From Family Findings
Vol. X, No. 2, April 1978, p. 75
Copyright, Mid-West Tennessee Genealogical Society, 1978
Appears on this web site by permission

THE LONE OAK TREE

By Capt. T. M. Gates

Taken from Charles McMillin scrapbook. Written about 1912.

            On the left hand as you enter Hollywood Cemetery, there once stood alone a white oak tree. This field, as it was called in 1886, had a dreary lonely look. The hilltop was a bleak, barren knoll, and looked as lonely as the lone oak tree looked at its base.

            In 1887 this plot of grand was laid out in burial plots. There once lived in Jackson a lawyer by the name of T. F. Lewis, who with his family moved to Jackson about the year 1885. He was not only a brilliant lawyer, but a man possessed with a high sense of honor. He erected a small cottage home a mile or more from Jackson, on the Poplar Corner road, and soon after it was finished he died, A lot was bought in the new cemetery, and his body was the first laid to rest in Hollywood cemetery. A few months later, one of Jackson's worthy citizens died, Mr. B. F. Howard, father of Gen. B. J. Howard, Charles and Frank. His body was the second laid to rest in Hollywood cemetery.

            Twenty-four years have passed since these two bodies were buried in Hollywood cemetery. Now the monuments and markers at the graves outnumber the stars directly above this sacred spot. The Reaper Death has helped to change this bleak and unsightly knoll into a beautiful city of the dead. The lone oak has gone, and the resting home of hundreds of our friends and kin have made this once bleak looking field a dear spot to every heart in Jackson.