1832- Brown Cemetery

There are a number of cemeteries called Brown Cemetery in the Knoxville area. This one is located at 2022 Powell Drive in the Powell community. The website FindAGrave.com gives these directions: "Cemetery notes and/or description: From Clinton Hwy (HWY 25) turn on to Powell Drive (HWY 131). Go 1.6m, cemetery will be on the right up a slight hill. As of 8/29/2015, the cemetery is being cleaned up and will be given a new fence." I visited this cemetery in December 2015, and it does, indeed, have a new fence, as well as a gate, some paver stones at the entrance, and a large, stone slab with information about the cemetery carved into it (see below). It all looks very nice.

FindAGrave.com has a page for this cemetery. According to that site, there are 22 interments, and the oldest one is for Margaret "Peggy" Ogg Gentry, who was born in 1780 and died on July 10, 1832. I found the headstone for Ms. Gentry, although it simply says "M. GENTRY." There are also several unmarked, eroded fieldstones marking burials that are possibly older than the one for Ms. Gentry. There is even one that is being enveloped by the tree growing next to it. It may eventually be completely covered up.

The stone slab at the entrance reads:

"Thomas Brown purchased a 100 acre farm on the Tennessee frontier on Nov. 29, 1798 for his son, Maxwell Brown. Maxwell Brown married Isbella Gaston in 1818 and they cleared and farmed the ground until his passing in 1863. Isbella and Maxwell founded the Brown Academy in 1825, one of the early schools in Eastern Tennessee. The school was located just south of this cemetery and was burned to the ground by Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War. Maxwell Brown was one of the founders of the Beaver Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church and his son Reverend John Maxwell brown served as its pastor for many years.

This cemetery was rededicated in 2015 by Arvin Brown and Hank Brown."