Benevolent Society No. 84 Cemetery, Hamilton Church Pike, Antioch

One of my favorite Benevolent cemeteries, and one of the smallest, is Benevolent Society No. 84 on Hamilton Church Pike in southeast Nashville. One reason it is my favorite is pure bias - it is located not far from where I grew up. I also love it because it has an abandoned lodge building on site.

What is likely an abandoned lodge building located on the property of the cemetery.

The cemetery is small, not marked, well maintained, and backs up to a suburban neighborhood. I feel that some graves may actually be located in the back yards of the houses behind the cemetery. The cemetery was a bit overgrown at the rear when I visited it, and it seemed to possibly extend into the neighborhood behind it. There were not very many marked graves (not more than 20), although it is always possible there are unmarked graves at the rear of the cemetery. There is at least one veteran buried here.  Many of the stones dated from the last half of the 20th century.

Tombstone located in an overgrown area at the rear of the cemetery.

Tombstone at the cemetery

Graves at the cemetery.

There are several mentions of the lodge in the Nashville Globe.  It often met with Benevolent Society No. 107 of Una, another small community in southeast Davidson County. For example, that paper noted in August 1909 that the two groups met together at B.O. No. 84 on "Hamilton Hill" (what the community located around what is now Hamilton Church Pike was once called).

From the Nashville Globe, August 27, 1909

I have done a bit of research on the members buried at this cemetery, using the cemetery transcription from findagrave.com. (http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&GScid=2300072) I was hoping to see what I could learn about what types of people were members of this lodge.  I learned that Albert Miller (1854-1939) rented a home in the community and worked as a road laborer in 1930. His death certificate, however, lists his occupation as farmer. Mr. Miller was literate and was not a veteran. His wife, Victoria Trimble Miller (1874-1941) was born in Rutherford County.  After his death, Victoria lived at 54 Trimble Street in Nashville.

I also researched Bernettie Whitsey (1875-1968).  Mrs. Whitsey was a laundress in 1930, married to John Whitsey, a farmer. Living with them in their home were two stepdaughters and two grandchildren, ages 6 and 8.  Like the Millers, the Whitseys rented their home. John has been born in Williamson County, and he died in 1943 at the age of 74.

I hope to do more genealogical research of the people buried in the Benevolent cemeteries. It humanizes the group, and it gives me a much better idea of what the members were like.  It also gives me a better sense of the importance of the group to the members.  These members listed here likely did not enjoy great financial prosperity, so a group like the Benevolent Society, which offered sick and death benefits at a time when the government did not, was likely very important to the Whitseys and the Millers. In time, I also hope that I learn about the fate of the lodge, and whether there are any members alive who remember meeting in this building.

Side view of the building. It is a concrete block building with a gable front roof, brick chimney, and several windows.

Interior of the building as it appeared in late 2012.

Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World

Back in 2014, while doing fieldwork for Tennessee's Reconstruction Past: A Driving Tour (a project I am very proud to have worked on and very dear to my heart. You can see it here.), I came across another fraternal group in Shelby County.  I was at the Gray's Creek Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery (a congregation started, incidentally in 1843) when I noticed several tombstones with the "Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World" etched on them.  They all also had either chambers or circles noted, much like the Mosaic Templars. The symbology was very interesting at well, a lion over an inverted triangle.

Top of a tombstone showing the Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World

I have not had time to research the group extensively, but it appears to have started in Arkansas in 1909, in the town of Helena. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, by 1944, the group had spread and had more than 100,000 members nationwide.  The founder was Dr. Richard Williams, an Arkansas native. Intriguingly, Dr. Williams was educated in Nashville (at Meharry) and practiced medicine in Knoxville before moving to Helena in 1905. Despite his connections to middle and west Tennessee, I have not yet found chapters of the organization in that part of the state.

The group's headquarters later moved to Chicago. They opened two hospitals for the benefit of its members - one in Memphis and one in Little Rock. The hospital is listed in the 1923 Polk directory of Memphis as being located on South Fifth Street. According to Calvin White, Jr. in The Rise to Respectability: Race, Religion and the Church of God in Christ, the hospital failed in 1924 and the property purchased by the Church of God in Christ (COGIC).

Listing for the Royal Circle hospital in Memphis in the 1923 Polk City Directory. Courtesy the Shelby County Archives.

