April 30, 1953

This Article Appeared In The Times

But Was Not Actually In Cal’s Column

Transcribed by Janette West Grimes

Decoration Sunday

____

On the coming Sunday after the afternoon, the annual decoration and memorial service for the Will Gregory Cemetery, located near Sycamore Valley Baptist church, and about 11 miles southeast of Lafayette on Peyton's Creek, will take place. Elder Arnett Gregory is to be the speaker for the occasion. All who have loved ones buried there are requested to attend and bring some flowers so that every grave may be properly decorated.

In this cemetery are buried scores of the former citizens of upper Peyton's Creek and elsewhere. Among those who lie in the old graveyard are Will Gregory, son of Smith Gregory, son of Squire Bill Gregory, who was a soldier of the American Revolution and the first of the family to leave Chatham County, North Carolina and settle in Tennessee. This occured even before the State of Tennessee was formed and took place in the autumn of 1791. In this cemetery sleep the mortal remains of Neal McDuffee and his wife, Delanie Gregory McDuffee, who were the ancestors of every McDuffee in this part of Tennessee.

The bones of Archibald Jenkins also are interred in this cemetery. He was a soldier of the Union Army during the Civil War and returned home sick and unable to scarcely walk. He was captured by Buck Smith, the guerrilla, and carried on foot down the creek, to Pleasant Shade, thence to the present Graveltown, thence up the "Bishop Hollow" and out on the ridge between the waters of Peyton's and Defeated Creeks and placed on a stump by Smith and his gang. After being forced to imitate the crowing of a rooster from the stump, he was shot down in cold blood and left for the buzzards to pick his flesh from his bones. Days after he had disappeared from his home, which is on the same farm now owned by Carse Smith and located less than a quarter of a mile below Sycamore Valley church, one of the citizens of the Defeated Creek side of the hill or ridge, saw buzzards about the hilltop. Investigation revealed the bones of a dead man. His family was notified and identified the remains by the shoes Archibald Jenkins had worn when he was taken from his home and family by the guerrillas. The bones were brought to the old cemetery and laid to rest. Archibald Jenkins married a daughter of Neal and Delanie Gregory McDuffee. Lester Jenkins of the Russell Hill section, is a grandson of Archibald Jenkins.

Many other interesting stories of an earlier day cluster about this quiet burial ground which lies between the big hills that bound Peyton's Creek on the east and on the west. At Sycamore Valley Baptist church, above mentioned, the Gregory family is to have a reunion on the third Sunday in the coming August, when thousands of Gregorys and related families are expected to gather. We plan to get out something of a program for the reunion in time for the occasion which is now about three months away.