TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTIONS FROM BLACK CEMETERIES
IN CARROLL COUNTY, TENNESSEE
Compiled by Jonathan K. T. Smith
Copyright, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 2000

(Page 25)

ENON CEMETERY

This cemetery is located behind (west) of Enon Baptist Church situated on the west side of Highway 79 about 7.6 miles north of this road's juncture with Highway 105 in Trezevant, Tennessee. In antebellum times black folk were listed among the members of this old church/congregation and in 1869 the black folk withdrew and formed their own Enon Baptist Church in nearby McKenzie, Tennessee; the latter had no cemetery. From time to time blacks were buried on the far west side of the white cemetery at Enon Baptist Church on the highway; there are no evidences now of these burials but the Reverend Dennis Beal, this congregation's pastor and long-time resident of the area conveyed to the writer that he had understood there were such burials here long ago.

His death certificate indicates that FOUNTAIN GILBERT who was cited as aged about 98 years when he died on February 15, 1917, is buried here. Perhaps he had worshiped here when young or he wanted to be buried among kindred here. His birthdate given in the 1900 census is March 1829; his wife, Clara, as born October 1837; married forty years, she had given birth to twenty-five children, five of whom were still living. (U.S. Census, 1900, Carroll County, Tennessee, Enumeration District 124, Sheet 10) He may have been the black male, aged 30, in the bondfolk holding of Benjamin P. Gilbert (1824-1897) of this area, some of whose black people worshiped at Enon Baptist Church in antebellum times and for sometime later.

 

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