Back to the cemetery at Gray's Creek, a number of circles and chambers are listed. Some of these include the Crescent Circle No. 304 and Eads Circle No. 1045. I would like to find out what other circles and chambers existed in Tennessee.

Symbol for the group

Tombstone showing that the deceased was a member of Eads Circle 1045

To learn more about the group, see its entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

Benevolent Society cemeteries of Middle Tennessee

Lately I have been thinking about the number of Benevolent Society cemeteries I have observed in Middle Tennessee, and whether there we can look at these cemeteries as evidence to tell us more about the group itself.  My thoughts are still being clarified, so this is something of an exercise in gathering thoughts in a semi-coherent manner.

To begin, I do not believe I have observed all the cemeteries in Middle Tennessee that were established by the Benevolent Society.  I think that, as the group died out in smaller communities, the cemeteries started by the Benevolent Society were given other names.  Also, I think that it is very possible that some cemeteries were surveyed by well-meaning transcriptionists in the past, and a name assigned to the cemetery that the community that established it would not have recognized.  For example, if a cemetery has fallen into apparent disuse, any sign that existed marking the name of the cemetery may have disappeared.  When a well-meaning genealogist then transcribed the names on the visible tombstones, a name, likely reflecting the last name of one of the families buried there, was assigned to the cemetery.  I also think some may have suffered from development, and after wooden grave markers deteriorated, they were overlooked and forgotten on the landscape.

Marker to the Benevolent Society No. 11 in the Benevolent Cemetery in Murfreesboro

Marker to the "B.O" (Benevolent Order, another name for the Benevolent Society), Port Royal

One thing I have found is that several of these cemeteries have a large, ornate marker to the local chapter of the Benevolent Society.  Examples include the Benevolent Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Mount Ararat in Shelbyville (a Benevolent Society cemetery), and the Benevolent Cemetery in Port Royal. Individual grave markers in these cemeteries are not often that ornate, and this leads me to think that while the Benevolent Society as a whole may have enjoyed some financial stability, the individual members did not enjoy the same level of financial resources.

Monument to the Benevolent Society in Mount Ararat Cemetery in Shelbyville. It reads "Sacred to the memory of the honored dead of the Benevolent Society. Their works do follow them. August 1897."

Commemorative marker for the Benevolent Society at Mt. Ararat Cemetery in Nashville. This cemetery was organized by the Benevolent Society and by the Sons of Relief, another fraternal group.

  Something else noticeable in the Benevolent Society cemeteries is that they are physical representations of the segregated landscape African Americans navigated in Tennessee. Some, such as the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Shelbyville and the Benevolent Society Cemetery in Goodlettsville, are located adjacent or across the road from an older, white cemetery. In the case of the cemetery in Goodlettsville, the two cemeteries, Benevolent Society (African American) and Cole Cemetery (white) are adjacent with no fence between. In that case, it is difficult now to know which cemetery is which, but my gut tells me the community was never in doubt of which cemetery was black and which was white.  I think that more should be done to document cemeteries as sites of segregation in Tennessee, and how Jim Crow pursued you even into death.

Mount Ararat (black) Cemetery in Shelbyville in shown in the foreground. The road and the cemetery in the background (surrounded by a fence) is the white Willow Mount Cemetery, established in the 1840s.

Sons of Zion (Memphis and Shelby County)

There were apparently a number of African American fraternal and benevolent groups in Tennessee with "Zion" in the name.  In Memphis alone, there are references in city directories and newspapers to the Daughters of Zion, Sons of Zion, Sisters of Zion, and United Sons of Zion (apparently different from the Sons of Zion). I have even found mention of a Sons of Zion as far east as Greeneville, Tennessee in 1871.  To be perfectly honest, I am still puzzling out the links, if any, between the groups.  Here goes my best guess, at this point, about the Sons of Zion, the group that formed Zion Christian Cemetery (http://tn-africanamericanlodges.blogspot.com/2014/09/zion-christian-cemterysons-of-zion.html).

A mention of the Sons of Zion in the Jonesborough Herald and Tribune, August 10, 1871.

According to G.P. Hamilton, in The Bright Side of Memphis, the Sons of Zion in Memphis organized in 1867, and at the time of his writing, consisted of one lodge, no endowment, and 200 members.  Hamilton describes the group as, "One of the earliest societies in Memphis, it has done much for the welfare of our people. Their leaders have been men of foresight and judgement . . ." The 1874 Boyle Chapman Memphis Directory lists the Sons of Zion as meeting on Rayburn Avenue with 200 members while the United Sons of Zion met at Beale Street church and had 270 members. 

Memphis Daily Appeal, March 23, 1874

The Sons of Zion were active in Memphis.  In 1874, they, along with other groups, took part in funeral ceremonies in Memphis to mark the death of Charles Sumner, former abolitionist and politician.  They participated in July 4th celebrations.  They took responsibility for burial of the dead, as when Joe Morgan, a black man, drowned in the Wolf  River. After his body was recovered, they took charge of his remains and buried him.

Memphis Daily Appeal, October 8, 1879.  Discusses the drowning and burial of Joe Morgan.

Brian D. Page has a great article in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly that discusses the different benevolent and fraternal groups in Memphis following the Civil War.  It is ""Stand by the Flag": Nationalism and African-American Celebrations of the Fourth of July in Memphis, 1866-1887," and it is located in Volume 58. number 4 (Winter 1999): pages 284-301.

Zion Christian Cemtery/Sons of Zion Cemtery - Memphis, Shelby County

Zion Christian Cemetery sign. Photo by author.

In April 2013, I visited the Zion Christian Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, located in the 1400 block of South Parkway East. This may be one of the oldest African American cemeteries in Memphis, having been established by the Sons of Zion in 1876.  It was during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 that many of the burials in the cemetery began in earnest.  More than 30,000 African Americans may be interred here.  Green Polonious Hamilton, an African American teacher and author of The Bright Side of Memphis (1908), stated in that work, "a few far-sighted brainy men of the race, anticipating the needs of the colored people of Memphis . . .purchased a large tract of land outside of the city limits to be used as a cemetery. . . Zion Cemetery is patronized by the best classes of colored people." [To read Hamilton's work, an African American guide to Memphis, you may find it on Google Books at http://books.google.com/books?id=m9vVAAAAMAAJ&vq=zion&pg=PA18#v=snippet&q=zion&f=false.]

As with many African American cemeteries in Tennessee, it endured many years of neglect.  In the early 2000s, a group formed the Zion Community Project with the intention of maintaining the cemetery and making its story known.  Their website, http://www.zioncommunityproject.org/, has great information on the history of the cemetery and the group as well as its continuing efforts to preserve the cemetery.  There is also a search engine to allow you to search for ancestors possibly buried in the cemetery.

Obituary for Rev. Morris Henderson, interred at Zion Christian Cemetery. Memphis Daily Appeal, October 30, 1877.

Advertisement found in the Memphis Daily Appeal, May 29, 1881.

The day that I visited was a beautiful day;  however, I had scheduled so many other research things that I was unable to spend a great deal of time at the site.  I hope to return one day when I can devote several hours to walking through the cemetery and observing the tombstones, the carvings, and the getting a better sense of its spatial organization.  There is also a state historic marker at the site that documents some of its history.  A future blog post will discuss the Sons of Zion in more detail.

State historic marker at the site. Photo by author.

Zion Christian Cemetery. Photo by author.

Zion Christian Cemetery. Photo by author.

Mount Ararat Cemetery (Benevolent) - Shelbyville, Bedford County

Mount Ararat Cemetery in Shelbyville (March 2013)

Back in March, I had the opportunity to slip away to Shelbyville to look for a cemetery associated with the Benevolent Society. Although the conventional wisdom seems to be that benevolent lodges are dead and have no relevance in today's culture, I once again found a cemetery associated with a benevolent group that is in excellent condition.  Thanks to field work and seeing some of these cemeteries for myself, I have re-evaluated what I think I know about African American fraternal and benevolent groups.

The cemetery is located on West End Avenue, across from the large cemetery, Willow Mount, used by white citizens in Shelbyville since the 1840s.  Once again, the realities of segregated life in Tennessee showed themselves on the landscape - two cemeteries, separated by a fence and a gravel road, one for whites, one for blacks. Despite this separation, they are located adjacent to each other, and both very near the location of Turner Normal School, an African American school opened in the 1880s.

