JPR, Always appreciate comments. When I made my first trip to Tennessee last year, I went to the executive director of Lincoln County. He let me read all the laws of the State of Tennessee regarding cemeteries. He even allowed me to use his copier to copy all the pages from the law book. I still have them. Unfortunately, there is no law in Tennessee that pertains to cemeteries like the McAdams Cemetery. I have written to the governor's office. I have corresponded with the Executive Director of the Funeral Board and Burial Services of the Department of Commerce and Insurance for the State of Tennessee. This department is responsible for seeing that the state laws concerning cemeteries are upheld. In the case of the McAdams Cemetery near Belfast, there is no law in Tennessee that will allow anyone to go onto private property to even view the cemetery. There are two main reasons: 1. The McAdams Cemetery is not a "legally recognized" cemetery. By this I mean that it was never declared or deeded as a cemetery in a deed or in a will. 2. There is no visible cemetery. It has been bull dozed. There are no tombstones to be seen. There is no fence around it. There is no sign anywhere saying there is a cemetery there. What the above amounts to is that the McAdams Cemetery which is on private property and has never been legally documented, is not protected by any Tennessee laws. Therefore, it is "owned" by the owner of the land and he can do with it as he pleases. Remember, around 1955, the then owner of the land had the entire cemetery bull dozed and even that was not against the law. The laws of Tennessee do not protect the small, family cemeteries unless they have been legally documented. The small McAdams Cemetery in Lincoln County near Po Grab is a legal cemetery because John McAdams (a son of Joseph McAdams) deeded the land for the cemetery. I have written the owner of the land twice and he has not responded. He lives in Massachusetts. I hope that maybe he will sell us the one acre the cemetery is on but I do not count on that happening. No matter, as of right now the McAdams Cemetery is a hay field and unfortunately may be such for a long, long time. Louis Shone [email protected]