Scott County, Tennessee
Winona Cemetery at Winona

This cemetery was inventoried and transcribed by Theresa McCoy and Felicia Bunn on 13 Aug 2005.

From the intersection of Winona Road and Highway 297, travel south on Winona Road for 2.0 miles. Turn left on the gravel/dirt road that takes you up to the cemetery in about 125 yards.

Timothy N. West and Sue Posey reinventoried this cemetery on 19 Jun 2018 and took pictures of every headstone.

When the Sacred Ground series visited Marcum Cemetery in Oneida last week, it was noted that it is one of the more unique cemeteries in Scott County. And indeed it is.

Another especially unique cemetery is on the other side of the county from Oneida - the old community cemetery at Winona.

Located on top of a hill overlooking the former “town” of Winona, the cemetery is the final resting place for more than 150 of the community’s residents. It dates back to at least the 1830s, which also makes it one of the oldest cemeteries in Scott County and it is unique because it contains a greater concentration of silhouette-style headstones than can be found at any other cemetery in Scott County.

In 19th century Scott County mass-produced commercial headstones were not widely available. Often, particularly prior to the Civil War, graves would be marked with simple field stones - sometimes etched with names and dates, but sometimes not. Other times, stones would be hand-chiseled by someone in the community who was skilled at such tasks.

The concentration of hand-shaped, silhouette-style stones at Winona Cemetery is an indication that someone in the community was a go-to for gravestones in the 1800s. Sadly, history did not record who that person (or persons) might have been. Equally unfortunate, many of the old stones have become weathered to the point of being nearly illegible.

There are also a few unmarked graves at Winona Cemetery, as well as some graves marked with field stones that aren’t inscribed. That makes it impossible to date the cemetery with certainty, though it appears to date back to 1837.

Beginnings

As noted by cemetery researcher Robert Bailey in his 1994 book, Cemeteries of Scott County, Tennessee, which is available for purchase at the Scott County Historical Society there is a stone at Winona Cemetery that is carved with the initials “S.W.M.C.” and the date 1837.

The nearly three decades that have passed since Bailey transcribed the cemetery have rendered the fading stones even more illegible, and it is difficult to locate many of the stones that he was able to identify in 1994. Tim West was unable to locate several of the stones when he transcribed and photographed the cemetery in 2018.

In any event, the “S.W.M.C.” stone appears to represent the first burial at Winona Cemetery. While it can no longer be located, Bailey’s work was methodical and there’s no reason to doubt his records. It was one of the silhouette stones at the cemetery that have been badly weathered over time.

A year later, a burial occurred with the letters “S.H.” and the year “1838” engraved into the stone, according to Bailey’s book. It, too, was a silhouette-style stone that can no longer be located.

There are similar mystery stones that came later: “E.B.” in March 1853, “S.E.M.C.” on Sept. 16, 1859, and others.

Who were these first burials at Winona Cemetery? That’s difficult to say with any certainty. There’s only speculation.

A Revolutionary War veteran

What is certain is that the first identifiable stone at Winona Cemetery is that of James McDonald, one of at least 15 Revolutionary War veterans who moved to present-day Scott County after the war.

McDonald, who served in the North Carolina militia, had a lengthy service record. He was present at the battles of Stono Ferry, Ramsour’s Mill, the Siege of Ninety-Six, and the Cowpens - all of which were among the most legendary battles in the southern theater of the Revolutionary War.

McDonald married Sarah Cox after the war, and they moved soon after to Tennessee. They had at least six children, including son Allen McDonald, who was elected Scott County’s first county clerk in 1850.

McDonald died on Jan. 12, 1848, at the age of 89. He was buried at Winona Cemetery with one of the silhouette-style stones marking his grave.

His wife, Sarah, died in 1873. A newspaper article written at the time listed her age as 125, though that seems doubtful. If she were actually 125 at the time of her death, she would have been born in 1748. Her father, Amos Cox, probably had not even been born at that time. Her grandfather, Isaac Cox did not marry his wife, Olive, until 1746, according to old court records.

Sarah McDonald’s burial location isn’t known, though some family members speculate that she was likely buried in an unmarked grave near her husband at Winona Cemetery.

The cemetery grows

Apparently, more than a decade elapsed between the death of James McDonald in 1848 and the next burial at Winona Cemetery in September 1859, which is the now-indistinguishable stone engraved “S.E.M.C.”

Another eight years passed before R. A. Jeffers was buried at the cemetery in October 1867. His is another of those stones that was documented by Bailey in 1994 but now cannot be located because it is illegible.

The Jeffers family of the Huntsville area had grown quite large by the 1860s, and there are several of them who are buried at Winona. In fact, there are more Jeffers buried there than any other surname. When the 1860 census was taken, there were more than 70 Jeffers living in Scott County - almost all of them in the Huntsville area. However, there is not a census record that readily matches an R. A. Jeffers - with the exception of a Rebecca A. Jeffers, who was born in 1843. The R. A. Jeffers grave at Winona is not hers, however; she married and became a Chambers, and lived several more decades.

