Shipley-Johnson Cemetery
2014
Located in a field across from 207 Paul Saylor Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee
GPS is: +36° 22.060, -82° 29.610
Cemetery is on the Shipley farm, 6 mi. North of Jonesboro in the 4th district. Established by Tobe Shipley. Tobe Shipley was Enoch Tolbert Shipley, born 10 May 1852, died 1 November 1930, son of James R. and Elizabeth Shipley.
Ken Saylor lives directly in front of, and leases this farmland parcel, near 207 Paul Saylor Road. This burial ground has recently been incorporated into a newly surveyed and sold parcel. The deed is recorded at Roll 439/Image 178 and is known as parcel 027-078.00 There is no tax parcel for the graveyard shown yet. The deed indicates a dimension of roughly 60 feet by 70 feet, which was found during the cemetery survey.
Tobe had a daughter, Amanda, who married Robert E. Johnson. Robert’s father, Hiram, is buried here and marked by a military marker. Ken remembers Bob Johnson, whose home place, now gone, was just a few hundred feet from the burial ground. The Johnsons, both Hiram and Robert, owned the subject parcel. Several deeds partitioned the Shipley farmstead over the years, however, this trail is quite clear.
Hiram Johnson
Hiram Johnson has the only named marker. He was born in Virginia about 1840 and died 18 April 1911 in Washington County, Tennessee. He is listed on the 1890 Special Census Schedule for Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, and Widows. Johnson enlisted 3 December 1864 and was discharged 5 August 1865.
Five distinct rows were found, with at least one or two fieldstones in each, some as many as 5. Cattle have trampled much of the area, so an exact count of depressions cannot be made, but given spacing and size, this burial ground appears to support about 20 to 30 graves.
This cemetery was not found in the 1970 surveys. See Bennett, Charles M., and Watauga Association of Genealogists . Washington County Tennessee Tombstone Inscriptions. 1st ed. : Loraine Bennett Rae, 1979, Volume III, page 324; with permission from Loraine B. Rae.
Surveyed, researched and donated to the Washington County TNGen Web December 2014 by Gordon M.
Edwards a member of the Cemetery Survey Team of Northeast Tennessee.
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