Greetings to All Buttram (Buttrum, Butram, Butrum, Bertram, etc.), Bradley, and Marsh Descendants and Researchers! Dates have been set for our Spring and Fall 2008 workdays at the Richard Bradley Cemetery near Sparta, White County, Tennessee. Please mark the dates on your calendars now and plan to attend if you possibly can. The dates are Sat., May 10th and Sat., Nov. 1st. Walter Buttrum of Sparta will arrange to have the gate unlocked so we can drive our trucks and SUVs into the field near the cemetery. Fount and I will try to be there both days by 9:30 AM from our home near Woodbury in Cannon County. We appreciate everyone who has helped in the past with "sweat equity", financial contributions, and best wishes. Attendance at the workdays is dwindling. Several interested persons are getting older or are no longer with us. In order to preserve this wonderful historical cemetery for our children, grandchildren, and their children, we need to get them involved in helping us take care of it too. For those new to this cemetery I will give a brief history. In 1838 landowner Richard Bradley established the cemetery when he buried his first wife, Minty Bradley. Other Bradley family members are buried here also in unusual "tent" or "comb graves" with sandstone markers that mostly resemble arrowheads. (Richard Bradley's grave has rounded markers instead on his tent grave, and no one seems to know why.) I have been told that the graves marked only with fieldstones that are directly behind the Richard Bradley family are those of their slaves. One beloved little boy, designated only as Black Boy Crockett, is buried next to his mistress, Sally Goodbread Bradley, as she requested. Fieldstones in front of the family are those of members of the community. Also in this cemetery is the grave of William Butram (II), a soldier of the American Revolution. William Butram was born July 15,1759 in Rowan Co., North Carolina. As a young man he fought in the American Revolution against the British, on the side of the Patriots. After the war he returned to his wife (Sarah Patterson) and children in Rowan County, but after their home burned they relocated to Iredell County, North Carolina. Later he moved to Lee County, Virginia for a short while, then on to Wayne County, Kentucky, where some of his children had already migrated. He was quite elderly when he moved for the last time to White County, Tennessee. We don't know exactly why he is buried in the Bradley Cemetery other than friendship with Richard Bradley who performed the marriages of some of William's grandchildren in White County. My husband is a third great-grandson of William Butram. In the early 1960s the Cookeville Chapter of the D.A.R. had a U.S. Military Service marker placed on William Butram's grave. The original marker has since been lost. The marker the DAR placed gives an incorrect year of death for William Butram because at the time they ordered it the grave had not yet been located by descendant Marshall Bertram, an Associate Professor of History at TN Tech. It is our plan to place a footstone on the grave with the correct date of death -- November 10, 1853. While William Butram lived in Wayne Co., Kentucky he was a neighbor to Henry Marsh, another Revolutionary War soldier. Henry and his family moved to White County, Tennessee a short time before William Butram and his daughter, Katy, moved there also. Again the two old soldiers were neighbors. It is known that Henry Marsh was buried somewhere in or near the Bradley Cemetery so it is only fitting that his descendants erected a US Military Marker for him a few years ago, next to his friend, William Butram. A lot more history and many colorful stories are shared at all these workday gatherings. They are a pilgrimage to honor our ancestors but they are an investment in the future. We work but we have fun and leave feeling proud of what we have accomplished. If you live near enough to attend and are physically able, please join us. Bring yard tools, including small push mowers, if you have them. Wear work gloves, sturdy clothes and boots. Bring your drinking water and snacks. Fount and I will go to eat afterwards, dirt and all. at Yanni's Restaurant off Brockman Way in Sparta. Everyone is welcome to join us. Please contact us if you have questions or need directions to the cemetery. We are hoping for a big turnout on both dates! Sincerely, Anna Bertram (Mrs. Fount W. Bertram) Encoded email address follows: abertram at dtccom dot net