Oak Hill Cemetery is located in the heart
of Johnson City and is as old as the city itself. In 1870 Robert Love
and Samuel Miller made a bond to seven trustees that each would give one-half
acre of land to establish a cemetery located at what then was the edge
of the town. Each man reserved a lot for his family with the only condition
being that the trustees build a plank fence around the cemetery to be
called "Oak Hill Cemetery." Among persons of historical note
buried at Oak Hill are Henry Johnson, former Congressman Sam R. Sells,
ETWNC Railroad Vice-President George W. Hardin, and Attorney LeRoy Reeves, designer of the Tennessee State Flag. Henry
Johnson and his wife were originally buried in the Hoss family graveyard located near the 1400 block of Fairview Avenue and were moved to Oak Hill in 1910. Read about the early history of Oak Hill Cemetery.
The Taylor Brothers Robert L. (Bob) and Alfred (Alf))
both served as Governors of Tennessee and are buried in Monte
Vista Cemetery off Oakland Avenue in Johnson City. Robert
L. Taylor was originally buried at the Old
Gray Cemetery in Knoxville in 1912 but was moved to Johnson City to
be united with the final resting place of his brother in 1938. B. Carroll Reece (who served longer in the House of Representatives than any Congressman in Tennessee history) and Samuel Cole Williams, the famed historian
and Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court are also buried at Monte Vista. Samuel Mayes Arnell, a noted Congressman from Middle Tennessee, moved to Johnson City during the late 1880s railroad boom years and was buried here in 1903.
The Mountain Home National Cemetery located
adjacent to the Quillen Veterans Affairs Center and Quillen College of
Medicine off Lamont Street is one of the larger national cemeteries within
the State of Tennessee with over 12,000 gravesites. The cemetery is the resting
place of the most powerful Congressman in Tennessee history, Walter P. Brownlow. It is part of the original National
Soldiers Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers established in 1903.
The annual decorations on Memorial Day in which each grave is commemorated
with an American Flag is an astounding inspirational sight.
Oak Hill Cemetery |
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Monte Vista Cemetery |
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The Tennessee State Flag |
By BETH RUCKER, Associated Press April 11, 2005 NASHVILLE - While other Southern state flags have struggled with poor design or lingering Confederate imagery, Tennessee's red banner with a wheel of three stars has remained popular since it was adopted 100 years ago. The state's most recognizable symbol, is a common sight across the state and has inspired logos of First Tennessee Bank and the Tennessee Titans. "If you drive across Tennessee, you see lots of homes flying the flag - maybe because it looks better than other state flags," said Devereaux Cannon, vice president of the North American Vexillological Association and a Sumner County resident. The design was adopted officially with a bill approved by the General Assembly on April 17, 1905, after two other designs failed to find their way into general use in the 1800s. Johnson City attorney and Tennessee National Guard Capt. LeRoy Reeves developed the flag as it appears today probably because the other two designs did not look very effective on a flagpole, said Candace Adelson, senior curator of textiles and fashion at the Tennessee State Museum. Reeves described his design, saying it would include three stars to represent the three grand divisions of the state. "They are bound together by the endless circle of the blue field, the symbol being three bound together in one - an indissoluble trinity," he said in his early 20th- century description. The blue stripe at the fly end of the flag "relieves the sameness of the crimson field and prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp." A survey conducted by the vexillological association rated the Tennessee flag in the top 10 of state flags. Peter Orenski, a flagmaker in Connecticut, said the Tennessee flag is "a flagmaker's dream" with basic colors and a simple design. "A flag has to be simple without being simplistic," he said. "Here is a flag, in terms of a flagmaker, that is simple without being simplistic. It says Tennessee to anyone who knows anything about it." Ted Kaye, an officer in the vexillological association and author of the booklet "Good Flag, Bad Flag," said the Tennessee banner stands out from half of the other U.S. state flags that have come to be known as "s.o.b. flags." "They're what we call a 'seal on a bedsheet,' " he said. "They're just a state seal plopped on a blue field."
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Original Tennessee Flag Designed by LeRoy Reeves |
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Colonel LeRoy Reeves
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Johnson City Comet: February 5, 1903 |
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Mountain
Home National Cemetery |
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Floral
Arrangement
Quillen College of Medicine |
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View from Mountain Home |
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Lake
Near South Entrance |
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National
Cemetery View |
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LINKS
Memorial
Day |
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Memorial
Day Flag |
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Historic
Clock and Bell Tower |
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Cemetery
View |
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Gazebo
- Memorial Day |
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Tipton-Haynes Cemetery |
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Cemetery Marker |
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Grave of John Tipton
1730 - 1813
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Mary Taylor Haynes Grave |
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Ancient Burial Ground |
Graves Not in
Johnson City
Gen. John T. Wilder
Forest Hills Cemetery
Chattanooga
Monument and Grave |
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