Sacred Ground: Pennington-Watson Cemetery
Of the dozens of cemeteries found within the boundaries of the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, one of the most mysterious is the Pennington-Watson Cemetery located between Parch Corn Creek and No Business Creek.
This small cemetery, located near the end of the ridge that separates Big Branch from Harvey Branch, is not one of the privately-owned cemeteries within the national park; it’s now owned by the federal government. It is no longer maintained, though it is enclosed by a fence with signage and a fairly well-worn trail leading to it.
Big Branch is located south of No Business Creek. Harvey Branch is located north of Parch Corn Creek. Pennington-Watson Cemetery is accessible from Terry Cemetery Road. A four-wheel-drive dirt road turns down the ridge just before Terry Cemetery, although the final eight-tenths of a mile require traveling on foot.
There are at least 10 graves in this cemetery. Only half of them can be identified. The rest are marked by uninscribed field stones.
All five of the marked stones are Watsons. But the cemetery is the “Pennington-Watson Cemetery.” So how do the Penningtons come into play? That’s part of the mystery.
Part of the Pennington connection is that the two families were connected. Nancy Watson, who died in 1920 and is one of the five verifiable graves at the cemetery, was a Pennington who married into the Watson family.
The Pennington family
It is believed that Lakey Chambers Pennington was buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery when she died in 1901. If so, she would’ve been buried in one of the unidentified graves, almost two decades before the first confirmable burial occurred there.
Lakey Pennington was the daughter of Thomas Chambers (1777-1871) and Catherine Lakey “Katie” Lawson (1792-1838). Both of her parents were the children of Revolutionary War veterans who settled in the Huntsville area in the early 19th century. Thomas Chambers was the son of William Chambers (1750-1840), while Katie Lawson was the daughter of Randolph Lawson.
William Chambers is one of the Revolutionary War veterans of Scott County listed on the plaque outside the old Scott County Courthouse. Randolph Lawson is not, but should be. He moved to present-day Scott County along with two of his brothers, David Lawson and John Lawson, who were Revolutionary War veterans and are listed on the Huntsville plaque. The Chambers family settled on Buffalo Creek, and both Thomas Chambers and Katie Lawson Chambers are buried at Chambers Cemetery there. The Lawson family settled on Paint Rock Creek.
Lakey, who was one of at least 10 Chambers children, married George Washington Pennington, who is believed to have been born about 1824. They married in 1845 and had as many as 13 children.
George Pennington was the son of William Pennington and Susannah Nossman from Whitley County, Ky. He had a brother, Fielding Pennington (1817-1867) who married Lakey’s sister, Sarah Elizabeth Chambers. They settled in the Rockhouse area near Buffalo and are buried at the Cross Cemetery there.
How George and Lakey Chambers Pennington wound up in Big South Fork isn’t clear. Nor is it clear where George Pennington was buried when he died.
At the time of the 1870 census, George and Lakey were living in Scott County’s 5th District with eight of their children: 19-year-old William, George, Martin, James, Elizabeth, Sarazidda, Catharine and two-year-old Mary. William was the fifth-oldest of the Pennington children (behind Daniel, David and Sally), while Mary was the next-to-youngest (Sarah was born two years after that 1870 census). There’s one documented child (Malinda, born around 1843) not accounted for in that 1870 census. (She was listed in the 1860 census, however, and appears to have married by 1865.)
When the 1880 census was taken, George and Lakey were living in the Winfield area with two of their adult children, 30-year-old Sally and 27-year-old Malinda.
The 1890 census is missing, which complicates efforts to trace the family. George Pennington does not show up after the 1880 census. Genealogy reports indicate he may have died in 1884. Lakey Pennington also does not show up after the 1880 census, although the same genealogy reports indicate she may not have died until 1901, one year after the 1900 census was taken.
Relationship to the Penningtons at Pennington-Watson Cemetery
There are two Penningtons purported by some sources (including FindAGrave) to be buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery. One is Lakey Chambers Pennington. The other is Sallie Pennington Slaven (1882-1951).
This Sallie Pennington was the daughter of William Pennington and Patsy Smith — a granddaughter of Lakey Chambers Pennington. She married Elijah Marion Slaven, the son of John Slaven and Elizabeth Smith. He was a deputy sheriff who died of a gunshot wound to the head — determined by a coroner to be self-inflicted — in 1943.
It seems doubtful that Sallie Pennington Slaven is actually buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery. By the time of her death in 1951, it had become uncommon to use field stones to mark graves. Her death certificate at the time of her death states that she was buried in the Slaven Cemetery. When her husband died in 1943, his death certificate stated that he was buried in a family cemetery. Additionally, E.M. and Sallie Slaven did not live in Big South Fork. When the 1840 census was taken, they lived on Buffalo Road east of Oneida. When the 1950 census was taken, Sallie Slaven lived alone on Duncan Road.
