Tag Archives: Bays Mountain Park

Upper Gregg Cemetery

In 2005, after a year or so recording the old foundations of homes and the old school at Bays Mountain Park,  Following a rather difficult path that I had picked out using a calibration between an old plat map and a modern topo map of the park, I located the Upper Gregg (or Gragg) Cemetery.  There are two readable stones here, the rest have eroded to blanks.
uppergreggstone1

On this one is carved, “John M. Brown Born Mar. 23, 1820. Died Sep. 21, 1880. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”
In Muriel Millar Clark Spoden’s self-published pamphlet “The Early Years on BAYS MOUNTAIN in Sullivan County, Tennessee” (1975, Franklin Printing), she records comments by a elderly descendant of the Gregg family commenting on the incongruity of having a Brown in the Gregg Cemetery.  “…how did he come in on this?”

There’s another stone with readable letters on it:

uppergreggstone2

J. M. B.  That’s it.
The cemetery is on a hillside overlooking the lake.  The graves face east, to the rising sun.
I have pictures of the lower cemetery.  I’ll post them later, but all the stones there were blank.