In 1875, Pleasant Jeffers died and was the first person buried at Winona who has a commercial stone that is not hand-chiseled. The stone stipulates that Jeffers served in the Union army during the Civil War.

The next person buried at Winona was also a Civil War veteran: Isham Thomas Chambers died on Feb. 16, 1877 at the age of 32. He has two stones at the cemetery; one of which is a military marker and the other of which is his original, hand-chiseled fieldstone.

Jeffers, Chambers, and Chandler

Through much of the latter portion of the 19th century, there are primarily three surnames that show up at Winona Cemetery: the Jeffers, the Chambers, and the Chandlers.

The patriarch and matriarch of the Jeffers family at Winona were John Jeffers (1820-1903) and Milly White Jeffers (1815-1880), both of whom may be buried at Winona Cemetery - though that cannot be conclusively verified.

Descendants of John and Mily Jeffers believe that the couple are buried at Winona, though there are no identifiable stones to mark their graves.

John Jeffers was in his 80s when he died in March 1903, a few days after nearly drowning as he attempted to save his livestock from the barn amid a spring flood that sent New River out of banks.

Pleasant Jeffers, the Civil War veteran who died in 1875, was a son of John and Milly Jeffers.

John and Milly have other children buried at Winona as well, including Blackborn, who died in 1903; Claborn, who died in 1927; and Burlin, who died in 1905.

In 1884, infant Cebery Chandler died and was buried at Winona Cemetery. He was the son of William F. P. (1845-1927) and Burnettie Chambers Chandler (1849-1923), both of whom are buried at Winona. Burnettie was the daughter of John Riley Chambers, an early elected official of Scott County who is buried at Winona. He was the son of Thomas Chambers and Catherine Lakey Lawson Chambers, both of whom were the children of Revolutionary War veterans (William Chambers and Randolph Lawson). They are buried at Chambers Cemetery at Buffalo.

In 1891, another of William and Burnettie Chandler’s children died. One-year-old Silvester Chandler was buried at Winona Cemetery along with his older brother, Cebery. In 1894, yet another of the Chandler children - two-year-old George - died and was buried there.

Cebery, Silvester, and George have other siblings buried at Winona, as well: Margaret Chandler Hamblin was buried there in 1909, and Helen Mary Chandler Cook was buried there in 1960.

In August 1895, the infant son of Burlin Jeffers and Julia Newport Jeffers, Edmon Jeffers, died and was buried at Winona.

Also in 1895, 66-year-old Isaac Jeffers, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, died and was buried at Winona. He was the son of Robert and Elsie Cox Jeffers and was justice of the peace in Scott County at the time of his death.

During this span there were two other Jeffers buried at Winona that are less known: Emberson Jeffers died in 1886, and Sarah Jeffers died in 1861. They’re buried side-by-side, their graves marked with the silhouette-style stones.

In 1896, an infant Chambers died and was buried at Winona. The child was a son of Pleasant Lafayette “P. L.” Chambers and Margaret Chambers.

Just weeks later, the one-year-old grandson of William and Burnettie Chandler died and was buried at Winona. Baby Thomas Hamblin was the son of Sampson and Margaret Chandler Hamblin. His paternal grandfather, Tyrell Hamblin, would be buried at Winona in 1900. His grandmother. Sally Ann Chambers Hamblin was buried there in 1910.

Another burial during this time frame came in 1900, when Olive Jeffers Newport, the 20-year-old daughter of Claborn and Melvine Phillips Jeffers, died and was buried at Winona.

The modern era

Burials continued at Winona Cemetery throughout the 1900s, and it was once one of the larger cemeteries in Scott County. The community cemetery became the final resting place for many members of the early families who lived at Winona - the Chambers and Jeffers families, especially.

The rate of burials at Winona has slowed since the turn of the century; but there have been more than two dozen people buried there since 2000,

Today, Winona Cemetery is essentially divided into two parts: the historic portion of the cemetery on the east side, which is poorly maintained, and the new portion of the cemetery on the west side, which is well maintained.

The most recent burial at the cemetery is John Henry Crabtree, who died on Aug. 31 at the age of 87. His wife, Judith Jeffers Crabtree, was buried there in 2017. Many of her family were also buried at Winona, including her parents, Marley and Elsie Bond Jeffers, and paternal grandparents, Samuel and Lucinda Harness Jeffers.

Prior to John Henry Crabtree’s burial, the last burial at Winona was Donald Wade Smithers, who died in March 2022 at the age of 63. He was the son of William and Helen Strunk Smithers, both of whom are buried at Winona. His paternal grandparents, Frank and Minnie Day Smithers, are buried at Winona, as well.(Source: The Independent Herald, 26 Oct 2023, p16-20)