1790- Eusebia Presbyterian Church Cemetery

The cemetery at Eusebia Presbyterian Church in Blount County was established at least as far back as 1790, the date of the oldest known burial.

Location: 1701 Burnett Station Road, Seymour, TN 37865

Eusebia Presbyterian Church was established in 1786, but the current church building only dates back to 1936.

Excerpt from an article entitled “Pioneer Presbyterian Congregations” by James H. Smylie and Robert E. Blade. Published in American Presbyterians, Vol. 67, No. ½, Spring/Summer 1989, page 38. Published by the Presbyterian Historical Society.

“This church began on an old Cherokee trail in the lost state of Franklin. Franklin covered east Tennessee 1784 to 1788, and then the land reverted to North Carolina. The Pennsylvanian Robert McTeer had built a fort nearby and people came from Cumberland County, PA, to Augusta County, VA, to Knox County, NC. Joseph Bogle, his wife Jean Mclntyre and their six children took that route. Joseph died in 1790 and his grave is the oldest in Eusebia Cemetery. Archibald Scott of Hanover Presbytery took the same route from his pastorate in Augusta County, VA. Scott preached in 1786 under a large beech tree near the community spring. The next day he preached to the people of the New Providence Church.

Eusebia people built a log church first, and in 1810 a wood frame building with a raised pulpit. Rachel McCall, a 'saintly mother in Israel' was born in 1829 and was still living almost a hundred years later. She remembered the old church building when they held a special service for her in 1926. Eusebia's first pastor, Gideon Blackburn, served here from 1794 to 1810. The fourth building was finished in 1936. That year Edwin H. Hall retired after serving as pastor for 27 years. Eusebia Church had an addition put on the building in 1986. It is still a small country church.”

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The book "Blount County," by Linda Braden Albert and B. Kenneth Cornett, says "the highest concentration of Revolutionary War veterans in Tennessee, at least 15 known, is buried here" (Albert & Cornett, p. 10). The book also has a picture of one of the previous Eusebia Presbyterian Church buildings, saying that it was built in the early 1800s. It is no longer in existence.

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I will be adding some better pictures, including close-up shots of some of the oldest grave markers, but in the meantime, here is a screen shot that I saved from Google Maps.

Local writer (and former neighbor of mine!) Fred Brown included a section about Eusebia Presbyterian Church in his book "Marking Time: East Tennessee Historical Markers and the Stories Behind Them." Parts of this book are available to view on Google Books. The Eusebia part starts on page 19; here's an excerpt:

"In the late summer heat of 1786, Archibald Scott, a Virginian, traveled into the wilderness, a righteous man on a righteous mission. He was accompanying settlers, ministering whatever comfort a man of the cloth could afford on a frontier that could at times extract harsh realities, especially along the Great War Path trail used by friend, foe, and felon coming to or from the back country.

As the small pioneer group wound its way into what is now Blount County, they stopped to worship near a large beech tree, taking refuge under its shielding branches. Here Scott, a Presbyterian minister, began to preach. He called the place “Eusebia.” It is a Greek word, and the old minister told his flock of settlers that this meant “reverence toward God.”

Not far from the War Path, he located a camping ground in the clearing underneath the wide-spreading beech. Close by was a spring. The farmers and settlers who had been there for a year or so before the arrival of Scott were pleased to see the religious man many had known in Virginia.

One of his first duties was to give proper burial to women who had died. The men had fashioned coffins of wagon boards.

Some five or six years later, another Presbyterian minister arrived in Eusebia. Gideon Blackburn, tall, lanky, unafraid, marched in with a company of militia from Jefferson County. Blackburn meant to stay until he not only established a Presbyterian Church but also put the flock in religious shape. He was a man who meant business.

There were roughly forty families in the Eusebia community at the time. They paid Blackburn $130 a year to serve as their preacher. By 1794 he was the minister of the Eusebia community and the Presbyterian Church.

The first log church was built, and Blackburn set up prayer business. The Bogle family, from a distinguished line in Ireland, and the McTeers, whose roots reached into Pennsylvania and the early American colonies, were just a few of the Scots-Irish families Blackburn found sitting in his congregation.

There were others, such as the Houstons, McClungs, McAnallys, Creswells, McCroskeys, Malcoms, McCallies, and McMurry families.

Robert McTeer’s fort was just down the road, not too far away, which was reassuring, but Blackburn was also a large presence on the frontier. He preached his sermons with a loaded musket at his side and a shot pouch over his shoulder.

Being a pioneer minister, Blackburn spent hours writing his sermons. He was not about to let a single word go unturned, and when he began preaching, you might as well sit a spell, for Gideon Blackburn was a preaching man with fire in his bones. His sermons routinely lasted two-plus hours.

Once, he kept fifteen hundred people in awe in a driving rainstorm. That sermon went for almost three hours in the church graveyard. On another occasion, Blackburn heated up the pulpit in a three-and-a-half-hour sermon. By 1810, Blackburn had moved on. He wandered deeper into Indian country. He went, as he said, to become a missionary to the Indians.

Eusebia Presbyterian Church in Blount County, established by Scots-Irish, was one of the earliest settlements in East Tennessee. Its graveyard’s oldest stone is that of Joseph Bogle, who died on September 16, 1790.

The graveyard is the site of Scott’s old church campground, and the beautiful brick church that sits there today, started in 1930 and completed in 1936, is a direct descendant of the first church established by pioneer ministers Scott and Blackburn.

As you look out from the church cemetery- where so many old gravestones are eroded, roughened by time and gray-green with weathering- you gaze across rolling farm country into the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Here in this magnificent setting, it is easy to understand why a mighty man of the cloth could get himself wound up on a late summer day, and preach from early dew to evening dusk" (Brown, p. 19-21).

(A side note- Joseph Bogle, who has the Eusebia graveyard's oldest stone, is my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great uncle! From the research I have done, I learned that three brothers- Joseph, William and Malcolm Bogle- came to York County, Pennsylvania around 1750. They most likely came from County Down, Northern Ireland. Joseph Bogle lived in Pennsylvania for a few years, and then moved to Virginia, before ending up here in the Eusebia area of what is now Blount County. Joseph Bogle's brother, William Bogle, was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. William's children left Pennsylvania and came to Tennessee, too, around 1798, but they settled in Middle Tennessee instead. They first spent a short time in Sumner County, then in a part of Wilson County that in 1836 became part of Cannon County.)