TENT GRAVES: SCATTERED THROUGHOUT GRAVEYARDS

Your stomach might overturn when you look at them and realize what they are.  Surprisingly, there are several located in DeKalb County.  They are found mostly in the older graveyards; so take an Alka-Seltzer and look around for the time-honored graves.  They’re easily recognizable and located (see photos).  The citizens majority is blatantly ignorant about the long-standing smothered gravesites.  It’s like a new unearthing or a new penicillin (antibiotic) discovery by Dr. Alexander Fleming in 1928.

The simple names are a “Tent Grave” or a “Cone Grave.”  Each name is referring to the – same subject-different names.  They’re an odd sight peppered throughout Tennessee graveyards.  In English word simplicity, years ago, persons were buried in wooden caskets, unlike today when caskets are made of iron and steel, etc.  Over time, the antique wooden caskets would rot, causing the ground dirt to fall down to where the casket once sat; thus, causing a sinking grave.  To protect the grave from robbers and animals, the public relatives or friends would purchase plywood or stone and cover the graves.  These tent graves can be found all over Tennessee in the Cumberland Plateau area.  DeKalb County is included. Tent Graves are most often found in cemeteries along the Cumberland River in Tennessee, where the practice may have originated.  There are an estimated 3,000 tent graves in the Highland Rim and the Cumberland Plateau regions in Tennessee, with hundreds in the north near Kentucky and hundreds more spread around northern Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia.

“The graves are most iconic for the slabs of stone that meet at a point above the burial plot.  The story goes that aging graves, back in the early 1800s, would settle and fall apart.  Once the wood coffins broke up in the earth, the ground would sink around the sudden underground space,” added the publication Only in Your State. “By using a tent-like gravestone above the burial plot, the stone would protect the sunken ground and keep animals and severe weather away.  There are old ghost stories of children wandering the graveyards on a dare and stumbling across the bones of an ancestor long ago laid to rest.  The Cone/Tent Graves were also a deterrent to grave robbers for their fortified, stony stance.”

There are two purposes to the Cone Graves/Tent Graves – to deter grave robbers and to protect sunken graves from being exposed to the surface.  In addition to stone, they can be triangular end stones or supporting iron rods.  The slabs of rock resemble a camping tent. 

There is not a complete list of Tent Graves anywhere in Tennessee, but after much research, two graves have been locally identified:  one on the Four Season’s land where Center Hill Nursery formerly was located.  The second one is in the Belk Cemetery, both located in DeKalb County, Tennessee.  Cone Graves are more prominent in the older cemeteries having sunken gravesites.  You can find Comb Graves in several gravesites across Tennessee and Arkansas. 

Now, friends, you know the stories.  You can now wander around the old graves, wondering about the lives led long ago, long before you arrived on the obscure scene.  Next question for study:  What happened to the bones and the bodies?  Did they sink too?

(Kraft, Meghan, 2 December, 2019, THE FASCINATING STORY BEHIND THE CUMBERLAND PLATEAU TENT GRAVES IN TENNESSEE.  Onlyinyourstate. Retrieved 20 August, 2022)

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