Odd Fellows Cemetery
Knox County, Tennessee
University of Tennessee | UT Non-Credit Course Office
Since 2019, I have been collaborating with other graduate students in the Anthropology Department and Katherine Ambroziak in the College of Architecture & Design at UTK to document and delineate the Odd Fellows Cemetery, a historically African American cemetery in East Knoxville.
The Odd Fellows cemetery is one of the oldest African American cemeteries in Knoxville, founded in 1880 by a local chapter of the Odd Fellows Fraternal Order. An estimated 6,000 individuals are believed to be interred in the cemetery since then, though fewer than 400 markers are present today. Efforts to revitalize and maintain the cemetery have been ongoing since 2009 through the Knoxville ReAnimation Coalition, the City of Knoxville, and the University of Tennessee, among others, and have involved countless volunteers and over 1,000 volunteer hours. Click Here to visit the main Odd Fellows Cemetery page and learn more about previous volunteer work and ongoing projects.
Important Figures Interred at Odd Fellows Cemetery
Calvin Johnson (1844-1925)
Calvin Johnson was a former bondsperson and Knoxville’s first Black millionaire, who owned numerous saloons in town as well as the historic Knoxville Racetrack in East Knoxville. The Calvin Johnson building, one of several Johnson built during his lifetime, is undergoing renovations. Click on the link below to learn more about Calvin Johnson’s background in the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
Image courtesy of WBIR Knoxville
William F. Yardley (1844-1924)
William Yardley served as Tennessee’s first African American gubernatorial candidate in 1876 and was founder of the local African American newspaper, The Examiner. Click on the link below to learn more about William Yardley’s background in the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
Image courtesy of the Tennessee State University Digital Library
Documenting the Odd Fellows Cemetery
As part of a continuing effort with the Department of Anthropology, I have coordinated volunteer efforts to document the location, content, and condition of the remaining grave markers at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. I designed an inventory system for collecting standardized data on the markers through the ArcGIS Collector application, which also provides a rough estimation of the location of each marker. The database asks users to collect information on the marker’s material, dimensions, decorative motifs, inscriptions, and relationship to other adjacent markers, among other attributes. The records from the Collector app are then tied to total station-identified positions for increased spatial accuracy.
Map showing the location of the GPR grids and grave markers collected in October 2020.
Starting in December 2019, I have been involved in organizing the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to identify the extent of unmarked graves at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. Given the massive disparity between the number of standing markers (n=337 as of 10/2020) and the estimated number of interments based on documentary and oral histories (~6,000), GPR is an essential tool for identifying burial anomalies that correspond to unmarked graves. The goal of the GPR survey is to highlight the locations of potential burials so that the final resting places of these individuals can be incorporated into commemorative efforts on the cemetery’s landscape.
Check out my blogpost for 30 Days of Tennessee Archaeology that highlights our October 2020 fieldwork here.
