First Presbyterian Church Cemetery

The First Presbyterian Church Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Established in the 1790s, the cemetery contains the graves of some of Knoxville's most prominent early residents, including territorial governor and Constitutional Convention delegate William Blount and Knoxville founder James White. In 1996, the cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places.While platting Knoxville with his son-in-law, Charles McClung, in 1791, White ordered at least one lot to be set aside for a church and cemetery. The cemetery spot may have been used as early as the 1780s for burials, and the cemetery contained several graves by 1799, but the earliest marker is Blount's, dated 1800. While the First Presbyterian congregation was active in the 1790s, the first church was not built on the site until 1816. The cemetery was used for burials for nearly sixty years, its most active period being during the Epidemic of 1838, in which hundreds of Knoxvillians died from an unidentified illness.HistoryIn 1790, after his fort was chosen as the capital for the newly created Southwest Territory, James White asked his son-in-law, surveyor Charles McClung, to lay out a new town, named "Knoxville" after Secretary of War Henry Knox. McClung initially divided the town into 64 half-acre (0.2-ha) lots, and added additional lots in 1795, with the cemetery lot being included in the later additions. While the cemetery was not officially platted until 1795, historians speculate that burials likely occurred before that date. When Moravian missionary Frederick de Schweinitz passed through Knoxville in 1799, he reported that the cemetery already had numerous burials.