Scott County, Tennessee
Robbins Cemetery at Robbins

This cemetery was inventoried and transcribed by Timothy N. West and Sue Posey on 31 May 2013.

Cemetery is located behind the Robbins Post Office on highway 27.

As of 5 May 2016, the cemetery sexton is Mary Etta Neely, P.O. Box 122, Robbins, TN 37852.

Stepping into the Robbins Cemetery feels a bit like stepping into an historic cemetery in the Old South — the ones dominated by sumptuous headstones and monuments that indicate the people who rest here were once people of note within the town.

Scattered throughout the countryside near Robbins Cemetery — which dates back to the 1880s and has seen only a handful of new burials in the modern era — are dozens of cemeteries that were in use at about the same time as Robbins Cemetery, and they’re dominated by either simple commercial headstones or even by common fieldstones. They mark the resting places of simple, hard-working people who lived hand-to-mouth and whose families often couldn’t afford ornate headstones even if they had wanted them.

In other words, among the cemeteries that date back to the 19th century, there aren’t many in Scott County like Robbins Cemetery.

To understand why Robbins Cemetery stands out is to understand that Robbins was once more than just an unincorporated dot on the map with a school and a post office … it was more than a railroad depot, even. By turn, places like Norma, Glenmary and Helenwood spent time as the economic hub of Scott County. And Robbins had its turn, too. There was a time when Robbins was a major town in Scott County. There was a high school and affluent churches, stores, major industry like the Southern Clay Mfg. Company — which we all know as The Brick Yard — and the town even had its own bank for a while.

In other words, this was an affluent population center in Scott County, and you don’t need the history books to tell you that … just the town’s graveyard.

Today, Robbins Cemetery is tucked away behind the community’s post office, one of the last remnants of the once-bustling town. It is just off the narrow lane that leads to the elementary school that remains where one of Scott County’s five high schools once stood.

And, like many old community cemeteries — including the Huntsville Cemetery just a few miles up the road — the cemetery is partitioned off; almost like several miniature cemeteries in one larger cemetery, each partition containing the graves of a different family. Many of the Robbins family who are buried here, for example, are buried inside a wrought iron fence in the center of the cemetery.

It is for the Robbins family that this cemetery draws its name. Or, you could say that the cemetery is named for the town it served. But the town drew its name from the Robbins family. So, either way, the once-prominent Robbins clan of southern Scott County left an indelible mark on this community and its burial ground.

The Robbins family

However indelibly shaped by the Robbins family the cemetery here may have been, the first Robbins wasn’t buried here until 1906. By that time, there were nearly two dozen graves in the cemetery.

Baby Florence Robbins — born in April 1907 and died in June 1907 — was the first Robbins buried here. She was the daughter of Melton James (M.J., or Mitt) Robbins and Etta Robbins. Mitt Robbins was a Scott County Judge. He married Bettie Hughett, the sister of Jasper Hughett — the first postmaster at Hughett (located in the general vicinity of where Indian Fork Creek and Huntsville Branch empty into Brimstone Creek) and that community’s namesake. Bettie died at age 22 and is buried at the recently-featured Hughett Cemetery, and Mitt remarried to Ettie. In addition to being the first postmaster at Hughett, Jasper Hughett would go on to establish a prominent general store in Robbins.

The Robbins family traces its lineage in Scott County to Michael Robbins, who moved here from Virginia in the early 1800s. By the 1850 census, Michael Robbins lived at Brimstone Creek and owned 2,000 acres of land there.

Michael Robbins and his wife, Mary, had four children: Elizabeth (Betty), William, John, and Jonathan, born in that order.

Betty Robbins, born in 1831, married Joshua Goad. The Goad family had moved to Scott County and first settled at New River before Joshua Goad moved his family up Brimstone Creek to what would become Hughett, or Indian Fork, site of what is now known as the Walker farm.

One of Joshua’s and Betty’s children, son John, was an early Scott County sheriff and also held other elected offices. A daughter, Almira, married Civil War veteran Daniel Walker and became the matriarch of the large Walker family that traces its roots back to Brimstone. Still another of their children, daughter Etta Tennessee, married Scott County Superintendent of Schools Fred Lee and was the grandmother of U.S. Congressman John J. Duncan, who also served as a prominent mayor of Knoxville.

Several of Joshua and Betty’s children are buried at the Hughett Cemetery. Joshua and Betty are buried at Slick Rock Cemetery.

That sidestep into history is necessary to demonstrate how the Robbins, Goad and Walker families tie together.

Meanwhile, Betty Robbins Goad’s brother, William Robbins, married Lucinda Lewallen, the daughter of Joel and Rachel Taylor Lewallen. Joel and Rachel Lewallen are buried at Hughett Cemetery.

One of their children, Andrew Johnson Robbins, or A.J., married into the Hughett family (his wife was Julia Ann Hughett) and had more than a dozen children.

Another child, Horace Maynard Robbins, was named for the U.S. Congressman who visited Scott County with future president Andrew Johnson near the outset of the Civil War and played a key role in convincing Scott Countians to remain loyal to the Union. He moved to Oregon and was a prominent physician and mayor there.

William Robbins died in Lexington while serving the Union army during the Civil War.

John Robbins, born in 1834 and murdered at Brimstone in November 1869, was a brother to Betty and William. He married Mary Newport, and they were the parents of Judge Mitt Robbins, who served as county judge from 1926 to 1934. He was also a one-time superintendent of schools, a long-time member of the county court, and was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives for one term.

Mitt Robbins’ son, Little Mitt Robbins, worked at the bank in Robbins for a while, and later served as president of the Oneida Bank & Trust Co. and vice president of First Trust & Savings Bank, now United Cumberland Bank.

The Robbins family had an indelible impact on education in Scott County. Prior to his move to Oregon, Horace Maynard Robbins served as Scott County Superintendent of Schools for four years and was one of the most noted school superintendents in the county’s history. A. V. Ellis, a grandson of Judge Mitt Robbins (making him a first cousin, twice removed, from Horace Maynard Robbins), also served as school superintendent from 1948 to 1952. Michael Robbins, the grandson of Johnathan Robbins and a cousin to H. M. Robbins and A. V. Ellis, served on the board of education. Finally, Ora Shoemaker Robbins — wife of John Robbins’ great-grandson, Jasper Robbins — was Scott County’s first woman superintendent of schools (and the only woman ever elected to the office of school superintendent). Her daughter, JoAnn Robbins, married Eddie Culver, who was also elected superintendent of schools. Several other descendants of the Robbins family served as teachers at Robbins School over the years.

Many of the names listed in the above paragraphs are buried at Robbins Cemetery.

The cemetery begins

The first person buried at Robbins Cemetery was John P. Bramble, a Civil War veteran who served in the Union army during the war. He died on Christmas Day in 1887 at age 45, and the Robbins Cemetery was founded.

Within the next year, George W. St. Clair and Amy Ann McDonald St. Clair had been buried at the new cemetery. They were a husband and wife who died three weeks apart at the ages of 22 and 23, respectively. Their son, Benjamin Bosworth St. Clair, was only six months old when his parents died. He later erected a shared headstone at the cemetery in their honor.

From there, many of the early burials at Robbins Cemetery were names that Scott Countians today aren’t familiar with; names like McPhener, Hemphill, Nance and Cannuo. Those were days of explosive growth in Robbins, thanks both to the railroad and the Brick Yard, and many people were moving to Robbins for jobs.

Dr. Foust

On March 5, 1927, an incident occurred that shook Robbins to its core.

That night, deputy sheriff Ben Fowler entered the auditorium of the Robbins High School for a motion-picture show. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a pair of .44 pistols. He was there to serve a warrant on a man who he had heard would be at the show. And he was drunk.

At some point during the show, Fowler became enraged that some kids were laughing at the movie. So, he marched down to them and demanded that they shut up or be arrested. The thought of a deputy sheriff arresting kids for laughing caused Dr. Wiley Foust — a prominent physician in both Oneida and Robbins — to also laugh. It was reported that Fowler wheeled around to Foust and said, “Big boy, you will have to be quiet, or I will get you, too.”

Foust is said to have replied, “Ben, you would not do that,” causing Fowler to strike him in the head with one of his pistols, then shoot the doctor five times in the face at point-blank range. Another deputy who was present, John Wesley West, was accidentally shot by Fowler, as well. He died later.

Fowler was shot five times by Foust’s adult son, who was present at the auditorium, but survived after four of the five bullets lodged in his metal vest. He was arrested and was later put to death in the electric chair.

The 54-year-old Dr. Foust was buried at Robbins Cemetery nearby the school. His wife, Ernie Kline Foust, is buried beside him.

Ernie Kline was the daughter of George Washington Kline and Ella Jeanette Thompson Kline. Among their eight children, in addition to Ernie, was Charles Lawrence Kline — the father of prominent Scott County physician George Litton Kline.

While Dr. Foust and his wife are buried in the older part of the cemetery, there are several Kline graves on the northern side of the cemetery, adjacent to the Kline farm. Among them is the grave of Dr. Kline, who died on March 16, 1991, at the young age of 50.

Both of Dr. Kline’s parents, Charles Lawrence Kline and Flonnie Davis Kline, are buried there, as is his brother, Charles Lawrence Kline Jr.

The Robbins Cemetery had mostly stopped being used by the time of the Kline family. In fact, Charles Kline Sr. was the first person to be buried there in four years when he died in 1985, and only 11 people have been buried there in the nearly 40 years since then — including his wife and two sons.

Bobby Burton and his wife, Donnie Maxine Human Burton, were buried at Robbins Cemetery when they died in 2005 and 2019, respectively. Both were very active in the South Scott community, and Bobby Burton was both a county commissioner and the long-time postmaster at Robbins.

The last person to be buried at the cemetery was Alvin Walter Gibson Jr., who died on Oct. 26, 2019. (Source: The Independent Herald, 6 Apr 2023, p24-27)