Community Archaeology at the Oddfellows Cemetery, Knoxville

Katherine Parker (University of Tennessee – Knoxville)

The Odd Fellow Cemetery, founded in the 1880s, is one of the first and largest historically African American burial grounds in Knoxville (Figure 1).  Reports have indicated that as many as 6,000 graves are located in the 6-acre cemetery, though past documentation efforts have recorded only 337 remaining markers. 

Figure 1. Odd Fellows Historical Marker (photo credit: Tom Bosse).

Key members of the twentieth century Knoxville Community are interred here, including William F. Yardley (1844-1924), who served as Tennessee’s first African American gubernatorial candidate in 1876 and was founder of the local African American newspaper, The Examiner (Figure 2, photo credit Tennessee State University Digital Library).  The cemetery is also  the resting place for Calvin “Cal” Johnson (1844-1925), 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 (Figure 3, photo credit WBIR).

Figure 2. William F. Yardley (1844-1924) (Tennessee State University Digital Library)

Figure 3. Calvin Johnson (1844-1925) (photo credit: WBIR)

Numerous revitalization efforts have been undertaken at the Odd Fellow Cemetery beginning in 2008, when the Knoxville ReAnimation Coalition (KRC), a local grassroots community organization, partnered with members of the UTK community to document and rehabilitate the cemetery landscape (The University of Tennessee-Knoxville 2018, Ambroziak 2019, Charnot 2019).  More than 2,000 volunteers have been involved in the efforts to commemorate the cemetery as a keystone linking community members past and present.

As part of Tennessee’s Archaeology Awareness Month, Jordan Schaefer and Katherine Parker partnered with UT’s Non-Credit Course Program to offer an educational opportunity for members of the Knoxville community to learn how to utilize ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to identify unmarked burials at the Odd Fellows Cemetery (Figures 4 and 5). Students have also been involved in collecting detailed information on the markers in the survey area to determine what patterns exist, if any, about those whose headstones still remain on the cemetery landscape (Figure 6). 

Figure 4. Students collecting data in September 2020.

Figure 5. Two students clean off a dilapidated headstone at the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

Figure 6. One student records a grave marker with the Collector for ArcGIS app on her phone.

 GPR has been highly successful at “seeing below” the ground surface to locate burial anomalies without having to disturb the soil (though ground truthing is key to verify which anomalies are burials and which anomalies are, well, anomalies).  Recent high-profile news stories have detailed how numerous historical African American cemeteries, which had been developed or destroyed, were recovered through the use of GPR—among these include the Zion Cemetery in Tampa, Florida (Guzzo 2019, O’Sullivan and Prendergast 2019, Morrow 2020).

Ten non-credit course students have been hard at work over the last three Saturday mornings to collect GPR data from the southeastern portion of the cemetery, an area that contains a relatively low density of standing grave markers (Figure 7).  As of Saturday, September 26^th, a total of four 10- by 20-meter GPR grids have been collected by the students (Figure 8).  The GPR grids were collected with normal (single-direction) oriented transects spaced 50 centimeters apart, with transects beginning on the south side of the grid and ending on the north side.  These methods ensured that the GPR transects would intersect with the burials, which are oriented east-west, at a perpendicular angle that minimizes visual distortions of the anomalies (for a more detailed explanation of GPR survey methods, see Leach 2019:36-37). 

Figure 7. Jordan Schaefer (left) supervises two students as they collect GPR data.

Figure 8. Map showing the Odd Fellows Cemetery and the Fall 2020 Survey Area.

It is important to note that due to recent rains, the GPR data was collected during wet ground conditions—a less than optimal circumstance for good GPR data, as water saturation can mask discrete anomalies.  Despite the conditions, however, the preliminary data processing indicates that extensive numbers of potential burials were identified in the four GPR grids (Figure 9).  Note the large, red clusters, particularly evident on the south side of the grid, which demonstrate the effect of the saturated ground on camouflaging data anomalies.  Five standing markers were recorded in the survey area, of which four appear to correspond to burial anomalies. 

