Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery
Of historic significance in the Knoxville area is the 13 acre, Old Gray Cemetery located just north of the downtown area.
Founded in 1850, Old Gray Cemetery is named in honor of Thomas Gray (1716-1771), an English poet and author of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.
This beautiful Sunday afternoon Old Gray holds it “annual Lantern and Carriage Tour” marked by local actors portraying folks of note who are buried here and telling stories of their life and death.
This pistol packing lady is portraying Evelyn Hazen, a Knoxville socialite who scandalized the country in the 1930s by successfully suing her longtime fiance and lover for breach of promise and seduction……..and winning a judgement for $80,000 which was an impressive sum in that depression era. She died in 1987 and is buried in Old Gray.
This gentleman portrays the engineer of one of the trains involved in the great New Market, Tennessee train wreck in 1904 that is believed to have killed up to 113 people; one of the great disasters of that era. Reportedly people up to 15 miles away heard the two locomotives collide head on at a combined speed of over 110 miles per hour. Ironically both engineers were Knoxville residents and lived only a block apart in the now historic 4th & Gill neighborhood.
A trio of musicians entertained the crowd waiting for a ride through the cemetary on horse drawn carriages. The stringed instrument the lady is playing is called a hammer dulcimer.
“Rocky” and “Eleanor” pull a carraige load of visitors on a delightful Fall afternoon in Old Gray Cemetary while the guide on the right points out graves of interest.
This almost life-sized sculpture of a Confederate soldier marks the graves of two Confederate veterans, William Asbury Horne (1845-1891), an assistant quartermaster with the 42nd Georgia Infantry, and John Fletcher Horne (1843-1906), who was a sergeant with the Kansas Bottom Tennessee Artillery. The Horne boys specified in their wills that the statue be erected with it’s back forever turned to the North in continued defiance and disdain for the Union side. Apparently the Horne boys knew how to hold a grudge.
Old Gray Cemetary is filled with hundreds of stories like these and is a fascinating place to spend an afternoon or a whole day wandering and learning the Knoxville area’s history.
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