MY RIVERSIDE CEMETERY TOMBSTONE
INSCRIPTIONS SCRAPBOOK PART V
by Jonathan K. T. Smith
1994

(Page 1)

KNOWN AND MOST LIKELY BURIALS OF PERSONS BURIED IN RIVERSIDE CEMETERY MENTIONED IN THE DIARIES OF ROBERT HENRY CARTMELL

ROBERT HENRY CARTMELL was a native of Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee, having been born there in 1828. He spent his entire life in the Jackson community, living as an adult resident on a farm one mile east of court square on what is now East Chester Street. He was a life-long farmer. He began to keep his diaries as a young man and continued to do so for many years with a possible interruption between May 1867-January 1879 until a few days before his death in 1915. The Cartmells were highly respected people and knew and interacted with many of the local citizenry over a long period of years.

Robert Cartmell's diaries (some thirty-three of which are known to have survived) reflect his farming, social, religious and political interests and concerns. The tone of his diary entries is actually "chatty," making for interesting reading. Especially as he grew older Cartmell noted the deaths of persons known or of interest to him in Madison County. He melded information from newspaper obituaries with his personal comments about decedents. In quoting Cartmell I have tried to adhere to his punctuation but in some cases I have for the sake of readability combined some of his words together; for instance: to day=today; Grand Father= grandfather. He began his sentences with lowercase letters as often as not. He was careful in maintaining sequential chronology. In this scrapbook I have quoted Cartmell and following the quotations have given tombstone dates. Some of the death dates don't "agree." It must be remembered that tombstones are often placed at graves years after persons have died, hence the chance for dates to be incorrectly recalled and inscribed on tombstones. Cartmell noted deaths and burials when they occurred so that his information that way may be more reliable in most instances than tombstone dates.

These Cartmell diaries were given to the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville by Robert H. Cartmell's great-grandson, Robert Cartmell Townes (1907-1971) of Jackson in 1968. It is through the courtesy of this agency and with the special permission of Townes' widow and heir, Camille A. Townes (by letter, July 9, 1994) that I have abstracted the data presented in this booklet. In doing the research from microfilm copies of the diaries I have benefited from the brief listing of events, including deaths and burials, compiled by the late Eleanora Tucker Vandenbrook (the copy available in the Tennessee Room of the Jackson-Madison County Library), although I have read and confirmed all the data quoted, including much that Mrs. Vandenbrook did not list. Hers is a very useful "index." For tombstone information I have done fieldwork in Riverside Cemetery and found useful the listing of tombstone inscriptions of this cemetery compiled for the W.P.A. by Ingram James in the spring of 1937 (which compilation is also in the Tennessee Room noted above). I will have overlooked some pertinent deaths and burials mentioned in the diaries but I have chosen not to quote this type information if it could not be ascertained certainly that individuals mentioned by Cartmell were in fact buried in Riverside Cemetery. Some of the persons he mentioned were buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Jackson and in rural "graveyards."

 

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