Rhoda, Willie, Sarah and William. It’s likely that at least Keziah and Rhoda were born in Virginia, before the move to Tennessee.

Rhoda Griffith married William Sexton, the son of another Revolutionary War veteran, Timothy Sexton, who moved to the Brimstone area after the war. And his granddaughter, Matilda (the fourthborn of Fielding Griffith) married Lewis “Luke” Peak, the son of Revolutionary War veteran Abel Peak.

Joseph Griffith applied for a Revolutionary War pension in April 1833. It was granted, but not before Griffith died a month later. With his death, the Goad cemetery was established.

It’s also believed that Joseph Griffith’s wife, Phoebe, was buried at Goad Cemetery when she died in 1846. However, that cannot be verified; there is no headstone for Phoebe Griffith located at the cemetery.

Other Griffiths buried at Goad Cemetery

Fielding Griffith died in 1846, the same years as his mother, and became the second person buried at Goad Cemetery when he was laid to rest beside his father. He was a veteran of the War of 1812, and married an unknown Webb woman, with whom he had three children. Following her death, he married Mary Reynolds, and they had 10 more children.

Fielding Griffith’s children were John, born in 1815, followed by Daniel in 1816, Ora in 1822, Matilda in 1823, Rebecca in 1827, William in 1829, Fielding Jr. in 1831, Griffith in 1831, Andrew in 1834, Isaac in 1836, Lewis in 1839, Martha “Patty” in 1840, and Reuben in 1843.

Life must have been hard for Mary Griffith, who was left a widower with several children under the age of 10 still at home. Young Reuben was only about three years old when his father died in 1846. However, she did have some help. The 1850 census listed most of the family’s children still living at home, with 23-year-old Rebecca being the oldest.

Mary Griffith died in 1859 and was buried alongside her husband in the Goad Cemetery.

Both Fielding and Mary Griffith were buried with stone tombs over their graves. While very common in other graveyards in the Upper Cumberland region, these above-ground tombs are very uncommon in Scott County.

More notes about the Griffith family

Unfortunately, there is a lot that is unknown about the second generation of Griffiths in Scott County, the children of Joseph and Phoebe Griffith.

It is thought that Rhoda Creek, which is located near the headwaters of Brimstone Creek, may have been named for Rhoda Griffith, Joseph Griffith’s thirdborn who married William Sexton. It is assumed that Rhoda is buried at Slick Rock Cemetery in Brimstone, but there is no stone that can be identified.

Fielding Griffith Jr., Joseph Griffith’s grandson, died at Camp Dick Robinson, Ky. while enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. He was apparently poisoned by a woman who was selling apple pies at the camp.

One of Fielding’s brothers, Isaac, fought for the Confederacy during the war. He was one of only a handful of men from Scott County who joined the Rebel forces, and he apparently paid quite a price for his Southern sympathies. He was a blacksmith who owned 375 acres of property on Brimstone, but he lost everything in the war. When he returned to Brimstone after the war, he had the horse he was riding, $2 in cash, and the clothes on his back. Two days later, “some Yankee” came along and took his horse. It was then that Isaac Griffith decided to leave Brimstone. He moved to Bradley County near Chattanooga and never returned.

The cemetery grows

Following the death of Mary Griffith, the wife of Fielding Griffith Sr., in 1859, no one was buried at the cemetery along what is now Brimstone Road for more than 60 years. It was only a small group of four graves, the final resting place of some of the oldest members of the Griffith family that settled the valley.

In 1924, however, another burial occurred at the cemetery, and that’s how it started to become known as the Goad Cemetery.

On March 13 of that year, Eliza Goad Burchfield was buried at the cemetery. She was the wife of Charley Burchfield (who died nine years later and is buried at the McCartt Cemetery in Glenmary). He died of influenza.

It’s worth pointing out that two other Goads are buried at the cemetery, as well. However, it’s not known when they died. In fact, very little is known about them at all.

The Goad graves are marked only with common field stones, which were engraved, but not well. One of the stones appears to contain the name “Pary Goad.” The other is less clear. Timothy West, who transcribed the cemetery in 2005, guessed that the name carved on the stone might have been “Isabell Goad.”

But who were they? When were they born? When did they die? All of that is a mystery. The graves may be those of a husband and wife … but, then again, they may be those of siblings who died as young children.

The parents of Eliza Goad, according to old census records, were Aaron and Sarah Goad. They had no other children named Pary or Isabell. There was another Goad family living nearby in that same census, but there was no Pary or Isabell listed in that family, either.

There was a connection between the Goads and the Griffiths. Malinda Goad, the sister of Eliza Goad Burchfield, married Andrew Griffith, the son of Fielding Griffith and grandson of Joseph Griffith.

The Robbins family

The final three burials at Goad Cemetery were all members of the Robbins family that was so prominent at Brimstone in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Eva Chambers Robbins died in 1929, at the age of about 35, and was buried there. She was the wife of William Robbins, who died in 1960 and was the last person to be buried at Goad Cemetery.

The other grave belongs to Mae Chambers, who died in 1957 at the age of 82. She was the mother of Eva Chambers Robbins. Her husband, James Chambers, died in 1932. Records indicate that he was buried on the family’s Brimstone property, though it’s not exactly clear where that was. (Source: The Independent Herald, 29 Jun 2023, p32-34)