Scott County, Tennessee
Buttram Cemetery at Low Gap

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

At the intersection of Highway 27 and Old Highway 27 (a.k.a. Glass House Road) at New River, head east on Old Highway 27 for about 200 yards. Turn right onto Low Gap Road. Travel about 0.8 mile and turn right staying on Low Gap Road. Travel about 2.0 miles. Cemetery is on the left on a small wooded knoll behind Thomas L. Sexton's home.

Sacred Ground – The Scott County Cemetery Project – Buttram Cemetery

It’s been nearly three years since the Sacred Ground series visited the Buttram Cemetery in Huntsville, which dates back to Scott County Circuit Court Judge William Harrison Buttram and his family.

But the Buttram family’s rich history in Scott County far predates Judge Buttram and the Huntsville branch of the family and can be traced back to the earliest days of settlement in the New River community along what is today U.S. Highway 27.

Before there was the highway, the railroad, or the lumber company that came to define the New River settlement, there was the Buttram family — John Buttram and Jane Stephenson, who became perhaps the wealthiest of Scott County’s original settlers.

We do not know where John and Jane Buttram were buried when they died. So, we pick up the family’s story with their son, Bailey Buttram, who served as sheriff of Scott County during the Civil War. He’s buried in a small family cemetery in the Low Gap community.

The Buttram Family

John Buttram (1773-1844, approximately) was born in Rowan, N.C., the son of William Buttram and Margaret Willis. The Buttram family came to America from England in the early 17th century, with John’s fourth-great-grandfather, John Butterum (1610-1686).

John married Jane Stephenson, who was also from Rowan County, the daughter of James Stevenson and Sarah O’Kelly. They had several children, including William “Bill” Buttram, James Andrew Buttram, Margaret Buttram, Rebecca Buttram, Bailey Buttram, and Mary Buttram.

Two of their sons, Bill and Bailey, became prominent landowners on New River, owning several thousand acres of land between them. Bill married Rebecca Reed, the daughter of Revolutionary War veteran John Reed and a brother to Isaac Reed, who served as Scott County’s first trustee.

Margaret and Rebecca married into the Cecil family. They married brothers, Joseph and William Cecil, sons of Benjamin Cecil and Priscilla Boyleston. There are indications that Mary married into the Cecil family, as well.

It’s not clear exactly when the Buttram family arrived in Scott County. Genealogical sources usually say that Bailey Buttram was born in Wayne County, Ky., and moved to the New River area with his parents around 1830. In her book , County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote that Bailey and his brother, William (Bill), came to New River from Virginia in 1850. In his books, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, historian H. Clay Smith cites a grandson of Bailey Buttram as saying that John and Jane moved to New River from Georgia and that all of their children were born at New River.

Regardless of when they arrived, the Buttram’s became prolific farmers in the New River area. They were Scott County’s most prominent slaveholders. When the 1860 census was taken, Jane Buttram — who was widowed by that time — owned 22 of the 59 total slaves that were owned in Scott County.

Bailey Buttram

Bailey Buttram was born on Christmas Eve in 1814 — whet her that was in present-day Scott County or in Wayne County, Ky. He grew up to acquire significant property on New River, and married Lucinda Mc- Coy (1816-1881) in about 1836. They had at least eight children: Joel Buttram, Rosa Buttram Hamon, Iradel Buttram, Parzidia Buttram Thompson, Ellen Buttram Hurtt, Martha Buttram Jeffers, Leonard C. Buttram, and Pauline Elmira Buttram Cecil.

The Hurtt and Hamon families, which Bailey’s daughters married into, were also prominent in the New River area during this era.

Bailey Buttram was elected Scott County’s second sheriff in 1858, succeeding John Lewallen (or Llewellyn). He was 44 at the time of his election. One of his most significant acts as sheriff was certifying Scott County’s vote in the secession referendum of June 8, 1861. The county’s voters rejected secession by the largest margin of any county in Tennessee, voting 521-19 against it, setting the stage for the county to declare itself the Free and Independent State of Scott during the Civil War.

Buttram signed the election results and forwarded them to Nashville, likely delivering them himself on horseback. A copy of Buttram’s hand-written affidavit containing the results of the election still exists in the state archives.

One of Bailey’s sons, Iredel Buttram, served in the Union army during the Civil War. He was among Co. G of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry, along with many other Scott Countians, captured by Confederate forces at the Battle of Rogersville in Hawkins County, Tenn., in November 1863. He died of illness at the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia in April 1864 and is buried at Andersonville National Cemetery (Grave 645). His brother, Joel, also served in Co. G. He survived imprisonment but died in 1875 at the age of 36.

Beaty Cecil, who married Bailey’s youngest daughter, Pauline Elmira “Polly” Buttram, later served as sheriff of Scott County in the 1880s. Bailey’s grandsons developed a sterling and lengthy military reputation and were dubbed “the Fighting Cecils of New River.” One of them, Col. Joe Cecil, is Scott County’s only Medal of Honor recipient, and the U.S. Highway 27 bridge over New River is named in his honor.