Figure 9. Results of the Fall 2020 GPR Survey at the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

How do we decide which of these anomalies might be burials and which are noise?  The size and east-west orientation of the majority of anomalies appear consistent with burials, but these factors alone are limited.  If we look at Grid B more closely, however, we can see patterns in how the red anomalies are distributed (Figure 10).  The light blue vertical lines represent estimations of rows in the cemetery, into which several east-west oriented anomalies clearly fall—including the two anomalies that correspond to standing grave markers.  There are a handful of other anomalies that fall midway between these estimated rows, which are outlined in thicker blue lines; these anomalies may be interpreted as smaller clusters of burials that could have been placed before the cemetery was formally organized or later, if the locations of the original rows was lost due to missing markers.  Without engaging in machine stripping to determine whether soil stains are present at the locations of these anomalies, a practice that would be highly invasive and destructive, we can only speculate as to the number of actual unmarked graves in the survey area; regardless, both the size, number, and distribution of GPR anomalies from this small portion of the 6-acre burial ground appear to corroborate the narrative of 6,000 persons at rest in the Odd Fellows cemetery. 

Figure 10. GPR Grid B Detail Showing Potential Burial Rows.

Additional Information and Acknowledgements

For more information on this history of the Odd Fellows Cemetery and the East Knoxville Community, please contact Dr. Katherine Ambroziak (aambrozi@utk.edu)  and Rev. Renee Kesler (beckcenter@beckcenter.net), and visit the Beck Cultural Exchange Center (currently closed to the public due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, but extensive online programming available at https://www.beckcenter.net/).

Additional work collecting GPR data for the Odd Fellows Cemetery will continue beyond the non-credit course, which concludes this coming Saturday, October 3^rd.  For anyone interested in following-up on the results of this project, or potentially participating in the data collection, please contact Katherine Parker (kparke38@vols.utk.edu). 

Links:

William F. Yardley: https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/william-f-yardley/

Calvin Johnson: https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/off-to-the-races-cal-johnsons-track-from-slavery-to-speedways/51-5018959c-ee92-4db3-bbe6-effddf7dbf37

Erasure of African American Cemeteries:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/2020/08/historic-black-cemeteries-at-risk-can-they-be-preserved/

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/hidden-in-plain-sight-historic-cemetery-with-thousands-of-graves-falls-victim-to-decay-neglect/51-576460019

UT Non-Credit Courses: http://noncredit.utk.edu/

UT Odd Fellows Cemetery Initiative: https://archdesign.utk.edu/projects/odd-fellows-cemetery/

References:

Ambroziak, Katherine Bambrick (2019) Odd Fellows Cemetery Reclamation Initiative. The University of Tennessee Knoxville. https://mk6vs3l2vyghvrhz2f3klvt6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ambroziak_-Odd-Fellows-portfolio.pdf

Charnot, Moira (2019) Odd Fellows Cemetery reclaims, celebrates African-American history with “Community Pause.” University of Tennessee Daily Beacon, February 25, 2019, Online edition. https://www.utdailybeacon.com/city_news/odd-fellows-cemetery-reclaims-celebrates-african-american-history-with-community/article_117c3188-3949-11e9-bbcb-0f78e634f61f.html

Guzzo, Paul (2019) Nearly 400 people buried in Tampa are missing. What happened to Zion Cemetery? Tampa Bay Times, June 23, 2019, Online edition. https://www.tampabay.com/florida/2019/06/23/nearly-400-people-buried-in-tampa-are-missing-what-happened-to-zion-cemetery/

Leach, Peter (2019) RADAN 7 for Archaeology, Forensics, and Cemeteries. Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc., Nashua, NH.

Morrow, Emerald (2020) At least 115 more graves from Zion Cemetery found at Gonzmart property. Tampa Bay 10 WTSP, January 7, 2020, Online edition. https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/special-reports/erased/zion-cemetery-graves-found-gonzmart-property/67-2d90f69e-93ab-4035-9ea8-16859798bd59

O’Sullivan, Rebecca C., and Eric Prendergast (2019) Towards Zion: In Search of Tampa’s First African-American Cemetery. Paper presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Jackson, MS.

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville (2018) Odd Fellows Cemetery Initiative. Electronic Document, accessed 12/04/2018, https://engagement.utk.edu/blog/2018/odd-fellows-cemetery-initiative/.