The first thing to understand about this geographic area is that it has by far the highest concentration of cemeteries in the United States.  Please see the table and map by Walter Zelinsky for the specific numbers.

The next thing to know is that Southern middle Tennessee was well populated in the early 1800's (the period in which most of the triangular monuments were built).  The census of 1870 includes tables on population by county 1790-1870.  Here are the Tennessee highlights (counties included in this study are in bold):
 
 
 

	1790	1800	1810	1820	1830	1840	1850	1860	1870
Total TN	35,691	105,602	261,727	422,771	681,904	829,210	1,002,717	1,109,801	1,258,520
Davidson	3459	9965	15608	20154	28122	30509	38882	47055	62897
Knox	--------	12446	10171	13034	14498	15485	18807	22813	28990
Bedford	--------	-------	8242	16012	30396	20546	21511	21584	24333
Coffee	--------	-------	-------	-------	-------	8184	8351	9698	10237
Franklin	--------	-------	5730	16571	15620	12033	13768	13848	14970
Giles	--------	-------	4546	12558	18703	21494	25949	26166	32413
Grundy	--------	-------	--------	--------	--------	--------	2773	3093	3250
Lincoln	--------	-------	6104	14761	22075	21493	23492	22828	28050
Mashall	--------	-------	--------	--------	--------	14555	15616	14592	16207
Maury	--------	-------	10359	22089	27665	28186	29520	32498	36289
Rutherford	--------	-------	10265	19552	26134	24280	29122	27918	33289
Warren	--------	-------	5725	10348	15210	10803	10179	11147	12714

Finally, it is also important to know that the Tennessee population came primarily from North Carolina and Virginia.  Most of these settlers, if they were not of English descent, were of Scottish or Irish descent.  The next most represented nationality is German.*

*Weeks, Stephen B.  "Tennessee: A Discussion on the Sources of Its Population and the Lines of Immigration."  Tennessee Historical Magazine, December, 1916, no. 4.

To briefly touch on the landscape of southern middle Tennessee: the people who built these triangular burial monuments had plenty of stone to work with.  In Marshall County (which has the highest concentration of sites with triangular monuments), there is so much exposed limestone that fields were very difficult to clear for farming.  The people there built miles upon miles of rock fences and walls with the stones removed from their fields.
The stones used in the burial monuments is not quite so casual.  From an examination of Bethel Cemetery near Fayetteville in Licoln County, and the burial ground at New Hope Baptist Church in Fairfield, Bedford County, stones were extracted from an area near the site, shaped, and then fitted together in constructing the monument.

Now, go to the data on cemeteries across the nation.

Lonsdale MacFarland Green
May 1999
The University of the South

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