The Buttram Cemetery

When Bailey Buttram died in 1898, he was buried in a small family cemetery in the Low Gap community, just off Low Gap Road. The cemetery predated his death by nearly two full decades, and he was the fifth person buried there. His wife, Lucinda, who died in 1881, was the second person buried there.

The cemetery began in 1880, with the death of Parzidia Buttram Thompson, Bailey’s third-oldest child. She was just about 31 when she died. She married Esau Thompson, who died in 1890 and was buried at the cemetery. They had a daughter, Lucinda, who married Christopher Columbus West and is buried at Helenwood Cut. Other children included Jacob Alvin and Mary Ellen.

Parzidia’s mother, Lucinda, was the second person buried at the cemetery, and her husband, Esau, was the third person buried there, in 1890.

In 1898, Martha Buttram Jeffers — another of Bailey’s daughters; Parzidia’s sister — was buried at the cemetery. She first married Jacob Thompson. Following his death, she remarried to Champion Jeffers. She was 44 at the time of her death. Her children included Bailey, Viola, and Simon through her first marriage. She had another son, Leonard, through her second marriage.

The tragedy of the Buttram family was that many of Bailey and Lucinda’s children died at relatively young ages. In addition to Parzidia and Martha, who are buried at the family cemetery, there was Iradell, who died during the Civil War at Andersonville, and Joel, who returned to Scott County after being imprisoned in the war but died in 1875 and is buried at Hurtt Cemetery at New River. Leonard was also buried at Hurtt Cemetery when he died in 1876.

So, by 1898, five of the eight Buttram children had died.

The Thompson Family

Baby Esaw Thompson was buried at Buttram Cemetery in March 1900. He was just 10 days old at the time of his death. His stone denotes that he was the son of B.C. and Artie Thompson. That would have been Bailey Thompson and Artie Newport. Bailey was the son of Martha Buttram, through her first marriage to Jacob Thompson. (Artie was the daughter of Alvison and Mary Newport of Brimstone). Baby Esaw, then, was Bailey Buttram’s great-grandson.

Bailey and Artie had three other children when the 1900 census was taken: Ora, Elmer Caywood, and Jacob Elerd. Jacob’s birth certificate indicates that he was born Feb. 20, 1900, which would make him a twin to Esaw.

It was mentioned earlier that Parzidia Buttram Thompson was the first person buried at the cemetery when she died in 1880, and her husband, Esau, was buried there when he died in 1890.

Esau and Jacob, who married the Buttram sisters, may have been brothers, though that isn’t clear. It also isn’t clear what became of Jacob, though he appears to have died sometime between 1880 and 1887. He was living when the 1880 census was taken, and Martha married Champion Jeffers in January 1888.

Esau and Parzidia had a son, Jacob Alvin “Jakey” Thompson, who was buried at the family cemetery in 1918, when he died of tuberculosis at age 48. He married Rosetta West, who was later buried at the cemetery in 1945 when she died of lung cancer at age 66.

Jakey and Rosetta had a daughter, Katherine Mae, who died in 1916 at age 11 and was buried at the cemetery. Like her father, she died of tuberculosis. She was a great-granddaughter of Bailey and Lucinda Buttram.

Other children of Jakey and Rosetta included Minott and Lucille.

Other Burials

William N. Washam was buried at Buttram Cemetery in 1902. He was the husband of Hester Ann York, who was later buried in Union County. Their children included Leander Mathias Washam, Mary Elizabeth Humphrey, Martha Leticia Warwick, H.C. Warwick, Sarah Humphrey, Jane Wilson, Maynard Washam, James Bradford Washam, Jonathan Maynard Washam, and Piety Turner.

Most of William and Hester’s children wound up in Union County. However, two of them remained in Scott County. One of them, Mary Elizabeth, married William Riley Humphrey, and is buried at the Buttram Cemetery. It is not known when she died, though it was after 1900. Her grave is marked only by a funeral home marker.

William was later buried at the cemetery, as well. His death date is also unknown. A commercial stone has since been placed there in their memory.

There are also funeral home markers for a Charlie Humphrey and Mamie Humphrey at the cemetery.

Finally, a 22-year-old W.A. Weaver was buried at the cemetery in 1907. No further information is available about this person.

All of the funeral home markers, and the commercial stone for William Humphrey, were placed after Tim West and Sue Posey transcribed the cemetery in 2005. At that time, they inventoried only 10 graves at the cemetery: Bailey and Lucinda, along with Martha Buttram Jeffers, Esau Thompson, Esaw Thompson, Jacob Thompson, Katherine Mae Thompson, Rosetta West Thompson, William Washam, and Weaver.

While West and Posey did not locate Parzidia Buttram Thompson’s grave at the cemetery when they transcribed it in 2005, the small commercial stones marking her grave and her husband’s (Esau) were placed later. Their graves were previously marked with unidentifiable stones. (Source: The Independent Herald, 6 Aug 2026, p30-22)