Odd Fellow's Cemetery, Knoxville, Knox County

Odd Fellows Cemetery, Knoxville

Located on Bethel Avenue in East Knoxville since c. 1880 is the Odd Fellows Cemetery, an African-American fraternal and benevolent cemetery.  The Odd Fellows, the Daughters of Zion, and the Good Samaritans purchased the property to create the joint cemetery.  Oddly enough, the cemetery is located on the same street as Bethel Confederate Cemetery, showing that the lines of segregation where not always drawn as rigidly in the decades following the war as they were in the early twentieth century.

According to Robert J. Booker, the Banner Lodge Chapter of Odd Fellows purchased the first section of the cemetery before 1881.  The Daughters of Zion purchased a section adjacent to this in 1881.  In 1884, the third section of the cemetery was purchased by Rebecca Lodge Chapter of the Independent Order of Good Samaritans and Daughters of Samaria (Robert L. Booker, Two Hundred Years of Black Culture in Knoxville, Tennessee, 1791 to 1991, p. 90).  It is not surprising that these groups purchased a cemetery together as the Rebecca Lodge and Banner Lodge of Odd Fellows shared lodge space, both meeting at Odd Fellows Hall on 92 Gay Street (1887 Knoxville City Directory, p. 29).

Odd Fellows Cemetery, Knoxville

The cemetery is in mixed condition.  It is apparent that there have been recent efforts to clear part of the vegetation at the site and to set upright fallen tombstones. The section belonging to the Daughters of Zion looks largely abandoned.

A partial transcription of the cemetery is located here.