The reason for the confusion is Sallie Slaven’s obituary, which stated that she was buried at Pennington Cemetery. The only other Pennington Cemetery in Scott County today is located at Pine Hill; however, she does not have an identifiable headstone there, either.
The location of Elijah and Sallie Pennington Slaven’s graves remains a mystery. If they were buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery, their graves were marked with uninscribed field stones which, again, would seem unlikely in the 1940s and 1950s.
It should be noted that while it’s not clear how Lakey Chambers Pennington wound up in Big South Fork, her son and his family did live in the Big South Fork when the 1880 census was taken. That year, William and Patsy Smith Pennington lived in the BSF with their three oldest children, Lakey, Nancy and Daniel. (Patsy, incidentally, was the daughter of Elijah and Nancy Smith, who lived on Station Camp Creek, where Elijah is buried in a lone grave.)
The only Pennington whose burial can be conclusively proven at Pennington-Watson Cemetery is Nancy Pennington Watson, who died Jan. 1, 1920, at age 43, of tuberculosis. She married James Watson, who was gunned down in Oneida during a pistol dual with Rans Cecil later that same year. He was an employee of the O&W Railroad.
Nancy Pennington Watson was the daughter of William and Patsy Smith Pennington, a granddaughter of Lakey Chambers Pennington.
Is Lakey Chambers Pennington actually buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery? It wouldn’t have been unusual for someone to be buried with only an uninscribed field stone (or an inscribed field stone that has since been rendered illegible by weather and time) to mark their grave in the 1880s or 1890s. And there must be a reason for the Pennington name being affixed to this small cemetery through the years.
The Watson family
The first member of the Watson family — and, thus, the first identifiable grave — buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery was Andrew Watson in 1916.
Andrew Watson was only about 25 when he was killed in combat. His recently-placed flat stone states that he was a member of Wagoner Supply Troop 5th Cavalry on the Mexican border during the “Mexican War.” This would be a reference to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920.
Watson was the son of Elisha Watson and Nancy Slaven. The Watson family lived in the vicinity of Terry Cemetery Road above No Business. When the 1910 census was taken, Andrew Watson was boarding with France and Elizabeth Miller, who lived at the mouth of No Business and operated a general store there.
Andrew Watson enlisted in the U.S. Army around 1910. It was in 1916 that the 5th Cavalry was dispatched to the Mexican border to serve in the Pancho Villa Expedition that was being led by Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing. Their assignment was to stop Pancho Villa’s bandits from killing American citizens in the southwestern U.S. Villa had led a raid that resulted in the murders of 17 Americans in the town of Columbus, N.M., in March 1916.
It takes some digging to find the record of Watson’s death. It occurred on Sept. 22, 1916, and is listed on a Punitive Expedition casualty roll. He was one of 46 American soldiers killed or wounded on the Mexican border that year, and one of 12 killed during the Punitive Expedition, which was the original, official name of the Pancho Villa Expedition.
It isn’t clear whether Watson’s body was returned to Scott County for burial or if the stone at Pennington-Watson Cemetery is a cenotaph in his memory.
Elisha Watson, born in 1852, was the son of Hiram Watson and Mary Foster. He married Nancy Slaven in 1883, and they had at least 11 children. Nancy was the daughter of Elisha Slaven and Mary Ann “Polly” Sweet. She was a granddaughter of Richard Harve Slaven, the first settler of No Business Creek.
Among Elisha and Nancy’s 11 children were James, the oldest, who married Nancy Pennington, and Andrew, who was killed in the Mexican conflict.
Nancy Pennington Watson was the next person buried at Pennington-Watson Cemetery when she died of tuberculosis on Jan. 1, 1920. Her husband followed after he was killed in the Oneida dual in August 1920.
Elisha Watson was buried at the cemetery in 1930, and his wife, Nancy Slaven Watson, was buried there in 1945.
The cemetery today
The last burial at Pennington-Watson Cemetery, assuming Sallie Pennington Slaven truly wasn’t buried there in 1951, was Nancy Slaven Watson in 1945. There are at least two — and perhaps as many as four — graves at the cemetery that are unaccounted for. One possibility is that these could be the graves of Hiram Watson and Mary Foster — Elisha Watson’s parents — who died in 1910 and 1915 with burial locations unknown. However, that’s only speculation. (As noted by Tim West in his transcription of Grave Hill Cemetery, there is a funeral home marker in that cemetery for a Hiram Watson, death date unknown, that states he was born in 1824. That is the approximate birth year of this story’s Hiram Watson.)