Jul 13, 2020
Search for Veterans Buried in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
When Joe Emert agreed to a speaking engagement at Blount County’s Tennessee Veterans Business Association, he probably didn’t realize the amount of change it would create in the community. After finishing his lecture on Sam Houston’s youth in Maryville, Mary Childress, president of the Veteran Heritage Site Foundation, inquired if a list of all veterans buried in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park existed. Emert’s search came up empty, which ultimately lead to a project that has currently identified 163 veterans buried in the park, spanning both Tennessee and North Carolina sides.
Putting Together the Team
After initial discussions, GSMNP Spokeswoman Dana Soehn connected Emert to Frank March, co-author of A Field Guide to Cemeteries of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. March then introduced him to the key folks who would lead the effort in the identification. Sheila Evans of the Daughter of the American Revolution in Cocke County, Tennessee, and Don Casada with Friends of Bryson City Cemetary in Swaine County, North Carolina, pulled their resources together to get this project started.
Finding Our Veterans
Before becoming a national park, many small communities lived and died throughout the property. Cemeteries on the property are the resting place for veterans spanning the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Vietnam War. Many grave markers are nothing more than fieldstone in the older cemeteries, leaving behind no engravings or ways to identify the dead. Even with careful research and the assistance of local sources and organizations, the team realizes they’ve missed veterans.
Of the one hundred sixty-three veterans buried in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the team has identified one hundred and three buried in Tennessee: twenty-six in Blount County; thirty-eight in Sevier County; and thirty-nine in Cocke County. There are sixty known veterans buried in North Carolina: forty-nine in Swain County and eleven in Haywood County.
Database Development
The team is currently working to develop a publicly available interactive database of all the veterans buried in the national park. They hope to include biographical data, cemeteries locations, and the wars and unit records where they served. Listed separately will be cenotaphs (headstones in a location with no buried body) and cremated veterans whose ashes have been registered and scattered in the park. They will also include bodies that were initially buried in the park and later moved to a new location before the Fontana Lake flooding.
How You Can Help
“Our goal is to honor and protect the valor of those who served and not let their memory be erased because of where they are buried,” Emert said in a release. “We are putting this initial list out for review by the public to ensure we are not missing any veteran who is buried in the national park.”
The list can be viewed on the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center website and on the Friends of the Bryson City Cemetery website. The group asks anyone with information on a veteran buried or whose remains are scattered in the GSMNP to contact Don Casada at [email protected].
If you are interested in learning more about Smoky Mountains history, check out these blog posts: