Scott County, Tennessee
Morris Goodman Cemetery at Pine Hill

This cemetery was inventoried and transcribed by Timothy N. West and Rebecca Ellis on 12 Sep 2024.

There is some controversy about the name of this cemetery. Apparently it was known as the Isaac Reed Cemetery for many years and then upon the death of Morris Goodman in 1997 it became known as the Morris Goodman Cemetery. The following is a brief history of the cemetery as told by Rebecca Goodman, granddaughter of Morris Goodman.

This story explains how the name came to change and discusses some other interesting tidbits about people in and and the lives around the cemetery.

Morris' parents, John and Rosie Goodman, bought a few acres across the street from the Isaac Reed Cemetery around 1913. (Incidentally, John and Rosie were not buried there, but in Huntsville.) Their property came to Morris. He bought the cemetery from Isaac Reed's descendents in 1956. According to my father, Lenville, Morris simply wanted a place for his family to rest together. After all, he had already buried two daughters at Isaac Reed -- Gereta Fay Goodman and Joann Goodman Sexton. After the purchase, he didn't change the name and it continued to be known as the Isaac Reed Cemetery until he died in 1997. (Incidentally, a lot of unknown people asked to be buried in the cemetery because my grandfather refused to charge for the plots. It began to fill up and he instituted a policy of disallowing anyone to be buried there unless the deceased already had a relative there.)

Upon his death, the cemetery went to Paul David Goodman, my uncle for whom I wrote the obituary. He and his siblings decided to rename it for their father -- the owner of the cemetery for more than 40 years. (Dad says that Grandpa owned it longer than Isaac Reed did.) Paul left it to his widow, Kay Turner Goodman. She doesn't permit new burials unless the decedent already has a stone there. The exception, of course, are Morris Goodman's relatives. This cemetery holds an important place in our family's history. Before my grandparents died, three of their children were buried there -- including Kenneth, their eldest child -- and they used to sit on their front porch in the evening and observe the setting sun reflect off the headstones. During every family gathering, a walk up the hill to the cemetery was requisite -- I still do it when I visit Oneida. Now both of them are there as is another son -- Milford Earl. (Paul's remains were cremated and are still in Kay's possession, but will probably end up there too.) There are only four surviving children of Morris and Gertrude: my father, Lenville; Larry; Kay Hicks; and Betty Hutson.

My dad told me that when Morris bought the cemetery it wasn't on record as being a burial place -- just a field. I suppose the original owner of the field simply began burying people there. (I don't know if Isaac was the original owner. According to your inventory, the first grave was one of a Duncan. My great-grandmother Sarah Harding was a Duncan.) I guess at that time, there were few or no laws governing burial.

The Isaac Reed Cemetery was truly a neighborhood resting place. The names of the occupants of the graves are mostly those of neighbors of my grandparents (if not relatives). For example, Melbert and Audna Ellis lived caddy-corner from my grandparents (and adjacent to the cemetery). My father grew up with the Ellis' as his neighbors and I remember walking over to visit them when I was a child. (I have never lived in Scott County. I grew up in Cincinnati.) I also remember when Melbert died -- the day he was to have retired -- in 1974. Audna died a couple of years ago and is now in the cemetery too. My grandparents (and I'm sure Audna and other neighbors too) looked toward the cemetery regularly as they went about their daily activities. They truly lived with their dead.

Having grown up in a suburb -- where cemeteries are detached and neighbors unrelated -- instead of a community, I find the history of a community like Pentecost fascinating. Isaac Reed Cemetery represents an era in history when people lived in cooperation (and knew each other's business rather intimately). For example, my father tells that when a neighbor who had a baby fell sick, my grandmother, Eula Gertrude, simply suckled the neighbor's baby along with her own. When a child misbehaved, the neighbors felt free to administer a bit of on-the-spot discipline. And when one of the households harbored a communicable disease, the others prepared and left food on the porch.

Morris and Gertrude named their second child after Dr. Milford Thompson -- the country doctor who came 'round to deliver their children.

Alas, the good Dr. Thompson misdiagnosed their daughter Joann's rheumatic fever and had no good knowledge of how to treat her anyway. Joann was bedridden with painful arthritic joints for most of her childhood without even the benefit of simple aspirin as an anti-inflammatory. (Dad says Dr. Thompson diagnosed arthritis, a symptom of rheumatic fever and advised against taking aspirin, which was believed to be harmful at the time.) Worse than the swollen joints, her heart was damaged. It gave out in 1955 when she was 21. She left behind a year-old baby girl, which Gertrude raised.

I guess my point is that every stone in the cemetery has a story. Each represents a life that intertwined with the others. The whole of it represents an important little slice of -- not only my personal history -- but of Americana.

Rebecca Goodman, Jan 2004

This cemetery was originally inventoried and transcribed by Sue Posey and Theresa McCoy on 21 Sep 2001.