On a very pleasant and sunny afternoon on 22 April 2018, Linda Newman and I visited the Williams / Kilgore Cemetery located on the hill beside the intersection of US 60 and KY SR 854 at Kilgore, KY. This cemetery is in Carter County, but just barely. The Boyd / Carter County line is about 5 or 6 hundred feet away. I have known of this cemetery for most of my life, but this was my very first visit.
Evidently numerous ticks, chiggers, and some very unexpected early season mosquitoes had been notified of our visit sufficiently in advance to make a prompt rendezvous with our flesh.
The cemetery is in a terrible state. Large fallen trees and huge limbs from still standing trees are strewn about. Decades and decades of fallen leaves, brush, and other organic material make finding individual graves difficult. Few grave marking stones remain upright. They seem to have fallen over from the unrelenting effects of gravity and neglect of maintenance due to time, not due to vandalism. This cemetery is about 200 years old and only 3 or 4 graves have been added since 1967, 1/2 a century ago (more on this later). It seem to be, more or less, a dead cemetery.
The cemetery sits on the hill on the north side of US 60, at the intersection of KY SR 854. There are no signs to mark the location and there is no road or even a definitive path to the cemetery. The cemetery commences about 1/3 from the bottom of the hill and spreads out along a ridge for about 800 feet. This ridge follows a property line that is intermittently fenced. On the west side of this fence line is the cemetery set in the woods. On the east side of this fence line is a cleanly mowed hay hillside. The approximate center of this ridge line cemetery is marked with the red teardrop marker in the Google Maps link below. The GPS of this centered point is 38.351133, -82.781843.
The Williams / Kilgore Cemetery Marked Location
The graves lowest on the hill are for the Williams Family. This is the family that first settled this entire general area in about 1815 on a 100 acre plot with the plot’s boundaries coming near this graveyard, but the plot did not appear to actually include this cemetery. The Williams family farmhouse was located about 1.5 miles to the northeast. Nearby Williams Creek is named for this pioneering family.
This Cemetery is often been referred to as the Williams Cemetery, and other times it is called Kilgore Cemetery due to its location at Kilgore, KY. Possibly the oldest marked grave in this cemetery, and very possibly the oldest marked grave in the entire Williams Creek Basin is the grave of 24 year old James Williams (1800 – 1824). James was the son of Mordecai (1777 – 1834) and Mary Elizabeth Davidson Williams (1770-1834) who purchased and settled onto the 100 acre plot in about 1815. Here is an image of James Williams’ headstone that we carefully and temporarily propped up for the photo and then returned to the pre-photo state. Click on any of the images for a larger view.
Also in the Williams plot area is the marked grave of Thompson Williams (1868 -1946). Thompson, called “Tompie”, was the last of the Williams clan to occupy part of the original Williams property. When he died the property, still 80 of the original 100 acres intact, was sold by his heirs (he had no children) and subdivided into many parcels. My brother-in-law, Jerry Burton, born in 1938, recalls visiting with his Father, Paul Burton (1913 – 1981), on Tompie’s front porch at Coalton when he was very young. Family Friends Bob (1924 -2011) and Myrtle Gullett Moore lived with Tompie in the Williams farmhouse early in their marriage. Here is Thompson Williams’ small headstone.
Near to the top of the ridge are three graves that are likely the last to be placed here. These are the graves of Robert “Bob” Thomas (1942 – 1967), who died in a car crash, and his parents Clyde (1905 – 1983) and Una Leibee Thomas (1917 – 1972). Here are images of these later headstones, Bob’s was overturned and partially buried.
So you have the oldest grave, and the newest graves at the Williams / Kilgore Cemetery. There are hundreds more scattered about, many under thick vegetation, running along that ridge at Kilgore.
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Enjoy! Lon