Division between the cemeteries.  You can see the fence and road that separate the white cemetery from the black cemetery on the left side of the picture.

Mount Ararat has an association with the Benevolent Society in Shelbyville.  There is a large monument to the Benevolent Society in the cemetery, which reads, "Erected to the sacred memory of the honored dead of the Benevolent Society. Their works do follow them. August 1897."  Additionally, the cemetery is referenced in the Nashville Globe, an African American newspaper, several times.  An article on May 17, 1918 states, "The benevolent order will hold its annual exercises in Mt. Ararat cemetery next Sunday. The speakers are Rev. W.A. Smith, Prof. McAdams, and Rev. E.F. Gooch."  Mrs. Lou Emma Tillman, beloved local teacher, is buried in what the Nashville Globe referred to as "the Benevolent Cemetery" in her death notice published July 19, 1918.

Nashville Globe May 28, 1909 blurb stating that Mount Ararat Cemetery is property of the Benevolent Society in Shelbyville.

 

Monument to the Benevolent Society located in Mount Ararat Cemetery.

As for the cemetery itself, it is unmarked but very well-maintained.  There are graveled roads throughout the cemetery, and a large number of trees.  There are approximately 400-500 burials, and Find A Grave has them transcribed here. In addition to the Benevolent Society monument, there are other evidences of fraternal groups throughout the cemetery, as several graves have carvings from the Masons, Knights of Pythias, and GUOOF.

Nashville Globe May 17, 1918

Nashville Globe July 19, 1918

Golden Star Society, Nashville, Tennessee

A group that I am just beginning to research (in other words, I know very little about them) is the Golden Star Society of Nashville. According to an article in the Nashville Globe on September 27, 1907, the group was formed by David Davidson in 1885 (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064259/1907-09-27/ed-1/seq-3/).  A perusal of the Nashville Globe indicates that this was a benevolent society with death benefits.

Nashville Globe, September 27, 1907.

The interesting thing about this article is that it shows us several things.  First, religion and benevolent orders were tied together in many ways.  This article is about the annual sermon of the group, and my research indicates that many benevolent orders had an annual sermon.  It appears that the preaching of this sermon rotated amongst different Christian denominations, perhaps indicating the ecumenical nature of lodges.  Secondly, it shows that lodges of different orders could work together.  This one states, "The celebrated I.O.I. Band furnished appropriate music."  The I.O.I. were the Independent Order of Immaculates, a benevolent order founded in Nashville and apparently well-known for its band (they figure in numerous newspaper accounts during this period).  Thirdly, it shows us that this is not an insignificant group, as eight hundred members, belonging to four societies, turned out for the annual sermon, held at St. Paul Church.  

An article from May 29, 1908 in the Nashville Globe also yields some interesting information (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064259/1908-05-29/ed-1/seq-1/). This brief blurb describing the election of officers for Golden Star Lodge No. 3 indicates that women were not barred from holding office.  While men were elected as President and Vice President, Sister Medie Roach was elected Treasurer of this lodge.  A woman was also elected as Receiving Teller of the group.  Sister Emma Long was elected the Orator.  This seems to indicate that the Golden Star Society had no restrictions upon women joining or exercising power.  It almost seems ahead of its time in terms of gender relations. I think it shows that more research is needed in the area of gender roles in African American fraternal groups.

Nashville Globe, May 29, 1908

Although this information was nice, I wanted to know where this interesting group met.  I finally hit the jackpot when I read the August 19, 1910 edition of the Nashville Globe.  This told me that the Golden Star Lodge No. 2 dedicated their new lodge on Pearl Street, located between 11th and 12th Avenues.  Looking at the 1914 Sanborn Insurance map for Nashville, I discovered a lodge hall on Pearl Street, between 11th and 12th Avenues, beside St. John's Missionary Baptist Church.  Unfortunately, this structure no longer exists.

1914 Nashville Sanborn Map, Sheet 26

I do not know how long the group survived.  There is a mention of a banquet at the Golden Star Lodge in the September 21, 1917 edition of the Nashville Globe. The 1956 Sanborn map does not indicate a lodge on Pearl Street beside a church. While a church is still present on the 1956 map (now St. James Baptist Church), the building formerly indicated as a lodge is indicated as a dwelling.

1956 Nashville Sanborn Map, Sheet 26A