I have known about these triangular monuments since the fall of 1996, and have been actively studying them since the fall of 1998. Officially, this project is currently an independent study in the department of religion at the University of the South, but it could as easily be sponsored by the history or anthropology departments. I hope, through this project, to determine why these monuments occur in this area, who built them, and what form these monuments imitate.

For now, I think the best introduction is to talk a little bit about how the whole project began and the methods used in its undertaking.

• The absolute first time I saw one of these monuments, I was taking a back-back-road between college and home, which are about 85 miles apart in southern middle Tennessee. I came around a corner and on the left saw the cemetery pictured above. I thought to myself, "Hmm. That's not typical." I took that road again on my way back to school, this time slowing down as I passed. I mentioned something to my religion professor, who I knew was interested in rural life and culture. Smith had not encountered this type of monument in other rural cemeteries he had studied.  At this point, I think we both filed the idea in the back of our minds. I continued taking different back-roads between home and school, exploring the area, but didn't notice other triangular markers at first. I went back to the above site right after Easter to take some photos of it in springtime, but did no other documentation.

 
• About a year and a half later, while taking a different route between home and school, I passed a cemetery with a single triangular monument. I took some photos, and showed them to the same religion professor at school. At this point, we just had a feeling that there would be more of these sites. I was taking his class on "rural religion" at the time, which contained a fieldwork section. I started thinking about actively searching for cemeteries with this kind of marker. Smith gave me a set of Tennessee highway department maps (which have most churches and cemeteries on them); I started driving around, seeking out sites with the triangular monuments.

 
• The first thing I did was take a couple of hilighters to the maps, marking cemeteries in bright yellow and churches in orange. Churches with cemeteries got a yellow mark. The colors made navigation easier and faster while driving. Then I just got in the car. Sometimes I took a friend, other times I just went by myself in the afternoons after class. I drove without method, just going along rural roads where there were supposed to be cemeteries.

 
• This is when I learned one of the most important things about my project: it is hard to look for old cemeteries when the land is still leafy and weedy. I didn't find half the sites I was looking for. If I didn't find it, the site got a penciled question mark on my map (to show I had been that way and not seen it). If I found the cemetery and it did not have triangular graves, I pencilled an "x" on the map. If the site did have the markers I was looking for, it got a big green "x" on the map, so I would later be able to easily see the geographic distribution. At this point, when I found a site that fit my developing project, I took a few pictures and wrote down some very basic notes, then moved on.

 
• After I found 20 or so sites, I started wondering if somebody else might have noticed their frequency before I had. Though still driving around looking, I also started looking in books and journals for articles on cemeteries. I also looked on internet sites on local history and genealogy. While much research has been done on cemeteries in general (especially in New England), and on local Tennessee history, I found no references to the kinds of grave markers I was documenting. The best resource I found was the Goodspeed brothers' histories of Tennessee counties printed in 1886. (The Goodspeeds recorded everything from mills to schools to stores to churches, not just in the towns, but also in the littler communities. They also wrote short biographies of select people of the area.) This is where I learned that several of the people who used the triangular burial monuments were of Scotch-Irish descent.

 
• After about 30 sites, I started realizing that the construction types of the monuments varied, and that the variations roughly corresponded to the region they were in. The three basic variations are shown below, in order of west to east.

• After finding about 40 sites, I realized that it was no longer important to find every site that could possibly exist. The area I have been working in is southeast of Nashville, between Lewisburg and McMinnville and along the Tennessee/Alabama state line. However, I know that there are sites around Nashville; we have seen a few in north Alabama, and I would not be surprised to find them in Kentucky, as well. We have found these monuments in areas showing large quantities of exposed and accesible limestone.  Parts of northern Alabama (near the tip of the Cumberland Plateau) and parts of Kentucky also have much limestone.  Anywhere in these areas a stone wall exists, a triangular burial monument is likely to be found.

• The next step has been documenting the sites I have already noted. This includes a list of surnames and burial dates, site maps, and lots of photos. Most of the photos have been taken with a digital camera, and are available at this site.

 
• At the same time, since I have not yet found any scholarly writing about these cemeteries, I intend to look at some primary documents: court records, census statistics, deeds, church records, and funeral home archives. Because the study extends across several counties (and potentially across several states), this part of the project has not yet begun. Still another source of information is local and county historians, as well as the state archives.  For help in locating the cemeteries, we have been using Tennessee Department of Transportation maps, as well as topographic maps by the United States Geological Survey.

Lonsdale MacFarland Green
May 1999
The University of the South

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