1793- Mars Hill Cemetery

Mars Hill is one of the oldest cemeteries in Knoxville. It is located at 438 Broome Road in Knoxville.

The old website of the TNGenWeb project, Knox County, Tennessee, Genealogy and History, has a description of Mars Hill Cemetery. This description includes the origin and history of the cemetery, as well as a list of those interred there.

The Mars Hill Cemetery was likely begun as a burial place for those killed in the Massacre at Cavett's Station on September 25, 1793. There is a book, written by Charles H. Faulkner, called "Massacre at Cavett's Station: Frontier Tennessee during the Cherokee Wars." It contains some good information about this disastrous event and about the cemetery. There is a preview of this book on Google Books- see page 81 and 82 for a good overview.

On September 11, 2013, Mr. Faulkner delivered a lecture about the Cavett's Station Massacre at the East Tennessee History Center in downtown Knoxville. Prior to his appearance, the East Tennessee Historical Society put a flyer on its website to promote the event. It is still there, and it contains a brief but comprehensive description of the massacre:

"In the late 1700s, as white settlers spilled across the Appalachian Mountains, claiming Cherokee and Creek lands for their own, tensions between Native Americans and pioneers reached a boiling point. Land disputes stemming from the 1791 Treaty of Holston went unresolved, and Knoxville settlers attacked a Cherokee negotiating party led by Chief Hanging Maw resulting in the wounding of the chief and his wife and the death of several Indians. In retaliation, on September 25, 1793, nearly one thousand Cherokee and Creek warriors descended undetected on Knoxville to destroy this frontier town. However, feeling they had been discovered, the Indians focused their rage on Cavett’s Station, a fortified farmstead of Alexander Cavett and his family located in what is now west Knox County. Violating a truce, the war party murdered thirteen men, women, and children, ensuring the story’s status in Tennessee lore."

There is a large, stone monument at the center of Mars Hill Cemetery:

IN GRATEFUL MEMORY

TO THE DEFENDERS OF

CAVETT BLOCKHOUSE

Upon this spot stood the house of Alexander Cavett, who was murdered together with two men and the Cavett family of twelve, September 25th 1793, after heroic resistance against a combined Creek and Cherokee force numbering one thousand warriors, thereby ensuring failure of the intended attack upon the town of Knoxville.

ERECTED BY

TENNESSEE SOCIETY

SONS OF THE REVOLUTION

SEPTEMBER 25, 1921

There is also a historical marker a short distance south of the cemetery, at the southeast corner of Kingston Pike and Gallaher View Road:

CAVETT'S STATION

About 1/2 mile north was this early fortified settlement. Here, on September 25, 1793, Alexander Cavett and 12 other settlers were massacred by a Cherokee war party under Doublehead, one of the more savage chiefs of the tribe.