Cemetery issue still not laid to rest By: JOHNNY HUTSELL-ROYSTER Source: <A HREF="http://dpa.xtn.net/">The Daily Post-Athenian</A> 11-07-2002 Controversy over a possible Civil War-era cemetery has not yet been laid to rest as interest still swirls around sunken areas some believe to be graves on property once considered for purchase by Wal-Mart for a Super Center. Meanwhile, a Wal-Mart official said the company is considering “other options” in regard to its building proposals. And, the Wal-Mart employee who first brought the possible graveyard to the public’s attention no longer believes it’s the Sivels-Vestal cemetery referred to earlier, although he still thinks a graveyard is located on that site. Employee Dennis Stewart had noticed the sunken areas as he walked the property once owned by the Layman family of Athens. It’s located on a rise behind Wal-Mart’s current site. The property has not been proven to be a cemetery, but Wal-Mart District Manager Jeff Eversole said last week, “Things have changed. We are looking at other options and we cannot comment.” According to McMinn County Courthouse tax records, the property on Layman Road is broken into two plots, now belonging to First Mortgage Co., of Naples, Fla. Representatives of the company have been unavailable for comment and haven’t answered left messages. When Stewart first located the sunken areas, McMinn County Historical Society President Rex Moses said he believed the property might have been the former Sivels-Vestal Cemetery. “It was last located in WPA records around 1939 but when we attempted to add it to our Cemetery Book records, we couldn’t find it. We believe this location is that cemetery,” Moses said at that time. Since then Stewart has done further research. He still believes the former Layman property on the hill above Wal-Mart contains a graveyard, but he no longer believes it’s the Sivels-Vestal Cemetery. “I did some research in the McMinn County deed books and have come to believe the farm once owned by John Vestal was off of Highway 30, turning right past Wendy’s and on out to the general vicinity of the Strikers’ Winery,” Stewart said. “I spoke with a Vestal descendant who told me that is the farm’s possible location,” he added. The property that once belonged to the Layman family behind Wal-Mart is shown in McMinn County Deed Book 3D, Vol. 2, page 245 as being purchased in 1918 by Layman from the E.M. Hutsell family, Stewart said. This property was said to be in the old 5th Civil District or the new 8th District. “If this is correct and if there is a cemetery on the old Layman property, it would not be the Sivels-Vestal Cemetery, but a different unknown graveyard,” Stewart added. Whether a graveyard is actually there, however, hasn’t been determined. Archaeologist Nick Fielder visited the site and determined there was no evidence of a cemetery. “There is no physical evidence I could see of a cemetery, and the place people said they thought were graves – well, my interpretation is that was where a tree had been and not a grave,” Fielder said. Stewart also walked the property with Pete Prince, a University of Tennessee instructor and Maryville resident who has been employed by the National Park Service to locate lost graves by using his dowsing method. It’s a method Fielder referred to as “unreliable because it only works some of the time.” In a recent e-mail, Prince said his background includes having had a newspaper career as a writer and editor. He said he’s now completing a 10-book series on the “Ghost Towns in the Great Smokies.” “Although my dowsing has lost some battles, we stopped a school in Bryson City, N.C., and a house building in Madisonville, but failed to halt a tourist bypass from destroying the well-marked Tennessee’s oldest Forks of the Little Pigeon Cemetery in Sevierville,” Prince wrote in the e-mail. Prince used his dowsing technique at the site of the suspected cemetery in Athens in the presence of Stewart and David Robinette of Robinette Civil Engineering of Knoxville. Robinette, who had been hired as an engineer for Wal-Mart, remains skeptical of the dowsing abilities. Robinette said he also has run title searches in regard to a reference in a 1939 publication on tombstone inscriptions that identified a Steve Reeder as being a prior owner of the Vestal property. That reference in “McMinn County, Tennessee Tombstone Inscriptions” Vol. 2, 193 List, Page 210 described the Sivels or Vestal Farm Cemetery as “being started during the war of 1861-1865 when several soldiers that were stationed nearby died with smallpox and were buried on the farm owned by Steve Reeder.” The reference said, “There are no markers but there are about 25 graves. The location is on the Decatur Pike 3 miles west of Athens on the farm of John Vestal.” Robinette said in his title searches, he couldn’t find a record of Steve Reeder owning the property in question in 1861 (courthouse records don’t go back that far), but he did find records of the Layman family. In a phone interview, Robinette said he believes the Sivels-Vestal Cemetery was located in an area in the vicinity of the old high school because his people checked courthouse records and reportedly found a John Vestal showing up as a property owner in McMinn County in the new 4th District (Old 7th District) in the Shipley Farrell-Nankalell Addition Plot in Map Book 1, page 25. “What it showed was a street where the Vestal property was with a north arrow that adjoins the high school in the 1930s. I ran a chain of title search back to the 1860s and found Laymans, but couldn’t find any Reeders, but we must remember that in the 1860s, Decatur Pike wasn’t where it was in the 1930s,” Robinette said. Moses said he would also like to settle once and for all the issue of whether a Civil War-era cemetery lies on the property. If it actually exists, the cemetery could be recognized as a historic site. If it doesn’t exist, but continues to be considered a “suspect site,” a substantial amount of acreage may continue to lie undeveloped within the city unless an owner can be located who will take scrapings from the soil and settle the matter. “The only thing that will satisfy me is when they actually move some dirt and make the determination as to whether or not there are graves there, and not just a suspect site,” Moses said.